2009 Features
THE MUSLIMS I KNOW
LOCAL LINK!
If you yahoo the words "moderate Muslim" today you
will get more than 8 million hits on the Internet, the result of a post-9/11
Western world trying to make sense of Islam and its followers. The need to
identify "militant jihadists" by distinguishing them from moderate
Muslims has cast suspicion on all Muslims in America, and stereotypes are
becoming well-entrenched. To break those stereotypes and to educate/highlight
that the basic tenets of Islam are often similar to the Judeo-Christian
tradition, local filmmaker Mara Ahmed focuses on Rochester's Pakistani
Americans, asking them questions non-Muslim Americans have framed through vox
pop interviews. Whether training her lens on Islamic scholars talking about
Islamic theology and history, or youth looking to participate in America's
mainstream socio-political discourse, Ahmed takes the audience on a journey
into a little-known, but much talked about American community.
Director Mara Ahmed has a Master's degree in Economics from
the University of Hartford, Connecticut, and another Master's in Business
Administration from the Institute of Business Administration in Pakistan.
Always interested in writing, art and film, she studied art at Nazareth
College, and filmmaking at the Visual Studies Workshop and Rochester Institute
of Technology. THE MUSLIMS I KNOW is her first film.
YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG
Documentary, US, 2008, 92 minutes
Director/Writer/Producer: Aviva Kempner
Susan Stamberg and Aviva Kempner in attendance!
In an era when women had no executive power in the American
entertainment industry, Gertrude Berg virtually invented the sitcom format and
wrote, supervised, and starred in one of the country's best-loved radio and
television programs. Maybe you've never heard of The Goldbergs, but for more
than twenty-five years, from 1929 – 1955, it dominated the airwaves and made
Berg "the Oprah of her day."
Even more amazingly, despite the anti-Semitism of that time, Berg's
fictional American Jewish family was welcomed into homes throughout the nation.
Directed by Aviva Kempner, the award-winning filmmaker of THE LIFE AND TIMES OF
HANK GREENBERG, YOO-HOO, MRS. GOLDBERG tells Berg's story from her earliest
performances to her post-Goldbergs triumphs on Broadway. Joyous, nostalgic, but
also painfully honest, it pays a loving and long deserved tribute to the
pioneer who paved the way for everyone from I Love Lucy to The Cosby Show and
Seinfeld.
Washington, DC-based filmmaker Aviva Kempner produced and
co-wrote PARTISANS OF VILNA. She directed, wrote and produced the
Emmy-nominated, Peabody award-winning and critically acclaimed THE LIFE AND
TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG. Kempner
founded the Washington Jewish Film Festival, and has written film reviews for
the past 25 years. She will be the
recipient of the 2009 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival's Freedom of
Expression Award in July.
TULPAN
Narrative, Germany/Kazakhstan/Poland/Russia/Switzerland,
2008, 100 minutes
Director/Co-writer: Sergei Dvortsevoy
Cinematographer: Jolanta Dylewska
In Kazakh and Russian with English subtitles
Kazakhstan director Sergei Dvortsevoy kept busy during much
of last year accepting a trunk load of awards from film festivals around the
world for his first feature, TULPAN, a polished, funny, and utterly charming
story of a young man who wants nothing more than to live in a yurt (a
traditional tent house) and enjoy a hard life herding goats and sheep on the
bleak, windswept steppes of central Asia.
But before Asa's older brother-in-law will give him his own herd, Asa
must find a bride. Unfortunately, the
young woman of his dreams, TULPAN (which means Tulip) says his ears are too
big. Mixing gentle humor, endearing performances, and spectacular scenery, with
a powerful documentary realism (Dvortsevoy has, in fact, made several notable
documentaries) TULPAN tells a timeless coming-of-age tale, while opening an
extraordinary window on a culture far different from our own.
2008 Cannes Film Festival: Un Certain Regard Award
2008 European Film Awards: Nominated, European Discovery of
the Year
2008 Karlovy Vary International Film Festival: Two awards
2008 Dubai International Film Festival: Muhr Award
2008 British Film Institute Awards: Sutherland Trophy
2008 Sao Paolo Int'l Film Festival: nominated, International
Jury Award
SAINT MISBEHAVIN'
Director: Michelle Esrick
Producers: Michelle Esrick, David Becker
Documentary, US, 2008, 92 minutes
Wavy Gravy and Michelle Esrick in attendance!
