Movies (and TV) at the Law Library

A fiercely independent woman is gang raped, then battles the legal system twice, going after both her attackers and the onlookers whose cheering fueled and encouraged the assault. Academy Award, 1989: Best Actress (Jodie Foster).

A husband and wife lawyer team clash when the wife defends a woman on trial for shooting her spouse. The lawyer-husband is the prosecutor.

Roger Cobb is a swinging bachelor, a lawyer, and a jazz musician. Edwina Cutwaters is a terminally ill spinster who is given another chance at life if her soul can be transported into another woman. However, the guru goofs, and Edwina's soul takes over the right side of Roger.

The true story of how Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncovered the White House involvement in the Watergate break in.

Chronicles the 1839 revolt on board the slave ship Amistad bound for America. Much of the story involves the court-room drama about the slave who led the revolt.

This documentary tells the story of the 1839 Amistad Revolt and the ensuing campaign to free the Africans jailed for murder and piracy.

"Emotions flare as a jealous Army lieutenant pleads innocent to murdering the rapist of his seductive, beautiful wife" -- Container.

A young lawyer battles not only one-on-one injustice, but the whole justice system itself.

Antek was one of the few lawyers willing to take on political cases in a period of enforced martial law. Upon his unexpected death, Antek's wife Ulla struggles to cope with her grief. She eventually takes on the task of finding another attorney to take over one of her husband's cases to defend a man jailed for leading a labor strike. After connecting a colleague from Antek's past with the prisoner's wife, a series of mysterious signals make Ulla believe that Antek's ghost is warning her about the man chosen to replace him.

An innocent, naive British Naval seaman is accused and tried of murdering the sadistic master-at-arms.

When director Judith Helfand (A Healthy Baby Girl) heard her parents were affixing blue vinyl siding to their house, she decided to find out how this product was created and disposed of. She and co-director Daniel B. Gold travel the world to point out how vinyl has caused numerous health problems. Included in their travels is a visit to Venice where businessmen who headed a vinyl company are on trial for manslaughter, and interviews with former employees of vinyl-producing factories who now suffer from cancer.

A Wall Street wheeler-dealer has everything going his way. But one night, in the right car with the wrong woman, he took a wrong turn at the wrong place, and nothing has gone right ever since!

A futuristic fable of feminist turmoil still brewing ten years after the Second American Revolution. When Adelaide Norris, the black radical founder of the Woman's Army, is mysteriously killed, a diverse coalition of women - across all lines of race, class, and sexual preference - emerges to blow the System apart. With their fury growing and all peaceful options exhausted, women overcome divisions of race, class, and sexual orientation to form a guerilla movement to take over control of the media.

A transgendered youth starts living as a man, and assumes the name Brandon Teena. He moves to a tiny Nebraska town and begins making new friends under his new identity. All goes well until his new friends discover his secret. Based on a true story about hope, fear, and the courage it takes to be yourself.

Maya is an illegal alien who has crossed the U.S. border from Mexico to search for her sister Rosa, and to begin a new life. While working, Maya happens upon Sam Shapiro, a muckraking lawyer and union agitator whom the service-workers' union has assigned to bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Appalled at the work conditions and unfair labor practices, Maya and Sam team up to fight her employer.

Based on a true story, this is the tale of three soldiers who are court-martialed at the end of the Boer War. In one of the most controversial court-martials in military history, they are defended by Major Thomas, a small town Australian solicitor who was only given one day in order to prepare for the case.

A one-hour television documentary about a contemporary American battle for civil rights. It follows three families in Yonkers, New York, in the middle of a confrontation about the politics and law of racial discrimination in housing and schools that challenges and changes their hometown.

The Buffalo Creek Flood : an act of man - 40 min. (1975) : On February 26, 1972 a coal-waste dam owned by the Pittston Company collapsed at the head of a crowded hollow in southern West Virginia. A wall of sludge, debris, and water tore through the valley below, leaving 125 dead and 4000 homeless. Through interviews with survivors, union leaders, concerned citizens, and company officials, evidence mounts that the coal company knew the dam was failing and in violation of state and federal regulations. The Pittston Company, however, continued to maintain that the disaster was "an act of God." Buffalo Creek Revisited - 31 min. (1985) : Filmed ten years after the flood, this documentary explores the second disaster in which survivor's efforts to rebuild the communities shattered by the flood were thwarted by government insensitivity and a century-old pattern of corporate control of the region's land and resources.