STARVING THE BEAST: Mims and Banowsky's smart, timely and very important documentary

Is higher education at America's public universities soon to become a "private" kind of thing?  As in: even higher tuition fees, less and less public funding, and more and more nasty disruption and fake reform from trash-talking (and worse-acting) Republicans bent on the destruction of any kind of government that would actually provide for the people it governs? According to the new, must-see documentary STARVING THE BEAST, the answer is a decided "yes" -- unless the public that most needs to make use the of that education is able to wrest control back from the purveyors of this "new business model" for our universities.

As written, directed, filmed and edited by Steve Mims, shown at right, who earlier co-directed that exceptional documentary, Incendiary, and produced by Bill Banowsky (below), the documentary is actually one of the more intelligent I've seen in its refusal to spoon-feed us a bunch of talking points and sound bites. Instead, the filmmakers let us slowly see and understand what is going on here by listening hard and watching well, then putting together all the pieces Mims provides in order to understand the bigger picture, as well as the smaller details that make up that picture.

Mims begins with an angry speech by James Carville (shown below, and no hero of mine: see Our Brand Is Crisis) about what's happening at LSU, but there so much going on here that the filmmaker then offers up some history, including how the private sector began encroaching upon the public, and the results of all this in various locations and universities. Those locations are often, no surprise, in America's south and southwest (Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Texas). But not always: We get a good dose of what Scott Walker did and wants to continue doing in and to Wisconsin.

We also see what Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal have in mind for higher education in Texas and Louisiana. Funny how all three would-be Presidential candidates have long since been unmasked for the lying pikers they are. We even get a dose of another would-be, Marco Rubio, who sings the praises of the Investing in Student Success Act -- surely one of the worst ideas those die-hard/kill-the-government idiots have yet concocted. Wait until you hear its particulars: This lunatic piece of if-only lawmaking (along with another bit of nonsense called The HERO Act) sounds like something out of the darkest, dystopian sci-fi film.

How did all this come about? Listen and learn of Jeff Sandefer and his Seven Solutions, or Wallace Hall and the Kick-Ass Regents. And, yes, Grover Norquist rears his ugly, no-more-taxes head once again. The fix is in by the one per cent to "starve" public higher education of funding. Sure, times are hard (except for the wealthy) but that is no excuse for so many states to abdicate their responsibility over higher education.

There is so much impressive information here -- including talking head interviews, copious charts and statistics, and especially a delving into exactly what happened and why -- that you will come away from this documentary with renewed appreciation for what public education used to mean and what, we hope, it can someday signify again.

As a filmmaker, Mims never raises his voice (although he occasionally lets his interviewees do this for him). Instead he piles up the evidence quietly and carefully and places it right in front of us. The result is impressive in both its quantity and quality. The movie's epilogue, involving the condition of Iowa State University, is like a further call to arms.

Starving the Beast, from Mr. Banowsky's distribution company, Violet Crown Films, and running 95 minutes, opened this past Friday, September 2, in at the E Street Cinema in DC, hits New York City at the IFC Film Center this coming Friday, September 9, and then opens on Friday, September 16, in Austin (Violet Crown Cinemas), Charlottesville (Violet Crown Cinemas), Los Angeles (Laemmle's Noho) and Madison (Sundance Cinemas). Click here to see all currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Steve Mims'/Joe Bailey, Jr.'s INCENDIARY: THE WILLINGHAM CASE is that -- and more

TrustMovies had never heard of Cameron Todd Willingham prior to seeing this movie about him, his family and the case of supposed arson that put the man on the Texas map. Ah, Texas: Here is yet another movie (one more--Texas Killing Fields--will open next week) that makes you thrilled not be a citizen of the back-ward state that has managed to elect George W. Bush as its governor, offering the fool a platform to the Presidency -- and then the likes of the god-pushing, sleazebag supreme, Rick Perry. If INCENDIARY: THE WILLINGHAM CASE does nothing else (it does a damn lot more, actually), what our country will learn from the film (if any retention remains in the American people) should put the permanent kibosh on Perry's Presidential aspirations.

Don't imagine that this movie by Mr Bailey (above, left) and Mr. Mims (above, right) is a broadside. Though their attitude and feelings seem fairly clear-cut, they go out of their way to give the "opposing viewpoint" its day. And were that viewpoint not so horrifyingly stupid and brutal we might be able to accept it with less suspicion, for what the movie does, finally, is convince you that a terrible injustice was done in the state of Texas. Yet, instead of owning up and making things right, even posthumously for the defendant, the powers-that-be, led by Governor Perry, do their best/worst to see that right never rears its head.

What the filmmakers let us understand about the whole affair -- which, by the way, cracklingly combines politics, forensic investigation, justice, the death penalty and the rights of a defendant -- raises a bunch of questions, whose answers raise even more. We learn the history of Mr. Willingham (above, right) and his extended family; we see "politics" at work, both in open meetings and behind closed doors; and we meet a defense attorney, the likes of which no defendant should ever have to endure. This movie is incendiary, all right, and not simply because it deals with (and explains a hell of a lot about) fire and how the determination of arson is arrived at -- both in the recent past and today, under a more modern methodology.

The filmmakers and their camera manage to be in a lot of places over time and what they've captured is, for the most part, exem-plary. We hear from the best, most reliable sources in fire forensics field (one of whom is shown above, and another at the bottom of this post); see up-close and nasty the ex-wife of the defendant, who appears to be lying through her teeth; and see and hear, over and over again, that putrid defense attorney who manages, in the same breath, to invoke attorney/client privilege even as he tries to incriminate his late client. In some of the best scenes, such as the one shown below, we're flies on the wall at political meetings during which the push for transparency is consistently undermined by the man Rick Perry appointed to do his dirt.

You're likely to leave this documentary fuming. Should you suddenly burst into flame, let's hope you're not in Texas -- where they'd no doubt charge you with arson and stick you on death row.

Incendiary: The Willingham Case -- one of the best and most important documentaries so far this year -- (distributed via Truly Indie and Yokel) opens this Friday, October 7, in New York at the  IFC Center; on October 14 at The Magnolia in Dallas; on October 21 at the Bijou Cinema at The University of Iowa; and on November 18 at Laemmle's Fallbrook 7.