“The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry; it just gets dirtier.”Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973)
Jul
30
National Whistleblower Day
The cover of the Austrian film magazine “Neues Filmprogramm”. A red-filtered lobby card of Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) and his partner (F. Murray Abraham, uncredited) during police proceedings. DP: Arthur J. Ornitz.
In the late 1960s, Frank Serpico worked as a plainclothes cop for the #NYPD. He spoke out when he uncovered systematic, widespread #corruption within the force, but his findings were ignored. In 1970, Serpico cowrote a page 1 article for the New York Times about the problem, which led to the instalment of the Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption aka the Knapp Commission.
– Frank Serpico
The following year during a drug-related arrest attempt, he was shot in the face under shady circumstances. This is where Sidney Lumet's Serpico, based on Peter Maas and Frank Serpico's book of the same name, starts.
MikisTheodorakis
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“A single cannon is fired and a teacher's monthly salary goes up in smoke.”
Z (Costa-Gavras, 1969)
Jan
1
Z Day
Hélène (Irene Papas) and Z (Yves Montand). DP: Raoul Coutard.
– Z