In a year when even the most perfunctorily political film has been deemed newly relevant, it’s a 58-minute observational documentary from 2007 that, by quietly surveying the United States’ progressive past, points most perceptively to the struggle that has faced the American Left since long before 2020. A history of violence and oppression told entirely through the sites and historical markers that stand in tribute to America’s fallen and forgotten revolutionaries, John Gianvito’s Profit motive and the whispering wind reiterates a hard truth about our world: that socially inclined thought is rarely embraced, and that the minds and voices of those fighting for real change are often only appreciated by an engaged few in the rearview mirror. To the latter point, Profit motive—like each of Gianvito’s films since coming to…
You're reading a preview of
Cinema Scope (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 85 - Winter 2021