RESISTANCE CINEMA
Presents two episodes from
“OLIVER STONE’S UNTOLD HISTORY OF
THE UNITED STATES”,
Ixtlan Productions, Executive Producers OLIVER STONE, ROB WILSON, TARA TREMAINE, Written by PETER KUZNICK, OLIVER STONE, & MATT GRAHAM, narrated by OLIVER STONE, (2012, 58 min per episode)
WHEN: Sunday May 11th, 2014, 1:15 pm
WHERE: Community Church NY Gallery Room, 28 East 35th St. btwn park & Madison Ave.
ADMISSION: Free, donations appreciated
In this ten-part documentary series Academy Award winning writer/director Oliver Stone turns his efforts not only to a political/historical documentary film but specifically designs the project for classroom use accompanied by lesson plans and supplementary reading materials. We will screen two of those episodes.
The title “Untold History” is a bit of an exaggeration since most of the material has been documented although in more elite academic circles. What Stone does is look back at human events that at the time went under reported, but that crucially shaped America's unique and complex history over the 20th century. The series concentrates on WWII and beyond. From the atomic bombing of Japan to the Cold War and the fall of Communism, this in-depth, surprising, and totally riveting series demands to be watched again and again.
Stone’s rationale for producing the series is expressed as follows.
“As Americans do we really understand our shared and complicated history? How do we recall the small details and forgotten players that influenced some of the biggest 
events from America’s past? Will our children actually get the whole story from reading history books? And how will it affect the future of our country?
Critical thought and informed debate are essential to the preservation of democracy. It is the duty of each generation to teach the next how to analyze and interpret history-and how to come to terms with the past, warts and all, to shape a better and more equitable future for people across the world”.
CHAPTER 4: THE ORIGINS OF THE COLD WAR
This episode gives a specific month by month account of the causes of the Cold War. Highlights include
Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, the Civil War in Greece, the Marshall Plan as humanitarian but politically motivated and the Red Scare that prompts the rise of Joe McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI. Clearly Stone’s heroes are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Henry Wallace. The unifying theme of the episode is that had their vision of the post war world 
prevailed, tensions between the U.S and the Soviet Union would not have amounted to more than a competitive but non lethal rivalry that could even have proven beneficial to both sides and the world rather than the massive paranoic hysteria that became the Cold War. The relevance to today is eerily demonstrated in a segment showing early CIA provocations in Ukraine.
THE SECOND EPISODE WILL BE ANNOUNCED.