Conservative Movies

Fire of Liberty

Jason Apuzzo, writer/director as well as the co-founder and co-director of the Liberty Film Festival, has a wonderful column over at Townhall.com on the emergence of conservative or conservative themed films within Hollywood via the 'independent film' scene. Though a considerable amount of the Hollywood left and the left in general will more than likely dismiss these film as right-wing infomercials or pap, you only have to look at the various assortment of films that will be appearing at the Liberty Film Festival to realize that these films offer a broad aray of subjects and concerns that this nation faces everyday. Here's a sample:

First-time filmmakers Nina May and Tricia Erickson, for example, wanted to tell the story of how many black Americans found their home in the Republican Party in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, all the way down through the 1950's. To tell this largely forgotten story they interviewed black intellectuals like Shelby Steele, Deroy Murdock and Armstrong Williams - and important witnesses like Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, and Gloria Jackson, a descendant of Booker T.
Washington. The resulting film, "Emancipation, Revelation, Revolution,"
tells an almost shocking tale of how the modern Democratic Party has worked to keep black Americans on a liberal 'plantation,' ignorant of their own history.

Meanwhile another first-time filmmaker, Mercedes Maharis, decided to pick up a video camera and begin documenting the corrosive, demoralizing effect of illegal immigration on her border community of Cochise County, Arizona. Her film, "Cochise County, USA: Cries From the Border," vividly captures the tragedy of illegal border crossings for migrants and Americans alike. Neither abstract nor preachy, "Cochise County" simply depicts the sights and sounds of this ongoing crisis, even featuring footage of actual border crossings.

Perhaps most novel, though, are the efforts of Marine Seargant Kc Wayland, another first-time filmmaker and an Iraq war veteran. Wayland's "365 Boots on the Ground" documents his year-long tour of duty in Iraq, from recruitment through deployment to his return home. This absorbing, first-person account (shot in part with a helmet-cam) shows the lives of Marines in Iraq, from their daily routines, to humorous and heartwarming encounters with Iraqis, to shocking outbreaks of terrorist violence.

I'd say that after reading about these various conservative movies has demonstrated that conservative ideas have some strong legs to stand on as it begins to scale of Hollywood. Thanks to the creation of The Liberty Film Festival by Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty, the summit might not be so hard to surmount.