Wonder whatever happened to the Hippies? They're alive and well in the person of Wavy
Gravy, aka Hugh Romney, former Beat poet, Bob Dylan roommate, and clown prince
of the sixties, who still lives with his extended family on the legendary
California commune, the Hog Farm. But he's always been much more than a clown.
At Woodstock he helped feed half a million people, and deliberately adopted his
fool persona to lighten the atmosphere when tensions grew. Later, he brought
food and medicine to cyclone victims in Bangladesh, and co-founded both the
Seva Foundation that helps prevent blindness in the developing world, and a
performing arts summer camp that passes his idealism on to younger generations.
Though director Michelle Esrick's joyous, inspiring film overflows with
gloriously nostalgic archival footage, its real importance is its portrait of
Gravy today, his sixties spirit intact, continuing his truly saintly efforts to
alleviate human suffering.
Producer/Director Michelle Esrick is a peace activist,
filmmaker, actress, producer and poet. She has worked on documentaries about
social change and music, including Barbara Kopple's film MY GENERATION; and has
produced such notable events as "Courageous Resisters" and
"Poems Not Fit for the White House" at Lincoln Center. For the past 10 years Michelle has
documented the life and message of Wavy Gravy. SAINT MISBEHAVIN' is Michelle's
first feature-length documentary.
BEFORE TOMORROW
Narrative, 2008, Canada, 93 minutes
Directors: Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Madeline Ivalu
Writers: Susan Avinqaq, Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Madeline
Ivalu
Editors: Norman Cohn, Marie-Helene Cousineau,
Louise Dugal, Felix Lajeunesse
In Inuktitut with English subtitles
There has simply never been a film quite like this one. Part fable, part social history, it's set
sometime in the 19th century, among a tribe of Inuit people isolated in the
unimaginably harsh yet awesomely beautiful landscape of the Arctic Circle. They've never seen white people, though
they've heard disturbing rumors about them.
But they carry on with their traditional nomadic lifestyle, hunting,
fishing, and living off the seemingly barren land. The story concerns two
elderly women and a young boy who go to an island to dry the clan's food for
the coming winter. Combining the most sophisticated cinematic techniques and
dazzling photography with traditional Inuit storytelling, featuring amazing
performances by its Inuit cast, BEFORE TOMORROW allows us to experience the
details of a place, time, and way of life far from our own, and a people who seem
so foreign at first, but are really so much like ourselves.
2009 Sundance Film Festival:
Nominated, Grand Jury Prize - World Cinema
2008 Toronto International Film Festival:
Best Canadian First Feature Film
2008 American Indian Film Festival
Best Film
Marie-Hélène Cousineau is deeply involved in the development
of women's video in Igloolik, Nunavut. She co-founded Tarriaksuk Video Centre
and Arnait Video Productions, was Vice-President of the Nunavut Filmmakers
Association, taught media courses in Montreal, and produced and/or directed
many notable works, including WOMEN IN BLACK, UNAKULUK and DEAR LITTLE ONE. She
co-directed ANAANA/MOTHER and NINGIURA/MY GRANDMOTHER.
QUIET CHAOS
Narrative, Italy/UK, 2008, 105 minutes
Director: Antonio Luigi Grimaldi
Co-writer/Delegate Producer: Laura Paolucci
In Italian and French with English subtitles
With a cast headed by the well-known Italian
actor/writer/director Nanni Moretti (who co-wrote the screenplay), and
featuring the popular and immensely talented Valeria Golino and a cameo by
"he needs no introduction" Roman Polanski, QUIET CHAOS can't help being
superbly performed. Moretti plays a
recently widowed film industry executive who transforms himself into a devoted
single parent, spending his days in a park across the street from his
10-year-old daughter's school. Through encounters with a young dog walker, a
Down syndrome boy, and movie bigwigs who pop into the park for meetings that
can't wait, he discovers the world outside his office is more complex,
fascinating, and emotionally challenging than he anticipated. More quiet than
chaotic, with a sophisticated use of songs by Rufus Wainwright and Radiohead,
this deceptively understated drama directed by Antonello Grimaldi is a deeply
moving exploration of unexpressed grief and unexpected self-awareness.
2008 Berlin Film Festival: Nominated, Golden Berlin Bear
Chicago International Film Festival: Silver Plaque – Best
Screenplay
Laura Paolucci served as Production Delegate on this year's
celebrated GOMORRAH. Before QUIET
CHAOS, on which she also served as Delegate Producer, she wrote three films, including
MAXIMUM VELOCITY and L'HORIZONTE DEGLI EVENTI, and a television series. IL
COMMISSARIO DE LUCA.
