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12 Libertarian DVD Holiday Gifts Under $10

Need some quick gift ideas for that special libertarian friend? Here are twelve films currently for sale on DVD for less than $10 at Amazon.

Richard Jewell

Security guard Richard Jewell saves hundreds of lives from an exploding pipe bomb at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, only to be railroaded as the prime suspect by an incompetent FBI and cynical press. Based on a true story. [ Richard Jewell credits: Dir: Clint Eastwood/ Paul Walter Hauser, Kathy Bates, Sam Rockwell/ 131 min/ Drama/ Incompetent government, Government as bigot, Law & liberty, Working for government/ 2019]

“Richard Jewell is an engaging, at times heart-wrenching film, and an act of justice — one might even say vengeance.”
–MissLiberty

“Richard Jewell is a study, not a diatribe, about runaway media and FBI agents victimizing an innocent man. Paul Walter Hauser commands the screen as the security guard falsely accused of the 1996 Olympics bombing in Atlanta.”
–Chicago Sun-Times

“Yes, this is a great movie, and a magnificent centerpiece performance by an unknown actor named Paul Walter Hauser in the title role is a major reason it is so unforgettable.”
–Observer

Currently on Amazon for $8.44

Footloose

The new kid in a small town leads a high-school rebellion against the town’s anti-dancing law. [Dir: Craig Brewer/ Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Dennis Quaid/ 113 min/ Drama, Musical-Dance/ Government Enforced Morality]

“[In Footloose ] the town passed ordinances enforcing a curfew on minors and outlawing public dancing. Alas, the town’s officials and even its pastor – played by Dennis Quaid with nary a twinkle – weren’t up on their Genesis, or else they would have realized: As soon as you tell people what they absolutely must not do, that’s all they want to do.”
–SFGate

Currently on Amazon for $5.99

Still Mine

WINNER: TOP 25 LIBERTARIAN FILMS
When a rural farmer builds a new home as a kindness to his ailing wife, a government bureaucrat threatens to tear it down for building code violations.  Based on a true story.  [Dir: Michael McGowan/ James Cromwell, Ronan Rees, Geneviève Bujold/ 102 min/ Drama/ Anti-regulation, Individualism]

“This film is notable as well for telling the love story of an elderly couple; in this age of hard-bodied youthful Hollywood stars, you don’t see that very often. And the story works, frankly far better and with more honesty than many cinematic teenage romps, thanks the excellent casting of James Cromwell in the lead and Geneviève Bujold as his memory-impaired wife. There is something a bit “made-for-TV” about the film in terms of production values, but you forget all that in the context–the picture of two people facing the fading light of age with dignity, resolve, and a kind of poignant understated heroism. Tears were shed at the end, both on screen…and off.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $9.88 | Great DVD pick for a date night!

How Jack Became Black

WINNER: TOP 25 LIBERTARIAN DOCUMENTARIES
A father forced by the public school system to categorize his multiracial children by “primary race” explores the silliness of racial identity. [ How Jack Became Black credits: Dir: Eli Steele/ 96 min/ Documentary/ Equality & Law, Individualism/ 2018]

“There is a growing group in this country who feel that they cannot be simply placed into one racial category. Yet, what if that is exactly what society is trying to make them do? This is a battle we see taking place in the new documentary How Jack Became Black.”
–The Black Geeks

Currently on Amazon for $9.99

Harvey

WINNER: TOP 25 LIBERTARIAN FILMS
A woman tries to have her eccentric brother institutionalized. [ Harvey credits: Dir: Henry Koster/ James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Peggy Dow, Charles Drake/ 104 min/ Comedy/ Psychiatry & Force, Social Tolerance]

“A well written story full of good will and humor that implicitly defends the freedom of eccentrics to be eccentric.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $8.69

Don Juan Demarco

A young man’s romantic delusion renews his psychiatrist’s passion for life. [Dir: Jeremy Leven/ Johnny Depp, Marlon Brando, Faye Dunaway/ 92 min/ Romance, Comedy/ Psychiatry & Force, Individualism]

“A romantic film in every sense of the word: it’s about love, about making an adventure of life, and about the liberating effect that such an imaginative attitude has on people.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $8.99 | Great DVD pick for a date night!

