But alas, that seems to be the trend.If we are fortunate, non-Holocaust genocides get one movie. Cambodia: The Killing Fields; Rwanda: Hotel Rwanda; Sierra Leone Civil War: Blood Diamond.
But sadly, Hollywood you have inexplicably chosen to ignore critical chapters in history. Twenty million dead during Stalin’s communist reign of terror: nothing. Communist oppression of democratic yearnings in Tiananmen Square: nothing.
Now please, please, please don’t get me wrong. Hollywood, I’m not saying that you don’t need to make any more Holocaust movies. To the contrary, in the spirit of Never Forget, Never Again, you need to keep making them.
But you also need to diversify. Why is it Hollywood, that you seem so committed to chronicling the fascist horrors of mid-century Europe in ever-greater detail, yet you are willing to let the longer-lasting and arguably more-devastating tragedies under communism slip into the realm of the forgotten?
There are important lesson here that I would like to help my students and my daughters learn. Thank you for the movies you have given us. They are invaluable tools that teach important lessons.
But they are not enough.
It’s time to broaden your scope.
-Jack
Earlier this year I read a phenomenal page-turner called “Mao’s Last Dancer” about a boy who grows up in abject poverty in rural China, is plucked from obscurity, and rises to become one of the top ballet dancers in the world. He defects from China to the US and eventually settles in Australia. It is a story of hope, determination, and a mother’s love. And of course, it is set against the larger political backdrop of turmoil that was the Cultural Revolution.
The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking: this would make an awesome movie, this would make an awesome movie. This fall, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that “Mao’s Last Dancer” has -in fact- been made into a movie . . . but not by Hollywood. It was made by an Australian movie company. It had a limited release in the U.S.
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