Video Lending Library Inventory
A Force More Powerful
United States, India, South Africa, Denmark, Poland, Chile
York Zimmerman Inc.
2000
Running Time: 154 minutes
A Force More Powerful is a two-part documentary series on one of the 20th century’s most important and least-known stories – how nonviolent power overcame oppression and authoritarian rule. In South Africa in 1907, Mohandas Gandhi led Indian immigrants in a nonviolent fight for rights denied them by white rulers. The power that Gandhi pioneered has been used by underdogs on every continent and in every decade of the 20th century, to fight for their rights and freedom. Reviewing a century often called the most violent in history, this series is the story of millions who chose to battle the forces of brutality with nonviolent weapons—and won.
EPISODE ONE
In the 1960s, Gandhi’s nonviolent weapons were taken up by black college students in Nashville, Tennessee. Disciplined and strictly nonviolent, they successfully desegregated Nashville’s downtown lunch counters in five months, becoming a model for the entire civil rights movement. In India in the 1930s, after Gandhi had returned from South Africa, he and his followers adopted a strategy of refusing to cooperate with British rule. Through civil disobedience and boycotts, they successfully loosened their oppressors’ grip on power and set India on the path to freedom In 1985, a young South African named Mkuseli Jack led a movement against the legalized discrimination known as apartheid. Their campaign of nonviolent mass action, most notably a devastating consumer boycott in the Eastern Cape province, awakened whites to black grievances and fatally weakened business support for apartheid.
EPISODE TWO
In April, 1940, German military forces invaded Denmark. Danish leaders adopted a strategy of “resistance disguised as collaboration” – undermining German objectives by negotiating, delaying, and obstructing Nazi demands. Underground resistance organized sabotage and strikes, and rescued all but a handful of Denmark’s seven thousand Jews. In 1980, striking workers in Poland demanded independent unions. Using their leverage to negotiate unprecedented rights in a system where there was no power separate from the communist party, they created a union, Solidarity. Driven underground by a government crackdown in 1981, Solidarity re-emerged in 1989 as Poland’s governing political party. In 1983, Chilean workers initiated a wave of nonviolent protests against the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. Severe repression failed to stop the protests, and violent opposition failed to dislodge the dictatorship—until the democratic opposition organized to defeat Pinochet in a 1988 referendum.
Bringing Down a Dictator
Yugoslavia (Former)
York Zimmerman Inc.
2001
Running Time: 56 minutes
In the year 2000, in a war barely noticed outside Yugoslavia, the indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic fought to hold power. He controlled a battle-hardened army, a tough police force, and most of the news media. But he underestimated his opponents, led by a student movement called Otpor! (Serbian for “resistance”), who attacked the regime with ridicule, rock music, and a willingness to be arrested. Their courage and audacity inspired others to overcome their fear and join the fight. Otpor! students were the shock troops in what became an army of human rights and pro-democracy activists who systematically undermined police and army loyalty to Milosevic and forced him to call early electins. When Milosevic refused to accept his defeat at the polls, the people responded with a general strike. As normal life ground to a halt, Serbs by the hundreds of thousands descended on the capital on October 5 to seize the parliament in a dramatic triumph for democracy. Milosevic was arrested and extradited to the Hague to stand trial for crimes against humanity in June 2001.
Orange Revolution
Ukraine
A Force More Powerful Films
2007
Running Time: 106 minutes
Presidential elections, Ukraine, 2004. One candidate is backed by the post-Soviet regime. Eight weeks before the election, the opposition candidate is mysteriously poisoned. He survives, but with a severely disfigured face. In the final voting, blatant vote fraud hands the election to the regime. Instantly, Ukrainians pour into the streets by the hundreds of thousands. Fed up with censored media, corruption, and rule by wealthy oligarchs, they have voted for change, and now they are taking over the capital, Kyiv, to enforce their will. Through snow and freezing temperatures they stand their ground, blockading government buildings, demanding a new election. Through the eyes and in the voices of the Ukrainian people, Orange Revolution tells the story of a people united, not by one leader or party, but by one idea: to defend their vote and the future of their country. (Not Rated)