Padman

An heroic and independent entrepreneur creates a low-cost sanitary pad for the world’s poor, but must overcome cultural shame associated with menstruation to get his invention accepted. Based on a true story. [ Pad Man credits: Dir: R. Balki/ Akshay Kumar, Radhika Apte, Sonam Kapoor/ 140 min/ Biography, Comedy, Drama/ Creator-as-Hero, Individualism/ India/ 2018/ aka Padman ]

“This is a wonderful story of entrepreneurial determination and has many pro-capitalism touches. Pad Man is also a love story, and a story about overcoming shame, and a sweet, colorful film. It’s an engaging window into Indian life, not only what it is today, but how it is evolving in the context of India’s burgeoning capitalist economy. Some say praise for Muruganantham in this film goes over the top, but that an enthusiastic tribute was made about an entrepreneur at all – I haven’t seen one lately from US film studios – says something very good about India.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $8.90

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

ACADEMY AWARD WINNER: BEST PICTURE (2003)
ACADEMY AWARD NOMINEE: BEST PICTURE (2001, 2002)
A small band of heroes embark on a journey to destroy an all-powerful ring before its evil conjurer can use it to enslave the world. [ Lord of the Rings credits: Dir: Peter Jackson/ Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen/ 178min/ Fantasy/ Power Corrupts]

“Libertarians will appreciate the ‘power corrupts’ theme as well as the portrayal of the central hero–Frodo, a wide-eyed ‘Hobbit’ (a small elfin creature) admirably played by Elijah Woods. Small and elfin though he may be, he rises to the task of keeping the world free. As so often in real life, the great battles between good and evil, between freedom and slavery, are not won or lost solely in contests of giants, but in the incremental deeds of those ordinary heroes to whom the torch falls.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $9.99

Logan’s Run

Two citizens of a twenty-third century automated welfare state reveal the lie on which their static society is based, and so destroy it. [Dir: Michael Anderson/ Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Peter Ustinov/ 120 min/ SciFi-Fantasy, Action-Adventure/ Democide]

“An imaginative and sometimes exciting story, marked by memorable performances by Michael York and Peter Ustinov.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $5.99 | Great DVD pick for classic sci-fi fans!

Tank

An Army sergeant uses his own Sherman tank to rescue his son from a corrupt local sheriff and make a run for the state border. [ Tank credits: Dir: Marvin J. Chomsky/ James Garner, G.D. Spradlin, C. Thomas Howell/ 113 min/ Action-Adventure/ Corrupt Government, Second Amendment]

“A generally satisfying chase film with a libertarian twist.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $9.69 | Great DVD pick for a family movie night!

Sons of Liberty

A group of young men–Sam Adams, John Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock and Dr. Joseph Warren–secretly join together to oppose British domination, and end up sparking the American Revolution. [Dir: Kari Skogland/ Ben Barnes, Marton Csokas, Ryan Eggold/ 87 min/ Drama, History/ American Revolution, Resistance to Tyranny]

“Sons of Liberty is really the first good cinematic update in nearly 60 years to the story of America’s founding. And that’s what makes this History Channel production so important—it breathes new life into the story of the Revolution, by dramatizing it in terms not just accessible but engaging, even one might say sexy.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $9.99 | Great DVD pick for July 4th celebrations!

Fahrenheit 451

WINNER: TOP 25 LIBERTARIAN FILMS
In a future time when books are banned, a secret underground preserves the world’s literature. [ Fahrenheit 451 credits: Dir: François Truffaut/ Julie Christie, Oskar Werner, Cyril Cusack/ 112 min/ SciFi-Fantasy, Drama/ Freedom of Speech]

“Fahrenheit 451 is a wonderful Ray Bradbury story, and its antiauthoritarian content will make it of very strong interest to libertarians. Truffaut’s telling of this story is Hitchcockian at times, and seems all the more so supported, as it is, by an excellent Bernard Hermann musical score.”
–MissLiberty.com

Currently on Amazon for $9.99

Thanksgiving: a Celebration of Property Rights?!

Journalist John Stossel explains how Thanksgiving would have been (and nearly was) “Starvation Day,” but for a change in policy from communal planting to…private property.  [4 min/ Anti-socialism, Econ 101]

Reason tells the the true story of how the introduction of property rights by Governor Bradford saved the Pilgrims.  [3 min/ Anti-socialism, Econ 101]

The original account of Governor Bradford, 1647

“All this while no supply was heard of, neither knew they when they might expect any.  So they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they cold, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still languish in misery.  At length, after much debate of things, the Governor (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves; in all other things to go on in the general way as before.  And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end, only for present use (but made no division for inheritance) and ranged all boys and youth under some family.  This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been by any means the Governor or any other could use, and saved him a great deal of trouble, and gave far better content.  The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability; whom to have compelled would have thought great tyranny and oppression.”