INVISIBLE: ABBOTT THAYER AND THE ART OF CAMOUFLAGE
Documentary, US, 2008, 56 minutes
Producer: Pam Peabody
Pam Peabody in attendance!
You know about such great American artists as John Singer
Sargent, Whistler, and Winslow Homer, but have you heard of Abbott Thayer? An influential naturalist who worked
tirelessly to establish bird sanctuaries and preserve New Hampshire's Mt.
Monadnock, as well as a magnificent painter, Thayer is also known as the father
of modern camouflage. During WWI he
fought heroically (if unsuccessfully) to convince the military about the
practicality of his then-revolutionary ideas about "concealing
coloration," or camouflage. He
walked away from a successful career as a society portrait painter to explore
New Hampshire's wilderness, bear witness to its beauties on canvas, and become
recognized as a "soul painter" who sought to express the spiritual
side of nature. This revealing documentary features Harry Hamlin as the voice
of Thayer and Jane Alexander, who climbed Mount Monadnock as a child – and won
the 2005 Rochester High Falls International Film Festival's Failure is
Impossible award – as narrator.
Director Pam Peabody, a long time Dublin, NH resident who
produced the documentary, says she was inspired to tell Thayer's story because
she grew up near where he lived, where his memorial stone could be seen from
her home. Peabody has also produced
films about Edith Wharton, the Washington D.C Shakespeare Theatre, and for
PBS's American Masters series.
A WOMAN IN BERLIN
If war is hell, the victors are often the devils. Case in point: Berlin at the end of WWII,
when the Russians marched in, thirsting for revenge against the incomparably
brutal Nazis they'd fought so long. But
bombed out Berlin had only civilians to offer: old men, children, and women.
Lowering themselves to the level of their enemies, the Russians systemically
terrorized the former and raped the latter.
A Woman in Berlin is based on an autobiographical novel (published
anonymously in the 1950s in East Germany, where it met with shock, disbelief,
and withering attacks) of one woman's struggle for survival in these horrific
circumstances. But it's not a
simplistic tale of victims and violators; almost all the complex characters
carry a bit of both within them, and which part dominates depends on the
specific situation. Obviously dark, but not without hope, it tells an important
story with unforgettable power.
Editor Ewa J. Lind is a feature film editor working
internationally for independent film companies. Educated at the NFTS, UK, and
FAMU, Prague, she has edited award-winning features in the UK, Germany, her
native Sweden, and New Zealand. Her
credits include THE WARRIOR, THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG and UNDER THE SKIN, winner
of Edinburgh's Michael Powell Award and Toronto's International Critics Award.
YOUSSOU N'DOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE
Documentary, Senegal/France/Egypt/US, 2008, 102 min
Director/Writer/Producer: Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi
Featuring: Youssou N'Dour, Peter Gabriel
In English, French, Wolof and Arabic
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi in attendance!
Director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's stimulating documentary
begins as a film about music and ends as a film about music and religion. But then, one way or another, haven't the
two always been connected? Youssou
N'dour is a genuine superstar of Senegalese music, and the film's first part
mixes dynamic concert footage (you'll quickly see why Vasarhelyi is such a fan)
with interviews and scenes of his daily life.
Though N'dour is a devout Sufi Muslim, his lyrics had been politically
preachy, praising hard work and championing people like Stephen Biko. But in 2004 he released, during Ramadan, an
album of devotional songs called "Egypt." For those who think a pop political singer has no right touching
the sacred, this was a sacrilegious act and ignited fires of controversy
throughout his country. Meanwhile,
N'dour himself wondered how to properly present this music to his legions of
non-Muslim, western fans. The results are unexpected.
Sao Paulo International Film Festival: Audience Award,
Foreign Documentary
Bahamas International Film Festival: Audience Award, Spirit
of Freedom Award
2008 Toronto Film Festival: Special Presentation, Official
Selection
Telluride Film Festival
SXSW Film Festival
Director/Producer Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi speaks proudly
of her Hungarian, Chinese, and Brazilian roots. A NORMAL LIFE, her documentary
debut about young Kosovars, won the 2003 Tribeca Best Documentary award. She's won grants from several foundations,
an Achievement Award from the Creative Visions Foundation, and has been
featured in numerous publications including the New Yorker, Vogue, and the New
York Times.
