A rectangle featuring two boxes showing two images. In the left box, which has a white background, are two speech bubbles stylized to look like film strips, one in red and one in blue, with the words “Meaningful Movies Project” beside them. Beneath these words is the website address: www.meaningfulmovies.org. and “Social Documentary Film and Community Discussion. The right box is a segment of a movie poster for the film “Knock Down the House, ” which features the picture of four women clustered together, all looking in different directions, with a faded image of the U.S. Capitol behind them on a blue background.
7 p.m. Thursday, SEPTEMBER 17, 2020
Release Year: 2019
Running Time: 86 minutes
Director: Rachel Lears
When tragedy struck her family in the midst of the financial crisis, Bronx-born Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had to work double shifts in a restaurant to save her home from foreclosure. After losing a loved one to a preventable medical condition, Amy Vilela didn’t know what to do with the anger she felt about America’s broken health care system. Cori Bush was drawn into the streets when the police shooting of an unarmed black man brought protests and tanks into her neighborhood. Paula Jean Swearengin was fed up with watching her friends and family suffer and die from the environmental effects of the coal industry.
At a moment of historic volatility in American politics, these four women decide to fight back, setting themselves on a journey that will change their lives and their country forever. Without political experience or corporate money, they build a movement of insurgent candidates challenging powerful incumbents in Congress. Their efforts result in a legendary upset.
The film is available through Netflix or on YouTube (https://youtu.be/YCSo2hZRcXk). Please watch the film on your own, then join the panel discussion with Meaningful Movies in Kirkland on Thursday, September 17 at 7pm.
Special guest for the discussion is Shelley Kloba, Representative, 1st Legislative District.
To register for the discussion, please follow this link. You will receive a link to the discussion meeting by return email.
MORE MEANINGFUL MOVIES: 6:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 17: Attla tells the gripping but virtually unknown story of George Attla, an Alaska Native dogsled racer who, with one good leg and one outlandish dream, dominated the sport for five decades, becoming a rockstar figure for both indigenous people and white people. REGISTER HERE: https://kcls.bibliocommons.com/events/5f4e7b45636c1c3a006490e3
Release year: 2019. Running time: 57 minutes. Directors: Catharine Axleyf