The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II

A documentary about the American war in Vietnam, made while the war was still being fought. Davis intercuts interviews with generals, officials, pilots, veterans, grieving Vietnamese families and ordinary Americans, setting the language of policy against what that policy did on the ground and at home.

Why it’s here: The punk move is the editing: Davis lets the war's architects talk at length, then cuts their words against a funeral, a bombed village or a cheering football crowd, and trusts the audience to feel the gap. The pedagogy is in how the film teaches viewers to hear the language of power, euphemism and abstraction included, while looking at what it covers up. Worth knowing that the juxtaposition is the argument, and General Westmoreland and others objected that their words were framed unfairly, so watch it as a persuasive documentary, not a neutral record.

In 1994, Paul Rusesabagina, the manager of a luxury hotel in Kigali, shelters more than a thousand Tutsi and moderate Hutu refugees while militias kill outside and the UN pulls back. The film follows him as he bribes, bluffs and begs to keep them alive. Terry George directs, and Don Cheadle earned an Oscar nomination for the lead.

Why it’s here: The film puts a viewer inside what it means to ask for help and be left alone. What's pedagogical is how clearly it names the radio propaganda and the foreign officials who knew. Note: it's a dramatization, and Rusesabagina's role has been disputed by some survivors, so watch it with the book Gourevitch (suggested 10/23) and a Rwandan voice.