Canal Zone

CANAL ZONE is about a US Army enclave in charge of the functioning of the Panama Canal. Beginning with an almost 30-minute-long sequence, in which work on the canal can be seen, the film also shows church services, military parades, schools, administrative meetings and an army radio station supposed to help keep spirits high. When the US was exuberantly celebrating its Bicentennial in 1976, Wiseman traveled to Panama and found a mini-America. CANAL ZONE is "both a despairing critique of lower-middle-class American values and a comic pathetic elegy to American imperialism." (David Denby) (hb)