FOOD, INC.
Documentary, US, 2008, 93 minutes
Director/Producer: Robert Kenner
Producer: Elise Pearlstein
Featuring: Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser
The processing of the food we eat has changed more in the
last 50 years than in the previous ten thousand. That's a direct quote from FOOD INC., and if it doesn't make you
stop and think, the rest of this revealing and disturbing documentary
will. Filmmaker Robert Kenner exposes
how the food industry, controlled by a handful of corporations, and with the
consent of regulatory agencies, often puts profits ahead of consumer health,
the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers, and our own
environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, insecticide-resistant soybean
seeds, and tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli,
widespread childhood obesity, and an epidemic level of diabetes. Featuring interviews with experts like Eric
Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and
entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirshberg, FOOD, INC. is the real
"naked lunch," the truth about what we do three times a day, told
with elegance and verve.
Producer Elise Pearlstein has been producing and writing
film and television documentaries for over 10 years. She produced Oscar-winner Jessica Yu's PROTAGONIST, directed and
produced THE MILLION DOLLAR RECIPE, about the Pillsbury Bake-Off, produced and
wrote prime-time documentaries for NBC's Tom Brokaw and the late ABC news
anchor Peter Jennings, and co-produced and co-wrote SMOKE AND MIRRORS: A
HISTORY OF DENIAL, about the tobacco industry's sordid history.
EASY VIRTUE
Narrative, UK, 2008, 93 minutes
Director/Writer: Stephan Elliott
Writer: Sheridan Jobbins
Based on the play by Noel Coward
Cast: Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin
Firth
Can a stuffy, upper class, veddy British family withstand
the onslaught of a gorgeous, independent American woman, who is not only a race
car driver but also the new bride of their only son and hope for the
future? Noel Coward asked that question
in his beloved 1924 comedy of manners. Now director Stephan Elliott (beloved
himself for PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT) brings it to bubbling, fizzy life
on screen, with a magnificent cast that includes Jessica Biel as the American
invader, Ben Barnes as her hapless husband, Kristin Scott Thomas as her sour,
angry new mother-in-law, and Colin Firth as her WWI-scarred father-in-law. As
in most Coward plays, some serious, even dark themes lurk behind the slashing
wit. But they're leavened by the
hilarious set pieces, beautiful costumes, splendid settings, and a glorious
musical score featuring both contemporary songs done in 20's style, and tunes
by Coward and Cole Porter.
2009 London Critics Circle Film Awards:
Nominated, British Supporting Actress of the Year (Kristin
Scott Thomas)
2008 British Independent Film Awards:
Nominated, Best Supporting Actress (Kristin Scott Thomas)
Screenwriter Sheridan Jobbins was born in Melbourne,
Australia. The third generation film veteran writes full-time with
director/writer Stephen Elliott, and is a member of both the Australian and
American Writers Guilds. Jobbins is also a producer, actress, journalist and
television host. Previous writing credits include ALEX'S PARTY and the
television series HOUSE OF FUN.
RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO
Documentary, Canada, 2009, 80 minutes
Director/Writer/Co-Editor: Brett Gaylor
Producers: Katherine Baulu, Mila Aung-Thwin
In RIP: A REMIX MANIFESTO, Web activist and filmmaker Brett
Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the 21st century. At the film's center is Girl Talk, a mash-up
musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is he a paragon of
people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? If you've no idea what any of this
means, a "mash-up" or "remix" is "the act of taking
pieces of existing art, cutting them up and rearranging them to create a wholly
different piece of art." Or it's
stealing, depending on your point of view. The debate has gone longer than you
think, and this fun, fast-paced film lets lots of folks weigh in on the issue
of corporate greed versus free-form creativity. If you want to, go to
opensourcecinema.org, where Gaylor shares his raw footage for anyone to
remix. [Note: this blurb is a brilliant
example of verbal remixing. Or is it
plagiarism?!]
47th Ann Arbor Film Festival: Audience Choice Award
Preceded by
Divination (1964)
Director: Storm de Hirsch
16mm, 6 min., sound, color
Storm De Hirsch, a major '60s and '70s figure, is a
published poet and filmmaker who has 26 films in distribution through the
Filmmakers Cooperative. Divination is a "film poem that records a psychic
event in color, shape and sound".
It has been preserved by Anthology Film Archives in New York City.
