The Illinois Disciples Foundation, located on 610 E. Springfield Ave., will begin its fourth Human Rights Film Series at 7 p.m. Thursday with the Champaign-Urbana premiere of the documentary, “Howard Zinn: You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.”

The four films chosen for the series address different social justice issues that are often overlooked by the media, said Jen Tayabji, executive director of the foundation.

The first documentary focuses on Howard Zinn, the noted historian, social activist, playwright, and author of the best-selling text, “A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present.”

“(Zinn) writes about history you wouldn’t ordinarily read about in school,” Tayabji said. “Zinn’s way of writing about history helps you learn how to evaluate issues.”

The film is a collection of rare archival footage, readings from Zinn’s autobiography and interviews with Noam Chomsky, Marian Wright Edelman, Daniel Ellsberg, Tom Hayden and Alice Walker. Matt Damon narrated and Pearl Jam, Woody Guthrie and Bill Bragg provided the music.

Zinn attended college on the GI bill after serving in WWII as a bombardier and received his doctorate from Columbia University. He taught at Spelman College in Atlanta, a school for black women, where he soon became involved in the civil rights movement. After being fired in 1963 for his protest work, he became a professor at Boston University where he was a leading critic of the Vietnam War.

A discussion will follow the film, facilitated by Jeff Machota, a foundation board member and staff person for the Champaign-Urbana chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

The central thesis of “A People’s History of the United States,” Machota said, is that “history is not made by famous people. It is made by common, ordinary people, working towards a goal.”

The film has lessons for people who want to become activists, he said.

On Oct. 6 at 7 p.m., “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,” will recount Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s removal from office in a 2002 coup d’etat and his reinstatement 48 hours later, as a hero of working class people.

“A lot of people are not aware of the coup and (Chavez’s) return to power,” said Aaron Smith, assistant director of the foundation. “People don’t have the context for understanding Chavez’s recent comments.”

Chavez was recently in the news for calling the United States a “terrorist state.”

“As the title of the film implies,” Smith said, “the private, corporate media was complicit in covering up the facts of U.S. involvement in the Venezuelan coup from the world.”

The third film, “The Lost Boys of Sudan,” to be shown at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 13, is a story of two refugees who escape Sudan’s civil war and move to America. Although the boys avert starvation and danger, they are confronted by alienation while living in contemporary American suburbia.

The final film in the series is “Operation: Veteran Freedom,” which chronicles the after effects of war for soldiers returning from Iraq. Filmed by an Iraq War veteran, the film follows events in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina when thousands gathered in March 2005 to protest two years of occupation in Iraq, according to Tayabji.

“It is a really important film because the director served in Iraq, so you could see that coming through,” Tayabji said.

All of the showings are free to the public and begin at 7 p.m.