Sacco and Vanzetti in cuffs.

In assembling his documentary on the case of the two Italian immigrants who were tried and executed as anarchists in the 1920s, filmmaker Peter Miller didn’t really need to include a clip of former Attorney General John Ashcroft congratulating himself and the Bush Administration on the supposed apprehension of foreign and domestic terrorists. The point, that the Sacco and Vanzetti case has trans-historical resonance for our anxious, nasty times, is quite clear without it.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a shoemaker and a fishmonger who were anarchists in Braintree, Massachusetts, were accused of murdering a factory paymaster and his assistant and convicted after a trial that relied on ethnic prejudice, public hysteria and ruling-class dishonesty.

For a long time after their execution for murder in 1927, Sacco and Vanzetti’s names carried a powerful political cachet, symbolizing for millions, here and abroad, what Italian-American historian Lunzio Pernicone calls the laying bare of “the mythology of American society.”

Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s comment (in a letter written from prison) that, had he not been indicted, “I might have lived my life talking to scorning men on street corners” carried a terrible, poignant eloquence for people around the world. (At the brink of the Second World War, James Thurber and Elliott Nugent wrote a comedic play, The Male Animal, in which a young college professor gets into trouble for reading the letter to students.)

The power of those names to invoke anger and sadness has, of course, diminished, and Miller renders a significant service by inciting new interest, and anger, and perhaps providing a focus for political reflections.

Sacco and Vanzetti amounts to a legal brief and historical lesson on the agencies of power and law reacting with a combination of fear and brutality to an actual but greatly hyperbolized threat to the established order. As Pernicone observes in the documentary, revolution in post-war America wasn’t even remotely possible. But Woodrow Wilson’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, arrested and held without warrant thousands of immigrants and native-born Americans, jailing and summarily deporting many of them because of their actual or alleged political affiliations. Some died.

Asparagus!

Miller’s movie carefully, calmly assembles its often provocative evidence—including dubious ballistic testimony—and conveys the sense of outrage and doom that the two prisoners’ partisans felt. Over the seven years of proceedings, they became dynamic symbols of American injustice for many throughout the Western world. Their fate can still teach us something important about ourselves and our enemies.

Sacco and Vanzetti will be featured as part of the Full Frame Documentary Festival, a selection of a dozen of the best films from the world’s most prestigious documentaries. Presented by Emerging Pictures and The New York Times, the series will screen from Thursday, April 6 to Sunday, April 9 at the Market Arcade. (See “Movietimes” this issue for dates and times of each film.) The series also features:

Asparagus!—The Asparagus Capital of the World takes on the US War on Drugs, free trade and the fast food nation, all to save its beloved “roots.”

Beyond Beats and Rhymes—Former college football quarterback Byron Hurt gives a first-person account of his disenchantment with hip-hop’s thug-centered, misogynist and homophobic culture.

Filthy Gorgeous: The Trannyshack Story

The Boy in the Bubble—The fascinating, heartbreaking story of the real boy who, due to an immune system disorder, was forced to live his life in a germ-free plastic enclosure.

China Blue—A rare perspective on the current state of Chinese labor and its impact on global economy and culture told through the eyes of a 16-year-old worker in a blue jean factory.

Filthy Gorgeous: The Trannyshack Story—A transgressive rock-and-roll drag show featuring subversive and absurdist performances, a fierce soundtrack and a transcendent spirit.

The Refugee All-Stars

The Immigrant—The Mexican-American border crisis is explored through the tragic story of the murder of a young Mexican migrant.

Rain in a Dry Land—A moving chronicle of 18 life-changing months for two Somali Bantu families who journey from the Kakuma Refugee camp to destinations in the US under the auspices of the USRP.

The Refugee All-Stars—War refugees from Sierra Leone form an Afro-pop band and express the hope and loss of their brethren.

SAZ—A dramatic year in the life of 20-year-old Palestinian rapper Samekh Zakhut.

Songbirds—Women in an English prison use musical therapy to deal with their life behind bars.

Sweet Dreams—An innovative film that banishes the stereotype of the Italian-American man, the sport of boxing and the common assumptions of what it means to be tough.