Profit Motive & the Whispering Wind

A loose adaptation of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, John Gianvito's remarkable film is a calm, patient and beautiful testament to the fallen. As Zinn shows, immigrants have shaped American history by fighting back against empowered elites. But the actions of minority radicals have too often caused their own demise. Consisting of elegantly composed shots of gravesites and public shrines, and progressing through American history from colonial times to the present, Profit motive is a call to arms. The resting places of famed figures as Mother Jones, Cesar Chavez and Eugene V. Debs stand alongside unfamiliar, but just as important radicals. Gianvito punctuates these scenes with the wind blowing, exemplifying the spirits of the nation's earliest victims.