Reviews

...and European audiences...

...government and corporate interests, like the constant and often bitter internal struggle between media owners and foreign correspondents over the decreasing amount of space allotted to stories from beyond the world's current hot spots...

...The film also describes the difficulties faced by today's journalists as they struggle to get stories about government corruption and neoliberal structural adjustment policies in Nicaragua into the U.S...

...Despite the desperate need for improved basic services like water, roads, education and health care, the stadium came first...

...mainstream media's treatment of foreign news, director Peter Raymont's documentary, The World Stopped Watching, follows two U.S...

...media's coverage of the 1987 Central American Peace Accords, also critiques the manipulation of foreign news coverage by U.S...

...The World Stopped Watching criticizes the mainstream media, especially television news, for superficial coverage of conflicts, neglecting their roots and aftermath...

...The film conveys the significance of the stadium as a symbol of the group's commitment to improving conditions in their home community and their determination to maintain roots in Mexico...

...Following the Sandinistas' defeat in the 1990 presidential election and the end of Nicaragua's civil war, the international media pulled out the hordes of journalists who had focused a spotlight on that country for over a decade...

...But with the building of the stadium, Grupo Uni6n gains momentum and completes other projects in Boqueron, some more successful than others...

...In a strong indictment of the U.S...

...THE WORLD STOPPED WATCHING A film by Peter Raymont, First Run/Icarus Films, 2003, 82 minutes...

...In the documentary The Sixth Section, director Alex Rivera rescues the concept of transnationalism from abstraction by exploring the complex and contradictory realities of a community struggling to maintain unity across vast spaces of distance and time...

...Transnationalism is the buzzword used by scholars seeking to explain the identity, culture and social structures of immigrants straddling two societies simultaneously...

...Huddling under a tent in a snowy backyard in upstate New York, immigrants from Boqueron, Puebla initially formed the community organization Grupo Uni6n to raise money for the construction of a baseball stadium in their hometown...

...In a flash, Nicaragua all but disappeared from the world's consciousness...

...While hopeful about the potential power of grassroots organizing and hometown organizations, The Sixth Section is a sober portrayal of the paradox of opportunity and loss confronted by millions of immigrants seeking new spaces for home and community across borders...

...The filmmakers accompany former Newsweek photographer Bill Gentile and former Boston Globe columnist Randolph "Ry" Ryan as they travel through the Nicaraguan countryside tracking down the subjects of their coverage from the war years...

...Woven into Raymont's critique is an exploration of the tragedies that Nicaraguan society must cope with in the post-war era, as well as some of the opportunities presented by these uncertain times...

...journalists as they return to Nicaragua 10 years after the conflict in search of the people whose faces personified the civil war for U.S...

...The film illustrates important and compelling stories about "peace, poverty, and the human costs of corruption" that the mainstream media has ignored...

...As the film follows a group of mostly undocumented Mexican immigrants who organize to fund social works projects back home, it provides a thoughtful critique of current U.S...

...press...

...immigration policy and its role in compounding the obstacles faced by immigrants attempting to maintain a cohesive community...

...This sequel to The World is Watching, a documentary about the U.S...