“The experience that was had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato’s and other ancients applauded by some of later times; that the taking away or property and bringing into community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.  For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort.  For the young men, that were most able and fit for labour and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense.  The strong, or man of parts, had no more division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could; this was thought injustice.  The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalized in labors and victuals, clothes, etc. with the meaner and younger sort, thought it was some indignity and disrespect unto them.  And for mens’s wives to be commanded to do service for other men, as dressing their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could many husbands well brook it.”
Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647, William Bradford

Links about Thanksgiving and property rights

This Thanksgiving, Be Grateful for Property Rights. The Pilgrims Nearly Starved Without Them, John Stossel, Reason
Giving Thanks for Property Rights, Caroline Baum, Economics21
How A Failed Commune Gave Us What Is Now Thanksgiving, Jerry Bowyer, Forbes
Thanksgiving: Pilgrims, property rights and prosperity, Hugh Whelchel, The Washington Post
How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims, Ilya Somin, The Volokh Conspiracy
The First Thanksgiving: How property rights transformed Plymouth Colony, Frank Miniter, National Review
JOHN STOSSEL: The Lost Lesson of Thanksgiving, John Stossel, Fox News
The Great Thanksgiving Hoax, Richard J. Maybury, Mises Institute
Our First Thanksgiving, Sartell Prentice Jr., The Foundation for Economic Education

DailyWire To Create Atlas Shrugged Series

The Daily Wire has announced it will produce and add to its growing video content an Atlas Shrugged series. “DailyWire+ has acquired exclusive film and television rights to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, and will develop a series based on the groundbreaking 1957 novel, company co-CEO Jeremy Boreing announced Thursday…Boreing vowed that the series will be true to the book’s message, plot, and character archetypes. The book — which has sold over seven million copies worldwide — champions Rand’s theory of objective reality and morality. Set in an over-regulated, dystopian United States and told from the perspective of railroad executive and protagonist Dagny Taggart and the fiercely individualistic leader John Galt, it promotes the theme that self-interest is not only the most moral, but also the only viable way to organize society.”

The earlier Atlas trilogy of movies disappointed fans as many thought the films were not equal to the book. Hopefully DailyWire will do better. The Atlas Society has produced very good animated versions of Anthem and Red Pawn as well as a large number of shorts related to Ayn Rand’s works.
h/t Instapundit

Holodomor Holocaust Remembered In Four Films

Holodomor (“to kill by starvation) is what Ukrainians call the period from 1932-1933, when Stalin created a forced famine to punish the Ukraine’s resistance to socialist collectivization. Estimates vary as to how many Ukrainians died, ranging from three million to twelve million. This tragedy and crime are remembered on Holomodor Remembrance Day. Here are four films to honor the dead.

We Remember, We Are Strong

…two short one-minute films to honor those lost.

Bitter Harvest

A young Ukrainian fights for his freedom, and to survive, as occupying Soviet troops deliberately starve his country into submission during the infamous Holodomor holocaust. [ Bitter Harvest credits: Dir: George Mendeluk/ Max Irons, Samantha Barks, Terence Stamp/ 103 min/ Drama, Romance, History/ Democide, Anti-socialism/ 2017]

“This cinematic telling is both long overdue and a small drop of justice for the victims whose stories were never told.”
–MissLiberty.com

“Must-see, dramatic, powerful story.”
–MovieGuide

Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is a new film about Gareth Jones, the journalist-hero who first tried to warn the world about communist atrocities in the Ukraine — and died for it.

“The story of Gareth Jones is such a fascinating one, built on such intrepid, one-man-against-the-system ideals, that it’s a wonder it hasn’t been filmed into oblivion over the past 80 years. A young Welsh journalist who blew the first public whistle on the Holodomor — the man-made famine of 1932-33 in Soviet Ukraine — only to be broadly discredited by his professional peers and murdered before his 30th birthday, he was the quintessential man who knew too much.”
—Variety

The Soviet Story

The untold story of Soviet mass murder. [ The Soviet Story credits: Dir: Edvins Snore/ 86 min/ Documentary/ Democide, Anti-Socialism]

“Gripping, audacious and uncompromising…”
–The Economist

“For those who think they’ve seen everything they need to know about wartime Europe, this film will provide an extraordinary jolt to the senses… ”
–Film Threat

Harvest of Despair: The Unknown Holocaust

One of the twentieth-century’s biggest and least-known genocides, in which as many as seven million Ukrainians perished at the hands of the Soviet government, is examined using interviews of survivors, photographic evidence and scholarly commentary. Based on the Robert Conquest book Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine. [ Harvest of Despair: The Unknown Holocaust credits: Dir: Slavko Nowytski, Yurij Luhovy/ 55 min/ Documentary/ Democide, Anti-socialism]

The Berlin Wall: Eight Films To Honor the Dead

The infamous Berlin Wall was socialism itself: concrete and razor wire in the name of humanity, guard towers and machine guns in the name of human progress. It’s ostensible purpose was to protect vulnerable East Germans from invasion, but as a practical matter it was simply a way of preventing the slave populations of the USSR from escaping to the West.

