Past Films

A young man is violently displeased when he is confronted by a mirrored image of himself while WTOP's Bill Diehl gives us the unabashed mid-morning news.

On a rainy night near a concentration camp being bombed during the waning years of WWII, the son of a top-ranking and fearsome Nazi General is mortally wounded. With the camp's doctor having been transferred to the eastern front, the only doctor who is available to perform the life-saving surgery is a condemned, elderly Jewish inmate at the camp.

Upon summoning the man, the General commands the Jewish doctor to perform the surgery, but the doctor refuses, saying that he will not help his enemy to continue to massacre his own people. The General threatens the doctor's life, and the camp's Commandant is only too happy to oblige, but the doctor still replies that his life will end soon in the camp's ovens anyway. The General then offers freedom to the doctor if he cooperates. The doctor still refuses. The General then begs the doctor to save his only son, but the doctor then objects that the Nazis did not save his only son but hanged him for smuggling food in to starving ghetto children. Then all the General's hopes are dashed as the distant sounds of a prison train can be heard approaching the camp.

With the General at an impasse, he discovers that he must connect with the underlying humanity that connects them both as fathers before there is to be any hope for his son.

China's unprecedented growth has placed it on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world's preeminent power. Meanwhile, Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback and The Sorrows of Empire, argues that America's preoccupation with militarism has all but sealed its fate as a nation in long-term decline. But if China surpasses the United States, what type of power will it become? In today's interconnected and globalized world, the answer affects each and every one of us.

In Pakistan and Afghanistan, China's humanitarian activities and investment in infrastructure have won it the hearts and minds of the people. Yet in Tibet and Xinjiang, China is reviled as an imperialistic abuser of human rights. Despite trumpeting its vision of an ethnic unity at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government has gone to great lengths to silence dissenting voices such as Rebiya Kadeer, de facto leader of the Uyghur people. Kadeer has replaced the Dalai Lama as Beijing's number one public adversary.

Will China follow in the footsteps of history's other great powers and use its strength to dominate its neighbors, trample ethnic and religious minorities, and become a 21st century empire? Or will a wealthy Chinese youth lead the country towards democracy, much like Taiwan? The international community shares responsibility in this outcome, but is it too dependent on Chinese trade to care? Whether it's a peaceful rise or potential threat, China's 21st century emergence as a great world power will change the lives of everyone.

The world as we know it has ended, and Thomas survives each new day locked up alone inside his missing neighbor's fallout shelter. The oppressive boredom is occasionally punctuated by the pleas of survivors outside, but Thomas greets them with indifference and even hostility. In a brief moment of "weakness" he allows a young girl inside his world, but is his desire for companionship enough to overcome his instinct to survive?

In this followup to his successful 2009 release Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Nathan Fisher takes us into a world gone mad and into the mind of one survivor as he tries to determine what makes a life worth living.