It’s June 27th, I’m Gina Telaroli and this is TakePart.com’s look at the week in social action

The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Nicole Hughes:

U.S. Media Ignores Link Between Midwest Floods and Global Warming

Top 10 Houseplants for Removing Indoor Air Pollution

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Andy Kondrat:

Dubai to Build Rotating Positive Energy Tower

Bioethicist Peter Singer Tackles World Food Shortage

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Jon Popham:

Americacorps Workers Assist Flood Ravaged Town

Australians “Out-Fat” Americans

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Giulia Rozzi:

Progressive Book Club

Oprah Recommends “A New Earth”

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Gina Telaroli:

Human Rights Watch 2008 Film Festival Update

SilverDocs 2008 Update

So the first week of Human Rights Watch is almost over so if you’re in NYC, catch something while you still can. I’ll be posting reviews of the remaining films in the next few days before they screen so keep checking back. Each film’s screening times will be listed and I’ll leave a schedule of reviews to come here.

Also in case you’re just tuning in now, here’s a little refresher on what’s already played:

• Human Rights Watch 08 : Calle Santa Fe
• Human Rights Watch 08 : The Beytrayal (Nerakhoon)
• Human Rights Watch 08 : American Outrage
• Human Rights Watch 08 : A Promise to the Dead

Here’s what’s ahead:

• Under the Bombs : http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/underthebombs.html
• The Sari Soldiers : http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/thesarisoldiers.html
• Traces of the Trade : http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/tracesofthetrade.html
• Letter to Anna : http://www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/hrw08/lettertoanna.html

After all is said and done I’ll post a comprehensive piece full of Takepart links that will let you connect to the issues in the film!

The Betrayal (Nerakhoon) Director: Ellen Kuras & Thavisouk Phrasavath, Country: US/Laos; Release: 2008, Runtime: 100

Screened : Sat Jun 14: 6:30 and Sun Jun 15: 8:30

Ellen Kuras has been shooting other people’s movies for years and it turns out she has also been shooting her own. The Betrayal, which she made with and about her friend Thavisouk Phrasavath, takes it’s audience from Laos to New York from the 1980s to the present. It’s a film that deals with family, war and the bonds that we keep and the bonds that we break.

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American Outrage (Beth Gage & George Gage, USA, 2007; 56m )

screening : Sat Jun 14: 4:15 and Mon Jun 16: 1:30 & 9

American Outrage focuses on the Dann sisters and their fight to keep their Western Shoshone lands. In 1863, the Shoshone signed a treaty with the US allowing them to pass on their lands. That treaty, The Treaty of Ruby Valley, was a treaty of good faith and in no way signified that the Shoshone were giving up their lands. However, in 1974, Mary and Carrie Dann, elderly Shoshone grandmothers, found themselves accused of trespassing on their own land. The lengths that the government went to to remove the Dann sisters and their livestock from their property is astounding.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie Halper:

Debra Winger and Rights Camera Action!

James Byrd Jr. and the Struggle for Tolerance

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Nicole Hughes:

Green Video of the Week: 5 Tips for Reducing Your Garbage

The Week in Green Politics

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Andy Kondrat:

Disappearing Destinations: Visit Before They Vanish

Chuck Norris Wants America to Start Drilling for Oil Here and Now!

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Jon Popham:

NASA Plans Voyage to the Sun

The Girl Effect

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Giulia Rozzi:

Gay Discrimination at Seattle Baseball Game

Bison Brucellosis

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Gina Telaroli:

Fathers Day Celebration of Movie Dads #1

My Father’s Gift of Tecumseh!

I was a pretty lucky kid. I grew up with a father who had an interest in Native American history. And despite the inherent contradiction that my father also influenced me to be an avid Cleveland Indians fan, I’ve always been thankful that he brought an awareness of Native American history into my life. We would go on cross country trips out west and when I was about 14 we drove on down to Southern Ohio to see what remains my favorite theater experience to this day, Tecumseh!. The play was based on one of my father’s favorite books, Allan W. Eckert’s A Sorrow in Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh.

Tecumseh! is about the tragic Shawnee chief of the same name and is told in what I remember to be a breathtaking outdoor amphitheater with real horses and gunpowder. It was awe-inspiring, even for a fourteen year old who thought she was too cool to go on vacation with her family. And while I’m sure my critical thoughts on the piece are influenced by my age and ignorance of all things theater at that time, I think I can safely say that the story was amazing, the tragedy of which has always stayed with me.

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Last month’s Human Rights Watch International Film Festival featured “The Axe in the Attic,” a poignant and thoughtful documentary about both the natural and human costs of Hurricane Katrina. Filmmakers Ed Pincus and Lucia Small spent 60 days on the road exploring New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana, Alabama and Kentucky in their efforts to collect post-storm footage and interviews, but broke with documentary tradition by deciding to include themselves in the story. “When you’re two white northerners heading South,” they said in their directors’ statement, “remaining behind the camera just doesn’t feel like an option.”

The title of the film is a gloomy reference to those who sought refuge in their attics from the flood, but had to chop their way through the roof when the water failed to recede. The documentary itself focuses on how evacuees have had to adjust to their new environments, some achingly alien to them, as both subject and filmmaker take on such controversial topics as class, race, and the government’s failure to provide for those who have lost everything.

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Seeing The Unforeseen at last years Human Rights Watch Film Festival reconfirmed for me how powerful documentaries can really be. Laura Dunn’s flawless portrait whisks you away to Austin, Texas directly into the murky battle between nature and ideas of development. The film follows a local developer, a legal battle over Austin’s beloved natural swimming spot Barton Springs and different families as they try to find affordable housing, often having to turn to new developments.

What makes the documentary stand out is that it shies away from being a film that simply makes the developer the bad guy.

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