Description

When Howard Zinn was invited to speak at the Taos Film Festival, he took the opportunity to explore how films portray history. In particular why historical film so often mirrors an establishment view of history rather than portraying the past from the perspectives of people's history.

Zinn spins tales of films he'd like Hollywood to make, drawing from his encyclopedic knowledge of outsiders and rebels; stories like Shays' Rebellion in which Revolutionary War veterans & small farmers took up arms against the excessive taxation of Massachusetts, or the Irish immigrant troops who fought for Mexico against the US as San Patricio's Batallion or a new Helen Keller bio-pic which shows her as the radical, anti-war activist and socialist she was or the march of 11 and 12-year-old textile workers from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to President Thoedore Roosevelt's summer home in Oyster Bay organized by Mother Jones.

Howard Zinn is Professor of History emeritus at Boston University and acclaimed author of numerous books.