Extracurricular Education

I was having a conversation at a pub one night with some fellow students and mentioned that J. was writing historical lessons for school kids. While passing along what he'd taught me about the Spanish Civil War, I mentioned the film "Land and Freedom," (which you should all go out right now and rent). Anyway, folks were interested, and C. from Nigeria said he loved political films and so we started talking about them and there are lots of good ones that not everyone had seen. So we're starting a fortnightly political film night at our house! I can't wait. We're starting with Land and Freedom. I will be making fajitas. (Nothing to do with the film, just that I mentioned that local "Mexican" food was not the American "Mexican" food I pined for and that I had learned to make salsa. They promptly committed me to making fajitas at the first film night.)

So far, it's J. and me, O. and P. from London, Z. from Turkey and C. from Nigeria. Should make for some great conversation and perspective comparison.

Jason and I have started a list of good (i.e. not JUST educational) political films. I'm not going to post it here because it's too long, and because my descriptions are probably not totally accurate, but if you'd like to see it, let me know and I'll email it to you once my fellow film society members have added their suggestions. Also, if you have knowledge of amazing films about world politics, let me know and I'll add them if they're not already on it. Maybe I'll figure out what high-tech Internet way to post it here without having it be in my blog text. I'm a little slow about such things.