Radical Alternatives: Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind

An alternative history of the United States as seen through its monuments and memorials, Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind is at once an eloquent tribute to the oppositional figures (both the house-hold names and the anonymous toilers) who helped shape the country's authentic history and a lament for a time when such genuine opposition was possible. Taking his inspiration from Howard Zinn's perennial favorite A People's History of the United States, director John Gianvito travels around the country filming the gravesites of Zinn's canon of heroic American figures, along with plaques commemorating strikes, uprisings, and massacres. Lacking narration, the film's text consists entirely of the words etched on the commemorative signage, the plaques' writing constituting a corrective to the selective amnesia that eliminates scores of important figures and events from the historical record.


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