The Women's Film Preservation Fund was founded in 1995 by
New York Women in Film & Television, in association with the Museum of
Modern Art and American Movie Classics. It is the first effort by women in the
industry to preserve a vital part of our cultural legacy.
Since its inception, the Women's Film Preservation Fund has
provided financial support for the preservation of over 40 short and feature
films.
Kat Baulu is the most recent producer to join the National
Film Board's Quebec Centre. She produces feature documentary, new media and
training programs for emerging filmmakers. Kat is a graduate of the Canadian
Film Centre and the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. Under a Rotary
Ambassadorial Scholarship, Kat completed a degree in science filmmaking in New
Zealand. Her recent films include award-winning LITTLE CAUGHNAWAGA: TO BROOKLYN
AND BACK.
JERUSALEMA
Narrative, South Africa, 2008, 120 min
Director/Writer: Ralph Ziman
Art Direction: Flo Ballack
For too many people, life after apartheid didn't turn out
the way the world hoped. Based on a
true story, this turbo-charged South African gangster saga traces the career of
Lucky Kunene, a smart, ambitious, good-hearted kid who turns to carjacking
after his dreams of a university education collapse under poverty. When a more
serious heist goes bad, he flees with a friend to Johannesburg and uses a
sophisticated combination of civic do-goodery and outright thuggery to become
uncrowned emperor of the Hillbrow neighborhood. He wins over the residents by chasing out the druggies,
prostitutes, and illegal immigrants, and setting up the "Hillbrow People's
Housing Trust." Then he collects
their rent and intimidates the slumlords into selling him their
properties. Of course there are
complications, including a vicious drug dealer, a treacherous mentor, and a
white girlfriend. Irresistibly intense, dramatic and culturally revealing,
JERUSALEMA gives a new spin to the familiar turns of the underworld epic.
Durban International Film Festival:
Audience Award, Best
Feature
Best Actor
Along with countless commercials and television series in
South Africa, Flo Ballack was Set Decorator on HOTEL RWANDA, DUMA and WAH-WAH.
GIGANTIC
Narrative, US, 2009, 98 minutes
Director: Matt Aselton
Producers: Mindy Goldberg, Christine Vachon
Cast: Paul Dano, Zooey Deschanel, Edward Asner, Jane
Alexander, John Goodman
Mindy Goldberg in attendance!
Debuting director Matt Aselton says he's "interested in
stories in which reality and absurdity cross," and deliciously
demonstrates this in GIGANTIC, a more or less comedy about families,
commitment, and expensive mattresses.
Brian (Paul Dano of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THERE WILL BE BLOOD) and
Harriet (Zooey Deschanel, who also appears in 500 DAYS OF SUMMER at RHFIFF)
both have rich, overbearing fathers, one of several things that draws them
together. But Harriet is a
commitment-phobic child of divorce, while Brian dreams of being the single
father of an adopted Chinese baby, and is repeatedly attacked by an imaginary
homeless man (who leaves him with visible injuries). Both have much more going on inside them than they let the world
see, and when their tentative romance collides with their families'
well-intentioned interference, explosions are inevitable. Sometimes surreal, often funny, and gently
touching, GIGANTIC is a highly original and enjoyable way to contemplate some
eternal questions.
AFI Dallas International Film Festival: Best Narrative
Feature
Producer Mindy Goldberg is the founder and President of
Epoch Films, a company for young directors with offices in NY, LA and London.
In 2007 Goldberg produced Epoch's first feature JUNEBUG; the
critically-acclaimed film won an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress.
Goldberg currently has three films in various stages of development, all with
Epoch directors attached.
SIGNS OF THE TIME
Documentary, US, 2008, 60 minutes
Director: Don Casper
Co-Executive Producer/Graphic Designer/Animator: Caroline
Maynard
LOCAL LINK!
Imagine watching one of baseball's earliest games, in the
presence of thousands of fans but without the benefit of hand signals on the
diamond that guide us through the modern game. There were no signals for
strike, safe, out or foul and no announcer to interpret the game. The only
signal was the umpire's voice, consumed by the roar of thousands of excited
fans. How did the signals of baseball originate? Like the origins of the game
itself, the genesis of baseball's greatest innovation is steeped in legend and
fraught with polarizing opinions. SIGNS OF THE TIME is a painstakingly
researched baseball documentary that was shot on location in eight states,
featuring interviews with many baseball greats and re-enactments of scenes from
old-time baseball games. The film explores the origins of this pivotal
innovation and the baseball pioneers that shaped the course of the game and
history. If you like a story about history, mystery and human achievement, you
are sure to enjoy.
