Kori Cioca shares her shocking story in THE INVISIBLE WAR
THE INVISIBLE WAR (Kirby Dick, 2011)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Monday, June 18, 8:45; Wednesday, June 20, 6:30
Series runs through June 28
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
invisiblewarmovie.com
Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War is one of the bravest, most explosive investigative documentaries you’re ever likely to see. Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated) busts open the military’s dirty little secret, revealing that episodes of horrific sexual abuse such as the Tailhook scandal are not an aberration but a prime example of a rape epidemic that seems to an accepted part of military culture. Dick speaks with many women and one man who share their incredible stories, describing in often graphic detail the sexual abuse they suffered, then faced further abuse when they reported what had happened. Their superiors, some of whom were the rapists themselves, either looked the other way, laughed off their allegations as no big deal, or threatened the victims’ careers. Dick includes remarkable Defense Department statistics — the government admits that approximately one out of every five female soldiers suffers sexual abuse and that there were nineteen thousand violent sex crimes in 2010 alone — even as such military officials as Dr. Kaye Whitley, Rear Admiral Anthony Kurta, and Brigadier General Mary Kay Hertog make absurd claims that they are satisfied with the way they are handling the alarming trend. The central figure in the film is Kori Cioca, a former member of the Coast Guard whose face was broken when she was raped by a superior and now keeps getting denied necessary medical services from the VA. Such courageous women as USAF Airman 1st Class Jessica Hinves, former Marine Officer Ariana Klay, USN veteran Trina McDonald, USMC Lieutenant Elle Helmer, USN Lieutenant Paula Coughlin, and even Special Agent Myla Haider of the Army Criminal Investigation Command also open up about the physical and psychological damage the abuse has left on their lives and careers.
Lieutenant Elle Helmer visits the Vietnam War Memorial in shattering documentary
Inspired by Helen Benedict’s 2007 Salon.com article “The Private War of Women Soldiers,” Dick and producer Amy Ziering (The Memory Thief) have presented a searing indictment of an endemic military culture that has to come to an end, and fast. The Invisible War is screening June 18 and 20 at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, both of which will be followed by a Q&A with Dick and Ziering, winners of the festival’s Nestor Almendros Award for courage in filmmaking. They will be joined on June 20 by Ariana Klay and her husband, Ben, along with moderator Meghan Rhoad. The festival runs through June 28 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, highlighting seventeen works divided into five categories: “Health, Development, and the Environment,” “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) and Migrants’ Rights,” “Personal Testimony and Witnessing,” “Reporting in Crises,” and “Women’s Rights,” with this year’s focus on how one individual or a small group of individuals can help make a difference.
A key film that helped lead 1960s cinema into the grittier 1970s, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces is one of the most American of dramas, a tale of ennui and unrest among the rich and the poor, a road movie that travels from trailer parks to fashionable country estates. Caught in between is Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson), a former piano prodigy now working on an oil rig and living with a well-meaning but not very bright waitress, Rayette (Karen Black). When Bobby finds out that his father is ill, he reluctantly returns to the family home, the prodigal son who had left all that behind, escaping to a less-complicated though unsatisfying life putting his fingers in a bowling ball rather than tickling the keys of a grand piano. Back in his old house, he has to deal with his brother, Carl (Ralph Waite), a onetime violinist who can no longer play because of an injured neck and who serves as the film’s comic relief; Carl’s wife, Catherine (Susan Anspach), a snooty woman Bobby has always been attracted to; and Bobby’s sister, Partita (Lois Smith), a lonely, troubled soul who has the hots for Spicer (John Ryan), the live-in nurse who takes care of their wheelchair-bound father (William Challee). Rafelson had previously directed the psychedelic movie Head (he cocreated the Monkees band and TV show) and would go on to make such films as The King of Marvin Gardens, Stay Hungry, and Black Widow; written by Carole Eastman, Five Easy Pieces fits flawlessly in between them, a deeply philosophical work that captures the myriad changes the country was experiencing as the Woodstock Generation was forced to start growing up. The film suffers from some unsteady editing primarily in the earlier scenes, but it is still a gem, featuring at least two unforgettable scenes, one that takes place in a California highway traffic jam and the other in a diner, where Bobby places an order for the ages. And as good as Nicholson is, earning the first of seven Best Actor Oscar nominations, Helena Kallianiotes nearly steals the picture as a crazy woman railing against the ills of the world from the backseat of Bobby’s car. Five Easy Pieces will be screening June 16 and 24 as part of the Anthology Film Archives ongoing series From the Pen of . . ., paying tribute to such lesser-known but seminal screenwriters as Eastman, Jacob Brackman, Lewis John Carlino, Alan Sharp, and Norman Wexler and including such other films as The King of Marvin Gardens, Seconds, The Last Run, and Joe.
For forty years, Belgrade-born performance artist Marina Abramović has been presenting cutting-edge, often controversial live works that redefine what art is. For her highly anticipated major career retrospective at MoMA in 2010, 
Rod Steiger and James Coburn star in Sergio Leone’s final spaghetti Western, set during the Mexican Revolution in the 1910s. Steiger is Juan Miranda, the leader of a group of bandits who have stolen a stagecoach. Coburn is Sean Mallory, an IRA man on the run who likes blowing things up. The sweaty Juan wants to rob the Mesa Verde bank, while the cool Sean just wants to be left alone, but the two of them soon find themselves fighting together in the revolution. The film is way too long, and Ennio Morricone’s music is way too goofy, but Leone fans shouldn’t miss this rare chance to see the restored version of this film. Duck, You Sucker! is screening June 13, 19, and 21 as part of Film Forum’s Spaghetti Westerns series, which also features such well-known classics and under-the-radar gems as Damiano Damiani’s A Bullet for the General, Giulio Petroni’s Death Rides a Horse, Carlo Lizzani’s The Hills Run Red, and Giulio Questi’s Django Kill . . . If You Live, Shoot!
Douglas Sirk and Thomas Mann would be proud. In Todd Haynes’s wonderfully retro Far from Heaven, Oscar-nominated Julianne Moore is amazing as 1950s housewife Cathy Whitaker, who thinks she has the perfect idyllic suburban life — until she discovers that her husband (Dennis Quaid) has a secret that dare not speak its name. Mr. & Mrs. Magnatech they are not after all. When she starts getting all chummy with the black gardener (Dennis Haysbert), people start talking, of course. Part Imitation of Life, part Death in Venice, and oh-so-original, Haynes’s awesome achievement will have you believing you’re watching a film made in the 1950s, propelled by Elmer Bernstein’s excellent music, Edward Lachman’s remarkable photography, and Mark Friedberg’s terrific production design. Far from Heaven is screening at the Museum of the Moving Image on June 14 at 7:00, with Haynes in person to talk about the film in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition “Persol Magnificent Obsessions: 30 stories of craftsmanship in film,” which focuses on artifacts from works by Ed Harris, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Alfred Hitchcock, Douglas Trumbull, Ennio Morricone, Dean Tavoularis, Clint Eastwood, Haynes, and others.