Miss Liberty's Film & Documentary World

Time to get ready for your July 4th celebrations. And what better way to remember what it’s all about than with a good film? Here are a few American Revolution films I recommend.

Note: You may want to consider buying DVDs. Since just last year, two of the six films listed below are now out of print and only available used and in limited quantity — expect these stories of American Revolutionary War heroes to disappear. These are stories some would rather not be told. More on the disappearing of great films here.

Sons of Liberty (free on Amazon Prime) is one of my favorite picks for July 4th. Sons of Liberty isn’t your grade school telling of the Revolution; it transforms the image of the Founders from dry intellectual men of the past, about whom young people reluctantly read because someone tells them to, into the cool crowd of their time, which oddly enough they were.

Johnny Tremain is historical fiction mixed with fact that gives us an intimate view of the early events of the American Revolution through the youthful eyes of Johnny Tremain, apprentice silversmith. This is a Disney classic that is a great pick for kids.

1776 is a musical telling of the founding, that remains popular nearly 50 years after its release. It’s a fun watch and a good way to remember the events if you like a little song and dance in your movies.

America: Imagine the World Without Her is partly a celebration of America’s roots, and partly a head-on counter attack against those who disparage that history. It challenges the Left’s dominant anti-American narrative — that America was built on plunder-and-conquest — by revealing that the country’s true story is one of unprecedented triumph over humanity’s history of plunder-and-conquest…through its unique idea of individual liberty.

Liberty: The American Revolution is the definitive full exposition of the events of the Revolution, a six-part PBS series that is often touching, exciting, inspiring, and full of wonderful details about individuals. Above all it gives a sense of the greatness of the people involved in the Revolution. Of the American Revolution films I’m recommending, this is one of the more serious tellings, but if you want the full story, this documentary series is it.

George Washington: The Man Who Wouldn’t Be King tells the remarkable and little-known story of just how important this great man was. Not only was he the one who made the democratic dreams of Jefferson and Adams a reality, he was the first person in history to turn down supreme power over most of a continent. At the end of the Revolutionary War, Washington was offered the opportunity to become king. In that pivotal moment, he took out something few had seen him wear, a pair of spectacles. “Gentlemen,” said Washington, “you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.” By the time he was done making the point that he and and his staff had not spent their lives and fortunes to establish another monarchy, but to give a birth to freedom, those calling for his kingship were reduced to tears…and thus ended what would otherwise have been a coup d’tetat. He’s the reason we have a democracy today.

George Orwell (the pen name for Eric Arthur Blair) was born on June 25th, 1903. Few in history did more to warn the public about the dangers of totalitarianism. Several films based on Orwell’s works are available, including three versions of 1984, and two of Animal Farm (1,2).

The definitive film version of 1984 is the one released that very year, starring John Hurt. However, like the book, it’s not the most uplifting experience. It projects a world bleak in every aspect, thoroughly controlled, and impossible to escape — in other words late stage socialism as seen in the USSR, National Socialist Germany, North Korea, Maoist China, etc.

Ayn Rand once said it’s nearly impossible to explain to free people what it’s like to live under totalitarian socialism; they just can’t comprehend the state of perpetual fear and hopelessness. This film comes pretty close to getting it across, and it’s worth watching for that reason — free people need to know the stakes that are being played in current cultural and political battles. But expect it to be grim.

My favorite version of Orwell’s Animal Farm, and the film I would most recommend watching to celebrate his birthday, is the 1954 animated telling. It also which happens to be available for free on you tube in HD format.

George Orwell also equipped the world with useful phrases to describe and disparage the workings of totalitarianism: “Big Brother,” “thought crime,” etc. The one that has become particularly relevant in the age of Saul Alinksy, Antifa, and social media, is: “two minutes of hate.”

From 1984, describing two minutes of hate: “A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.”

Some current examples of two minutes of hate…

US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was born on June 23rd, 1948. He is a fan of Ayn Rand and has decided libertarian leanings. No wonder the left did everything it could to try to keep him off the Supreme Court. As he himself put it: “‘I felt as though in my life I had been looking at the wrong people as the people who would be problematic toward me. We were told that, ‘Oh, it’s gonna be the bigot in the pickup truck; it’s gonna be the Klansman; it’s gonna be the rural sheriff.’ But it turned out that through all of that, ultimately the biggest impediment was the modern-day liberal.’”

You can learn more about Justice Clarence Thomas and how he rose from poverty to the pinnacle of judicial power in the excellent documentary Created Equal: Clarence Thomas In His Own Words.

Edward Snowden was born on June 21st, 1983. At age 30, in 2013, he became an American hero.

While employed at the NSA, Snowden discovered the agency was routinely and secretly scanning every email, listening to every phone call, tracking every phone, etc., of every person in the United States. Each and every instance of this policy constituted a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which specifies that “unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause.” Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of NSA employees knew that this was going on but had done nothing to stop it. So Snowden alone summoned his courage to do the right thing and went to the press with bombshell proof.

The press offered to shield him from exposure by allowing him to make his charges anonymously. Snowden knew that doing so would undermine his allegations, that an unseen whistleblower might be brushed off. So decided to allow himself to be exposed to the full wrath of the authorities, in the name of getting the truth out. As he replied at the time,  “No…Put a target on my back…Nail me to the cross.” The analogy is not lost, given the situation.

His allegations rocked the country. The Obama Department of Justice responded sharply by charging Snowden, on his birthday of that year, with espionage, forcing him to reluctantly flee for his life to the only country that would offer him protection — Russia, where Edward Snowden remains to this day, in exile. Obama himself came out to try to spin the story and his talking heads did likewise. But there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Now everyone knows.

Two films have been made to tell Snowden’s story.

Citizenfour is a documentary, but it is so well crafted it is as much thriller, and it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary for its high caliber of exposition.

Riveting, as well as the most indispensable documentary of the year…”
–BBC

Additionally there is the Oliver Stone film Snowden, which is more personal and biographical.