NERAKHOON (THE BETRAYAL)
DOCUMENTARY, LAOS/US, 2008, 96 minutes
Co-Director/Co-Writer/Producer/Cinematographer: Ellen Kuras
Co-Director/Co-Writer/Editor: Thavisouk Phrasavath
In English and Lao
LOCAL LINK!
Renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras (who studied here at
the Visual Studies Workshop in the 1980s) makes her directing debut, joined by
Laotian co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath, to tell the latter's astonishing
story of suffering and hope as he and his family journey from war-torn Laos to
a crime-and-poverty-torn New York.
After his father is arrested by the Laotian communist government for
working with the U.S. during the Vietnam War, young Thavisouk and his family
flee Laos, and finally reach the U.S. in 1981.
But they find another kind of war in New York, as Thavisouk's mother
single-handedly struggles to raise a family of ten amidst almost constant
danger. Filmed over the course of 23
years, fluidly incorporating archival footage, cinema verite passages,
interviews, and visually poetic montages, THE BETRAYAL enables us to feel the
far-reaching consequences of war, the resilient bonds of family, and what it
means to be in exile.
2009 Academy Awards: Nomination, Best Documentary, Features
2009 Independent Spirit Awards: Nomination, Best Documentary
2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival: Spectrum Award
2008 Sundance Film Festival: Nomination, Grand Jury Prize,
Documentary
Director/Director of Photography ELLEN KURAS ASC, three-time
winner of Sundance's Best Dramatic Cinematography Award, counts among her
credits many major independent films, such as SWOON, PERSONAL VELOCITY,
ROYCOHN/JACK SMITH, UNZIPPED, and I SHOT ANDY WARHOL, several Spike Lee films,
including FOUR LITTLE GIRLS, SUMMER OF SAM and BAMBOOZLED, as well as major
studio productions such as BLOW, ANALYZE THAT, and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE
SPOTLESS MIND.
ALBERT PALEY: IN SEARCH OF THE SENTINEL
Documentary, US, 2006. 56:40 minutes
Executive Producer/Writer/Producer/Director: Anthony Machi
Narrator: Jane Alexander
For more than thirty years, Rochester-based sculptor Albert
Paley has successfully fused art and technology into a career unparalleled in
modern art. Hailed as virtuoso works of
design and technique, Paley's monumental metal sculptures are always in harmony
with their architectural surroundings. Local filmmaker Anthony Machi's
documentary explores the latest chapter in Paley's life, focusing on the
creation and installation of The Sentinel at Rochester Institute of Technology,
the largest public sculpture on any university campus in America and what Paley
calls, "my most important piece to date." Throughout the film, Paley's family and colleagues reflect on his
art and his creative process, while Paley himself candidly discusses how his
two near-death experiences have affected his sensibility. And to a local filmmaker celebrating a local
artist add this: Machi first met his film's narrator, Jane Alexander, at our
2005 Festival, and asked her to consider being part of this project.
New York Emmy Award in the Arts: Program/Special Category
CINE Golden Eagle Award
Since receiving the Susan B. Anthony "Failure is
Impossible" Award in 2005, Jane Alexander has starred as Dr. May Foster in
the boundary-pushing television series TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. She appears as Paul Dano's mother in
GIGANTIC (2009 RHFIFF). Her role in THE
GREAT WHITE HOPE opposite James Earl Jones brought her to prominence in the
late '60's. The film brought her the
first of four Oscar nominations, which include ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN, KRAMER
VS. KRAMER and TESTAMENT. Her work on stage and in television is equally
renowned, and she served four years as the Chairman of the National Endowment
for the Arts.
LOCAL LINK!
Tony Machi is the Executive Producer as well as the Writer,
Producer and Director of ALBERT PALEY: IN SEARCH OF THE SENTINEL. He has been an award-winning documentary
filmmaker for close to 40 years and is the owner and Vice President of Machi
& Machi Communications, Inc.
UNMISTAKEN CHILD
Documentary, Israel, 2008, 102 minutes
Director/Writer/Co-Producer: Nati Baratz
In English, Tibetan, Hindi, Nepali
One of the most beautiful films you will ever see, this
story of the search for the reincarnation of a beloved Tibetan Buddhist monk
plunges you into a world utterly alien in its details, yet hauntingly familiar
in its passionate spirituality.
