Term Paper Help- “The Lives of Others” is the required first film. If you want to earn extra points, start here.  This tells how the secret police spied on journalists, writers and other potential critics of the Communist  regime during the 1980s and 90s. 

Term Paper Help- “The Lives of Others” is the required first film. If you want to earn extra points, start here.  This tells how the secret police spied on journalists, writers and other potential critics of the Communist  regime during the 1980s and 90s.

Here are some films that deal with political and economic systems. You may earn two points for each film you watch and report upon (only choose 5 of the list below).

To earn your  credit, do not to describe the film’s narrative.  A plot summary is not asked for.  What you are asked for is to tell on paper something significant that you learned about the drawbacks or evils of the political/economic system that serves as the background to whatever film you have chosen to watch and write about. We have been studying (see class syllabus attached) the way philosophers have thought about society, politics, ethics from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to Marx who wants philosophers not to understand the world, but to change it. You have been in dialogue with other students throughout the semester. Think about and apply what you have learned.

1. “The Lives of Others” is the required first film. If you want to earn extra points, start here.  This tells how the secret police spied on journalists, writers and other potential critics of the Communist  regime during the 1980s and 90s.

 

2. “The Killing Fields” (Communism comes to power in Cambodia in the 1970s and 80s).

 

3. “Goodbye, Lenin!” is a comedy about on life behind the Berlin Wall before and after the wall is torn down in 1989.

 

4. “The Motorcycle Diaries” tells the story of how a South American medical student, Che Guevara, becomes a Marxist revolutionary after encountering the injustices of the capitalist system.

 

5. “The Tunnel” is a 2001 German film dealing with the attempts made by a champion swimmer and other Berlin citizens trying to escape of the Communist paradise in East Germany.

 

7. “The Bridge of Spies” tells the true story of a captured Soviet spy, an American lawyer, and the anti-communist paranoia that belonged to the United States during the “cold war” with Russia in the 1950s and 60s.

 

8. “Saving Private Ryan” (American, 1994) and “Stalingrad” (German, 1993) are two films dealing with the destruction of lives and civilization in times of war. These two films are recognized as being among the most realistic films dealing with combat and thus raise many ethical issues that are most relevant to our world today.