The American President (2000)

The events of Sept. 11 remind us of the crucial role each president plays in shaping the direction of our nation. The American President, a 10-hour PBS documentary miniseries, was completed before the election of George W. Bush, but its focus on the relationship between the personal and the political during the terms of his 41 predecessors can help us better understand the significance of Bush's behavior and decisions.

Produced by journalist Philip Kunhardt Jr. and his two sons, Philip III and Peter, the series has wisely chosen a non-chronological structure.

Each one-hour segment picks four or five presidents from different periods and examines what they had in common.

For example, a segment titled “Happenstance” profiles five men who moved from the vice presidency to the White House upon the sitting president's death. “Family Ties” profiles four commanders in chief whose careers were jump-started by their powerful, influential families.

The voices of the presidents from pre-electronic media eras are provided by contemporary public figures like Colin Powell, the Rev. Billy Graham and Walter Cronkite.

Battle of Algiers (1965)

Does this sound familiar? A clandestine Arab political organization that uses a non-hierarchical, cell-like structure to plant bombs to kill innocent Westerners and whose leaders prefer death to surrender. The Battle of Algiers, winner of the Venice Film Festival's Grand Prize, is a passionate dramatization of the real-life rebellion of the FLN guerrillas against French colonialism in Algeria. The terrorists' motives back then were nationalist rather than religious, but their brutality and effectiveness still chill the blood.

It's 1957, and the local French commander, Col. Mathieu (Jean Martin), surrounds the apartment of terrorist leader Ali La Pointe (Brahim Haggiag) and asks him and his family to surrender or face death. The revolutionary ignores the warning and is killed. The action flashes back to 1954 as we watch Ali successfully recruit criminals and pre-adolescent boys to his cause. The methods used by the French to hunt him down are as disturbing as the violence he employs. The terrorists' eventual victory despite Ali's death may unsettle contemporary viewers. Australian nurse who challenged the medical establishment of her day. Elizabeth Kenny (Rosalind Russell) works in sparsely populated rural areas at the beginning of the 20th century. She finds a reliable way to rehabilitate polio victims before the discovery of the Salk vaccine. Her methods attract the interest of a big-city physician, Dr. Aeneas McDonnell (Alexander Knox), but the region's top researcher, Dr. Brack (Philip Merivale), initiates a campaign to discredit her. He believes that only doctors are qualified to make findings of that sort.

Kenny's primary concern is to help the physically handicapped children under her care.

She has no time for romance or anything else that will distract her from her cause. She eventually carries her battle to the United States where she gets proper funding and recognition. Her compassion and perseverance are inspiring. The production was a labor of love for its director, Oscar-winning screen-writer Dudley Nichols (The Informer).