Movies at the 2004 High Falls Film Festival
Abadan - A lonely Iranian woman searches desperately for her elderly father, who is obsessed with running away from Tehran to Abadan. The film interweaves the older generation, often in denial and longing for the past, with a younger generation also looking for glory -- in a future outside Iran.
Another Road Home - Israeli documentary filmmaker Danae Elon, partially raised by a Palestinian caretaker, has made an film that shows how the bonds of love, though entwined with politics, can survive and be a source of hope.
Arna’s Children -The tragic Israeli/Palestinian conflict has generated at least a dozen unforgettable documentaries, but perhaps none as emotionally devastating and thought provoking as this one.
Beauty Academy of Kabul - Featuring female empowerment through hair styling and ditzy do-gooders who actually do good, The Beauty Academy of Kabul is refreshingly full of surprises. It’s also a textbook illustration of that old feminist slogan: The personal is political.
Born into Brothels -Photographer Zana Briski went to Calcutta to do a piece on the prostitutes of the notorious Sonaguchi district, but ended up trying to save their children by teaching them a skill – photography. An intimate, sometimes painful, sometime exhilarating depiction of fragile young lives.
Brotherhood - Director Lilibet Foster takes us beyond the sound bites and into a behind the scenes glimpse of the heart and soul of New York City's bravest, the firefighters who picked up the pieces after the September 11, 2001 attack.
David Hockney: The Colors of Music - The 67-year-old British painter David Hockney had a second career as a production designer for opera; this feast for the eyes and ears shows Hockney at work in his studio and on the stages of some of the world’s great opera houses.
Dear Frankie - Nine-year-old Frankie and his single mum Lizzie have been on the move ever since Frankie can remember, recently arriving in a seaside Scottish town. Wanting to protect her deaf son from the truth they've run away from his father, Lizzie invents a story that he is away at sea.
Dig! - The doc grand prize winner at Sundance, DIG! follows two '90s post-punk bands, the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jones Massacre, for seven years. With her inconspicuous DV camera, filmmaker Ondi Timoner was a persistent fly on the wall -- and the result is a fascinating study of music and personality.
Dorian Blues - A wryly-funny crowd pleaser, Tennyson Bardwell’s debut feature has been racking up audience awards at festivals east and west, gay and straight.
Down to the Bone - A woman stuck in a stale marriage struggles to raise her children and manage her secret drug habit. But when winter comes to her small town, her balancing act begins to come crashing down.
Easy - Jane Weinstock’s sun-dappled debut feature is a comedy of manners about a pretty, personable, slightly quirky, Southern California twenty-five year old looking for a lasting relationship and suddenly finding herself with two desirable prospects, both of them crazy about her.
Free Radicals - After surviving a plane crash, the blandly contented suburbanite Manu is killed in a head-on collision that is as tragically banal as her earlier accident was miraculous.
The Graffiti Artist - Adrift in a lush, nocturnal urban landscape, Nick is a post-modern urban hero asserting his anarchistic agenda on the endless maze of virgin exterior walls that comprise downtown Seattle and Portland.
The Green Hat - The brilliant directing debut of Beijing-born Liu Fen Dou took two major prizes at the recent Tribeca Film Festival. Liu’s subject is masculine confusion about sex and what happens to seemingly macho guys when they’re rejected by women they think they love.
Heir to an Execution - Filmmaker Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of convicted (and executed) spies Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg, uses her unique access to revisit her grandparent's story, painting a picture of cold war paranoia -- disturbing for its parallels to post-9/11 America -- along the way.
In the Company of Women - Lesli Klainberg decided to make In the Company of Women after attending a screening of A Decade Under the Influence, a documentary about the movies of the 1970s that didn’t include a single female director.

Intimate Stories - On a single day, three people from a small Argentine village find it necessary to make their separate pilgrimages to a larger town that’s 200 miles away. Carlos Sorin’s quirky road movie makes expressive use of the vast Patagonian landscape with its long stretches of empty highway and its isolated houses, shops, gas stations, and factories.
Jail Bait - intense and harrowing depiction of the psychosexual power dynamics among men doing hard time, one can give no greater compliment to writer/director’s Brett C. Leonard’s debut feature than to say that it bears comparison to Jean Genet’s jailhouse novels and plays.
