Cinequest Film Festival: Review

A friend of mine was working for the Cinequest film festival that's been going on in San Jose for the past week or so. This weekend was unfortunately the last of the festival, the two films I saw were so amazing, I wish I had the time to go see more.

The film I saw was a documentary called Witch Hunt. It will be airing on MSNBC on April 12th, but I do not know at what time. Witch Hunt focused on Bakersfield, Kern County California, in the mid 80's they elected a new district attorney with a tough on crime platform. He was so tough on crime, that he began fabricating child molestation cases. He based convictions on the testimony of 6 year old children, browbeaten into following leading questions to convict their own parents of the most horrible falsehoods. It began with one man John Stoll, in 1984 he was recovering from a messy divorce with a vindictive ex wife. His wife wanted sole custody of their child and was willing to destroy their son's life to get it, so she lied to him about being molested and got him to lie to the police.

This process went on for years, in total about three dozen people were convicted, most were working class or middle class parents, most had no previous criminal records. Eventually, after rotting in jail for a almost a decade, the first of the convictions was overturned, and paved the way for the rest of the innocents to be released. John Stoll, the first to be jailed, unfortunately was also the last one out, serving a total of 20 years out of a 40 year sentence. Other parents had obscenely long sentences, some set a new record for the highest sentence ever in Kern county, at 373 years. All of the parents were innocent from the beginning. Most of the kids have come forward to tell the truth about the situation as well, and despite all this no one has pressed charges against the authorities for any of it.

The second film I saw was Johnny Mad Dog and it was one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time. It was a fiction about child soldiers fighting for freedom in Liberia, but it was very realistic and very gritty, using ex-child soldiers as actors in the movie. This movie is not for the faint of heart, it is most realistic depiction of what life is like for these kids. Or at least I think, no one in America really knows much since we aren't involved in the conflict, even through our UN participation. The only things America sends to Africa, since Somalia, are condoms and money, but I digress.

If you liked Full Metal Jacket, you will love Johnny Mad Dog, as there are many parallels in the plot of both movies. At the end of the movie I felt depressed yet inspired, happy to be alive, and very happy not to live in that kind of a world. I couldn't cut it, I'm too used to life in "civilized" American society. At the same time, I doubt they could survive in America, without being jailed at least. All those child soldiers are taught, from the youngest of ages, is killing, rape, and looting. It's a horrible thing to conscript children as young as ten to do these acts, as was the case for Johnny Mad Dog, the main character of the film.