By the time it finally fell on November 9th, 1989, 5,000 had attempted to cross it, most ending up in brutal labor camps and about 200 killed on the spot. And yet, so unhappy was life behind the Iron Curtain, that young people in particular never stopped trying to breach it. The following films remember the Wall and its victims.

The first victim of the Berlin Wall was 18-year-old Peter Fechter.

The moment he was shot down by East German border guards as he tried to cross the barrier to the West, the Berlin Wall quite suddenly became real because everyone near the wall saw him die. In a poignant record of the tragedy, British Pathe provided this unnarrated, silent 3-minute clip.

“Peter Fechter (14 January 1944 – 17 August 1962) was a German bricklayer from Berlin in what became East Germany in 1945.” –Wikipedia

 

Despite the risk, many made heroic escapes, particularly in the beginning when the Wall was not fully completed, as captured in this early news reel.

Inspired by these heroic escapes, a young George Lucas, later of Star Wars fame, would make one of his earliest short films, Freiheit.

A number of tunnels were attempted, some successful. Several films were made on the subject, including Berlin Tunnel 21 starring Richard Thomas, and the German film Der Tunnel.

One of the most daring escapes, in which a family used a hot air balloon to get out, was made into an excellent film by Disney, Night Crossing.

This was remade in 2020, with the release of the German film Balloon.

The human cost of the Berlin Wall was not only human life as such, but human misery on a scale unimaginable. It separated loved ones quite suddenly, and for decades. That cost is well captured in The Promise, a film about a young couple in love. It begins with their attempted escape to the West. The man slips, hesitates, and before he knows it the moment is lost. His girlfriend goes on and makes it to the West, but he is left behind. It isn’t clear why he hesitated. Was it fear of being caught? We and he don’t know. But his failure fills him with guilt, compounded by his subsequent draft into the border guard service. Each further opportunity for him to escape is lost by bad luck and his own lack of daring. And as time goes by, he makes one compromise after another to survive until finally he is doing whatever the state wants him to do just to have the slight crumbs of happiness they allow him.

Then one day a speech that almost didn’t happen changed everything. Speechwriter Peter Robinson was told by US diplomats to write a speech for President Reagan’s visit to the Berlin Wall, but was warned against any “commie bashing.” He didn’t take their advice, and Reagan loved what he wrote. “Tear Down This Wall” became an iconic moment of the Cold War.

Enough time has apparently passed that Germans can now laugh about the Wall, in a sort of bittersweet way. The German-made comedy Good Bye Lenin! captures, in its own ironic way, the fall of communism far better than any straightforward telling. At one level, it’s a delightful farce that relentlessly mocks East Germany’s socialist past, but at another it also touches on the emotional perspective of many former East Germans, that in the transition to freedom…their side, the side they had been taught to love, lost.

COVID Lab Leak Deception: The ‘Kooks’ Were Right

Reason has released an excellent short film, The Lab Leak Deception, on the US government’s coverup of COVID lab leak origins.

It seems that while Anthony Fauci was publicly condemning as kooks and conspiracy theorists those who suggested a connection between COVID and gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, resulting in social media censorship of anyone writing or talking about such a connection — behind the scenes his own government scientists were concluding the virus was man-made, and with plenty of reason to think so.

“Journalists and scientists routinely dismissed the lab leak hypothesis as a crackpot theory and even as ‘racist,’ up until the summer of 2021 when science journalist Nicholas Wade published an influential article, and a viral rant by Jon Stewart pushed it into the mainstream. Until that point, social media platforms had been removing or throttling posts that took it seriously. Anthony Fauci, who didn’t respond to our interview request, said it wasn’t worth even considering the possibility that COVID could have originated in a lab. More recently, emails made public through the Freedom of Information Act have revealed that Fauci, National Institutes of Health (NIH) director Francis Collins, and other prominent public officials took the possibility of a lab origin far more seriously than they were letting on.

Health reporter Emily Kopp has assembled a comprehensive timeline that lays out substantial evidence that Fauci, Collins, and a number of influential scientists misled the public. Whether or not the lab leak theory is correct, it’s now clear that these public officials concealed their conflicts of interest with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and minimized their own roles in providing government funding for unsupervised gain-of-function research that may have led to the pandemic. ‘It seems to me like the status quo is more or less continuing unabated,’ says Kopp. ‘I don’t think that experiments are actually slowing, and I think they might actually be accelerating.'”

For more information, see the COVID Timeline: The Story Told in Links.

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About Miss Liberty

This site is a collection of films and documentaries of particular interest to libertarians (and those interested in libertarianism). It began as a book, Miss Liberty’s Guide to Film: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium, where many of the recommended films were first reviewed. The current collection has grown to now more than double the number in that original list, and it’s growing still.