Profit motive and the whispering wind

America’s history is told through countless plaques, monuments and tombstones, far too many for the average history buff to see firsthand, so director John Gianvito has done some of the leg work in his 2007 documentary Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind, which silently films dozens of historical markers and cemeteries, covering 400 years of American history. Many of the figures and events the film documents were prominently covered in Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, so the film, which screens for free tonight at 7 p.m. in the UWM Union Theatre, has a distinct progressive tilt.