Films reflect historical reality, registering the feelings and attitudes of an epoch. As the American historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. wrote,”The fact that film has been the most potent vehicle of the American imagination suggests all the more strongly that movies have something to tell us not just about the surfaces but about the mysteries of […]
Author: Sheldon Kirshner
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The Fathers of Superman
He rocketed to earth from a dying planet and grew up with supernatural powers. Faster than a speeding bullet, he masqueraded as a mild-mannered newspaper reporter named Clark Kent. When called upon to perform a good deed or save the planet from nefarious enemies, he changed into the Man of Steel, wearing a blue costume […]
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Barack Obama and the Middle East
The Middle East has kept Barack Obama extremely busy, if not preoccupied, since he assumed office in 2009. Obama has had to grapple with a multitude of challenges in this turbulent region, from Israel’s perennial struggle with the Palestinians and Iran’s quest for an atomic bomb to the revolutionary Arab Spring rebellions that have toppled […]
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The Converts of San Nicandro
Donato Manduzio, a disabled veteran of World War I, transformed himself into a messianic figure after returning to San Nicandro, his remote ancestral village in southern Italy. As he resumed his trade as a cobbler, he turned to faith healing, and after reading the Old Testament for the first time, he discovered the Hebrew scriptures. With […]
American democracy, its virtues notwithstanding, was deeply flawed for far too long. The stains that grotesquely blemished the United States for at least a century were slavery, segregation and Jim Crow racism, all maliciously directed at African Americans. While whites enjoyed the benefits of freedom and liberty in the land of the free, blacks bore […]
Seventy years ago this month, amid the terror of the Holocaust, the forces of decency prevailed in Nazi-occupied Denmark. At a time when millions of Jews throughout Europe were being systematically murdered in German extermination camps in Poland, the Jews of Denmark were being saved by their fellow citizens, in one of the […]
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Matthew Halton Sounded the Alarm
Matthew Halton, a celebrated Canadian foreign correspondent who worked for the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, visited Nazi Germany about a dozen times between 1933 and 1939. These were pivotal years in Europe. In 1933, Adolf Hitler assumed power, and in 1939, World War II erupted. Based in London, Halton covered the most important […]
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Fifteen Reasons to Live
After reading Ray Robertson’s book, Why Not? Fifteen Reasons to Live, Toronto filmmaker Alan Zweig thought that the complexity of life might be better understood by organizing it into neat and accessible categories. Animated by this idea, he sought out real-life stories that were at once applicable to Robertson’s concept and transportable to the screen. […]
Mountaineers are under no illusions when they embark on a challenging expedition. Having weighed the risks, they know there is always a chance they may never return to their loved ones. These thoughts doubtlessly crossed the minds of 70 climbers from 15 countries who set out to reach the summit of K2, the world’s highest […]
The rise of the Nazi party in Germany in 1933 led to an outpouring of protest in the United States. Community leaders, politicians, trade unionists, writers and intellectuals, among others, took to the podiums, streets, airwaves and op-ed pages to denounce Adolf Hitler’s blatantly antisemitic regime. Strangely enough, the presidents of America’s universities and colleges […]