Eyes in Film - The Global New Economist Film Project

Gideon Lichfield, deputy editor of The Economist Online and head of The Economist Film Project, has launched a new documentary project launched this month January 10th. The Economist Film Project is an initiative by The Economist magazine, in partnership with PBS NewsHour, to showcase independent documentary films from around the world. Selected films and the topics they explore will serve as the subject of news segments airing regularly on PBS NewsHour beginning in March 2011 and continuing throughout the year. In just one week, the project has received nearly 200 submissions on a variety of topics. For more information visit www.film.economist.com.

Films included are:

Reagan, Directed by Eugene Jarecki, examines the enigmatic career of one of the revered architects of the modern
world – icon, screen star, and two-term president Ronald Reagan.
Black Power Mixtape, Directed by Göran Hugo Olsson starring Danny Glover, Talib Kwali, Erykah Badu and Harry Belafonte: From 1967 to 1975, fueled by curiosity and naïveté, Swedish journalists traversed the Atlantic Ocean to film the black power movement in America. “The Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975” mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material, which languished in a basement for 30 years, into an irresistible mosaic of images, music, and narration to chronicle the movement’s evolution.

Hell And Back Again, directed by former New York Times Photojournalist Danfung Dennis, is a cinematically revolutionary film that asks and answers the question, what does it mean to come home - injured physically and psychologically - and build a life anew? Two overlapping narratives are brilliantly intercut – the life of a Marine at war on the front, and the life of the same Marine in recovery at home – creating both a dreamlike quality and a strikingly realistic depiction of how Marines experience this war.