OF A POLITICAL NATURE

On Thursday, November 1, AFI FEST 2007 kicked off with an opening night gala for LIONS FOR LAMBS, a heavily political film that marks the start of a civicminded vein that runs throughout the rest of the festival. Be they big-budget dramas or home-made documentaries, a slew of selected films examine governments, presidential campaigns, corrupt systems and the cost of freedom.

Directed by and starring Robert Redford, the aforementioned LIONS FOR LAMBS intertwines an aspiring U.S. senator (Tom Cruise) and a TV journalist (Meryl Streep) with a university professor (Redford) and two of his recently enlisted students who are soon deployed to Afghanistan.

Despite its overtones, Redford contends the film is charged and evocative, but propaganda- free. LIONS strives not to beat partisan cliches, but to strike a chord within all viewers from all ideological backgrounds, to think, listen and always stand for whatever it is they stand for.

In director Weijun Chen's documentary PLEASE VOTE FOR ME, a children's school in Wuhan, China, is electing a new class monitor. Three eight-year-old hopefuls -- a class clown, a stern "dictator," and a gossipy young girl -- face off against one another in a race for the coveted seat.

The film is a lesson in defeat and acceptance, hope, bribery and bitterness. It serves as a charming microcosm for the modern day People's Republic of China.

Part of the International Shorts Competition, Director Kevin Everson's EMERGENCY NEEDS is a brief experimental work that touches upon the 1968 race riots in Cleveland, Ohio. Presiding over a rabid press hearing, Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes -- the first African American mayor in the history of the U.S. -- used poise in the face of hostility.

"I think his legacy is that he handled situations not with violence but with compassion," said Everson. "In the footage, Stokes answers every question posed to him with more dignity than it was asked."

Ellen Spiro & Phil Donahue co-direct BODY OF WAR, a documentary that tells the painful, yet proud story of 26-year-old Tomas Young, who enlisted in the military immediately after 9/11. Young was shipped to Iraq, where after a mere five days a sudden onslaught of insurgent gunfire descended upon his convoy. One of the bullets pierced Young's spine, instantly crippling him from the waste down.

BODY OF WAR instills both misery and indignation. We watch as Young struggles to grip his immobility, depression and anger; to weather his now-turbulent marriage; to endure a daily cocktail of medications and sub-par medical treatment; and to turn his newfound disappointment and disgust for the Iraq War into a positive form of political action.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROBERT KENNEDY STARRING GARY COOPER, a short and experimental work, curiously mixes stock footage of Robert Kennedy with images from the 1952 Hollywood western High Noon in a surreal, fact-meets-fiction blur that seems to mock our modern political landscape.

One horrific morning in May 2004, art professor Steve Kurtz awoke to find his wife dead and then his house in Buffalo, New York upturned and quarantined off by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

As federal agents in Hazmat suits rummaged through Steve's life, the body of Hope Kurtz was confiscated, and Steve -- whose art incorporated the use of perfectly harmless bacteria in petri dishes -- suddenly faced charges of biological terrorism.

Director Lynn Hershman Leeson's STRANGE CULTURE recounts Steve's surreal nightmare, from prosecution to vindication to further prosecution. Actress Tilda Swinton and actor Thomas Jay Ryan portray Hope and Steve, respectively, with intertwined interviews from friends, lawyers and the suspected terrorist art teacher himself.

SOUTH CENTRAL FARM, directed by Sheila Laffey, is a home-grown documentary with Los Angeles roots. Literally. Up until they were forcefully evicted in June of 2006, roughly 130 families cultivated and lived off the land of South Central Farm, a 14-acre plot in the middle of industrial south LA (East 41st & South Alameda). Utilized as a community garden for growing everything from avocados to walnuts, SCF was one of the largest urban farms in the U.S. at the time.

"It was paradise," said Laffey. "It brought truly different people and ethnic groups together, and fresh organic produce in a time when the costs of food and fears of food safety are going up."

Armed with a camera, passionate neighbors, the occasional activist celebrity (including Daryl Hannah up a tree) and a handful of fresh produce, Laffey catalogs in SOUTH CENTRAL FARM a heartfelt green-thumbed protest with a simple romantic vision.

"The farm was a gem of green and vibrant life in the midst of a concrete desert," said Laffey.

Three years ago, director Steve York began working on ORANGE REVOLUTION, a documentary that depicts the outstanding democratic rallies that followed the controversial 2004 Presidential election in Ukraine. After the unsolved murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze -- coupled with long-standing charges of government corruption and allegations of election fraud -- more than one million citizens descended upon the capital of Kiev, many of them sleeping in street tents and weathering the bitter cold in the name of justice.

York, who's covered everything from Gandhi to Milosevic to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, crafts an emotional and jarring look at the 17-day nonviolent battle waged by a people fed-up on lies and thirsting for freedom.

"The 'orange revolution' brought real change," said York, "And reforms which I think are irreversible. A free media, without censorship. A clean electoral system. The start of constitutional reform. Those are big steps toward a better life."

ATENCO, A CRIME OF STATE follows the May 2006 political upheaval in San Salvador Atenco in northern Mexico and the violent crackdown that followed it. In response to a government plan to seize their property to make way for a new airport, Antenco villagers formed the "Peoples Front for Defense of their Land," a group that would later come to the aid of protesting peasants in neighboring Texcoco when state police blocked flower vendors at a local market.

The result was an uprising, placing 300 civilians against 3,000 police who used violence to break the back of what they feared was a mounting rebellion.

Additionally, THE UNFORSEEN (directed by documentarian Laura Dunn) lays out the battle between preservationists and land developers over Barton Springs, in Austin, Texas, a popular spring-fed watering hole, while TORN FROM THE FLAG (directed by Endre Hules and Klaudia Kovacs) tells the tale of Hungary's struggle for sovereignty against Soviet Communism -- a popular rebellion that turned idealists into realists into fierce freedom fighters.