Salon and Video Dog are very excited about a new partnership with Rooftop Films, a terrific Brooklyn, N.Y., group celebrating the 10th year of its film series, which appears on rooftops in and around New York City all summer long. We’ll be screening at least one film a week, on Friday afternoons, from Rooftop’s summer series. We know you’ll enjoy them.
First up is “South Central Farmers,” by Ross Guidici, about 14 acres of farmland in Los Angeles that helps feed 350 low-income families, and the farmers’ battle with a wealthy land developer who has acquired the land and threatens to kick them off. [Spoiler alert: After the film was finished, the farmers lost their last appeal, and just today the land was bulldozed.]
Read more about Rooftop Films here. And check out its summer festival schedule here.
Robert Greenwald has our enduring admiration for his low-budget, high-impact documentaries on some of the nation’s most-obsessed-over subjects, including Wal-Mart (“Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices”) and Fox News (“Outfoxed”). While his movies enjoy theatrical releases, they really take off as timely DVD phenomena; his use of the medium is like that of a modern day pamphleteer. And his successes in the past have been huge; his 2003 “Uncovered: The War on Iraq,” which exposed the deceptions that went into selling the invasion of Iraq to the public, sold well over 100,000 copies.
His latest, “Iraq for Sale,” exposes the great extent to which corporations are profiteering — with government help — from the war. Brave New Films is sponsoring local house screenings of the film, which you can learn more about here. You can also purchase the film for $12.95 here. Greenwald and Brave New Films has kindly offered us this exclusive bonus clip that features Salon’s own Mark Benjamin, who appears in the film.
Video Dog will be on hiatus until Oct. 9, as we take a long-planned break. In the meantime, watch these 10 great pet videos over and over and over again. They’ll make you a much better person.
A wacky cat compilation, complete with laugh-track:
This puppy’s tired, and he will not perform for your amusement!
Sleeping Kitty:
The feline version of Ri Rove You:
Novel uses for a cat:
You may not notice what makes this dog different at first, but he’s pretty special:
The inimitable Lee Kern, director of “The Nyuggle,” returns with a charming home movie about his dog’s mission to discover the long-buried contents hidden in a typical British backyard.
Kern will attend a very special show featuring many of his works Friday night at Rooftop Films’ “Twinklebum” show in Williamsburg.
Jonny Kaye catches up with a fleeing robber with his one-chip camera, and captures a brief glimpse into the mind of a not terribly successful, but hungry, man of the street.
America’s billionaire-run democracy 
No, Newt, don’t quit to make room for Santorum 
Whose Wisconsin recall is it? 
Can Greece thwart a complete meltdown? 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s alternative abortion history 
Inside Syria’s whirlwind of war 
Syria’s looming threat of civil war 
Santorum’s well-compensated love of fracking 
The Tea Party’s war on mass transit 
At the CPAC-Occupy beer summit 
