This Land Is Your Land

Thurs., June 23

"This land is your land"-it doesn't cost anything for companies to sell you that idea. The very words are already in the public domain. Yes, Woody Guthrie's 1951 tuneful agit-prop resonates strangely in post-historical America. The theme of Reagan's reelection campaign (after 9/11 the most misunderstood pop song ever; second is Springsteen's "Born in the USA") has become the nation's new anthem, a Francis Scott Keyed?up verse-chorus-verse abused to support the Bush campaign and sell Ford trucks.

Of course, the words have never lacked for irony, or parody. Remember this one from grade school? This land is my land! It is not your land! I got a shotgun, and you ain't got one!

Most recently, this song's gotten new purchase as the titular music of a new film by veterans Lori Cheatle and Daisy Wright, best known for their work on biopics.

This Land is Your Land is a wonderful, irreverent, less-is-not-Michael Moore take on what the filmmakers call the "overwhelming corporate takeover of America life." In three years of crisscrossing the country, from California to the New York Island, from the Redwood Forests to the Gulf Stream Wa-ters, Cheatle and Wright interviewed artists like Ron English, Naomi Klein media types, and the small-business owner down the block about the ways in which their lives have been affected by the encroaching incorporation of small-town America, and by the consumerism that in tandem with a fierce sense of independence and religious zeal has resulted in the desecration of the American Dream.

Quiet, with a respect for its subjects that borders on the folksy familiar, This Land is a documentary against documentaries: none of the Supersized antics more stunt than statement, little of the Fahrenheit scandal and pomp, what's to be found here are average people fighting against money and power for dignity and peace.

Appropriately enough, this screening of the film opens New York's First Solar-Powered Film Festival, sponsored by Solar One and held every Thursday evening deep into summer at Stuyvesant Cove Park, at 23rd & FDR. A non-for-profit educational facility, Solar One is the city's first freestanding solar-powered building, fully equipped with projectors powered by rays alone; all in all, the festival will host six free films on consecutive Thursdays at 8:45, including the Maysles brothers' cult classic Grey Gardens and Kirk Davis' award-winning Screen Door Jesus. Admission proceeds will go toward the design of Solar Two, the city's first environmental museum, which will feature exhibits on energy efficiency and sustainability in an urban setting.

For full schedule, call 212-505-6050.

-Joshua Cohen