July 64 - Carvin Eison and Chris Christopher took on one of the trickiest and most volatile subjects imaginable: a three-night riot that erupted when temperatures were hottest in downtown Rochester, leaving an otherwise peaceful neighborhood in shambles and changing lives, businesses and living conditions forever
Juvies - An up close and personal look at the juvenile justice system — featuring eye-opening and ultimately heartbreaking interviews with children who obviously would have thrived in today’s society given the right set of circumstances.
King of the Corner - A sly, deadpan social comedy about the dangers of navigating life without a compass, King of the Corner paints a portrait of Leo (Peter Riegert), his family and world. His father (Eli Wallach) is dying, his daughter is growing up, his protege is after his job, his wife (Isabella Rosselini) is running out of patience and his judgment is becoming blurred.
Kinsey - 1n 1948, Alfred Kinsey irrevocably changed American culture with his book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Interviewing thousands of people about the most intimate aspects of their lives, his work sparked intense debate, still raging today.
Lipstick & Dynamite, Piss & Vinegar - The First Ladies of Wrestling: Meet Crazy Killen Gillen, the Great Johnnie Mae Young, The Fabulous Moolah - women who lived up to their defiant show-biz monikers.
The Master and his Pupils - Documentarian Sonia Herman Dolz filmed a master class given by the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev during the Rotterdam Gergiev Festival.
M.C. Richards: The Fire Within: Poet, potter, teacher, author of the enormously influential book on creativity, “Centering,” M.C. Richards (1916-1999) is often viewed as a forerunner of the New Age movement.
Off the Map - A most intriguing and unusual first feature from the dexterous hands of Campbell Scott, OFF THE MAP takes place somewhere in the high desert of New Mexico where an eccentric family threesome lives almost completely outside the bounds of 21st century “civilization”.
Persons of Interest - Renowned television director Alison Maclean (“Sex and the City,” “Homicide,” Carnivale”) directs this spare and startling documentary focusing on several disturbing personal stories of Muslim-Americans detained unjustly in the wake of 9/11.
Peter Gabriel: Growing up on Tour - When rock legend Peter Gabriel embarked on his 2002-03 “Growing Up” tour with a mix of original and new band members, he invited his daughter Anna to accompany him—and she experienced much of the tour through her camera lens.
A Place of Our Own - is a bittersweet meditation on the passage of time, the corrosive effects of racism, and the universal human longing to belong.

Proud - Based on her wonderfully researched book, “Proudly We Served” and her PBS documentary of the same name, Mary Pat Kelly’s “Proud” tells the story of the men of the World War II destroyer escort, the U.S.S. Mason.
Rolling - Galen Buckwalter, Vicki Elman and Ernie Wallengren see life from a different perspective than most of us. They have each got wheels - that is, wheelchairs, upon which they completely depend in order to maintain their independence.
Sideways - The latest film by writer/director Alexander Payne (ABOUT SCHMIDT), this 21st century buddy film features two middle-aged pals (Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church) who drive into California’s wine country for a last fling before marriage.
Silent Waters - Set in rural Pakistan in 1979, when the new military government allowed the country to swing toward Islamic fundamentalism. When 18-year-old Saleem falls under the spell of Islamic extremists, he betrays the love of his mother and his girlfriend, and indeed, the lives of almost everyone in his village.
Still Doing It - Intimate lives of Women over 65 -The heroines of Deidre Fichel’s documentary have broken a taboo almost as strong as the one that prohibits incest. They pursue a sexually active life when they are in their sixties, seventies, and eighties.
Still the Children are Here - Acclaimed director Mira Nair (VANITY FAIR, MISSISSIPPI MASALA, SAALAM BOMBAY) will join us at the festival as the producer of this exquisitely photographed portrait of a society that has maintained its isolation from urban, westernized India.
Travelers & Magicians - This remarkable film is the first ever to be made in the pristine beauty of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Two men—one an educated university graduate, the other a restless farm youth studying magic--seek to escape their mundane existence.
Untold Scandal - Based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, this sumptuous film is set in aristocratic18th century Korea at the end of the Chosun Dynasty. The irresistible temptress Lady Cho asks her cad of a younger cousin, Jo-won, to deflower the innocent young Soh-ok, who is to become her husband's concubine.
The Woodsman - Nicole Kassell makes her feature directing debut with THE WOODSMAN. She is a recent graduate of NYU’s Tisch School’s graduate film program, where she made a short.
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