Nepalese monk Tenzin Zopa has spent twenty-one of his twenty-eight years
as the devoted disciple of the venerated master, Lama Konchog. Given the task of finding his reincarnation,
with only a few clues to guide him, the grief-stricken young man sets out on a
journey that takes him through tiny rural villages in overwhelmingly gorgeous
landscapes and eventually brings him to a rather remarkable infant who may well
be the "unmistaken child" he seeks. Shot over several years by
Israeli director Nati Baratz, featuring an appearance by the Dalai Lama
himself, this is a film that will fill you with wonder.
Haifa International Film Festival: Haifa Cultural Foundation
Award, Best Documentary
LAILA'S BIRTHDAY
Narrative, Palestine/New Zealand/Netherlands, 2008, 72
minutes
Director/Writer/Producer: Rashid Masharawi
Editor: Pascale Chavance
In Arabic with English subtitles
The best film yet from acclaimed Palestinian writer-director
Rashid Masharawai (WAITING, CURFEW), LAILA'S BIRTHDAY is a wry, comedic
vignette tracing a day in the life of an experienced judge-turned-taxi driver,
a portrait of ordinary people living in impossible circumstances in
contemporary Ramallah. Abu Laila is only trying to do a days work and bring
home a birthday cake for his beloved young daughter, but the madness of West
Bank life frustrates him at every turn.
Bomb scares, political arguments, and other strange circumstances
suggest the serious issues that motivate Masharawi's art. But his touch remains light and the gags he
constructs reflect the influence of the great silent comedians.
Pascale Chavance has been working as an editor in film and
television since 1988. Among her best
known titles are THE LAST MISTRESS (RHFIFF '08), ANATOMIE DE L'ENFER, SEX IS
COMEDY, BRIEF CROSSING and FAT GIRL.
SHOUTING FIRE: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF FREE SPEECH
Documentary, US, 2008, 74 minutes
Director: Liz Garbus
What happens to the right of free speech in an era when the
fear of genuine enemies is exploited, manipulated, and inflamed by power
seeking politicians? In SHOUTING FIRE, filmmaker Liz Garbus looks at one such
era: the past eight years. What she
sees should frighten and enrage all of us. Spokespeople from the right and
left, including her father, First Amendment attorney Martin Garbus, reveal the
full range of opinions on civil liberties, as they comment on several first
amendment cases (some still undecided when the film was finished) such as Ward
Churchill's firing from the University of Colorado, Debbie Almontaser's
resignation from the Khalil Gibran International Academy, and Tyler Chase
Harper's "Homosexuality is Shameful" T-shirt. Clips from popular films and TV shows, such
as MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, ANIMAL FARM, HBO's "John Adams,"
TORN CURTAIN, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE BIG LEBOWSKI, examine the role of
pop culture in molding attitudes.
2009 Sundance Film Festival: Nominated, Grand Jury Prize -
Documentary
Celebrated Director/Producer Liz Garbus is the co-founder
(with Rory Kennedy) of Moxie Firecracker, Inc. Past credits include: THE FARM:
ANGOLA, USA, which was nominated for an Academy Award, the National Film
Critics Award, two Emmys and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize; THE EXECUTION OF
WANDA JEAN (HBO; RHFIFF '03) and GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB, which won the Emmy Award
for Best Documentary in 2007.
THE QUEEN AND I
Documentary, Sweden, 2008, 90 minutes
Director/Co-Writer: Nahid Persson Sarvestani
Co-Writer/Editor: Zinat S. Lloyd
Q&A with MCC Professor Shahin Monshipour
A major hit at Sundance, this is Iranian exile filmmaker
Nahid Persson Sarvestani's uniquely personal portrait Farah Diba, widow of the
last shah of Iran. Sarvestani grew up in poverty in Iran, joined the Communist
wing of the anti-shah movement that eventually deposed him, then fled the
country herself when Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic fundamentalist government proved
to be at least as repressive as the shah's. Thirty years later, Sarvestani is a
renowned Swedish filmmaker, when she begins to court Farah, hoping to make a
documentary about her. This film is the
story of the prickly relationship between the queen and the commoner, two women
whose circumstances could not be more different, but who both suffered
devastating personal losses during the revolution and after, as well as the
permanent loss of their homeland. Told
against the backdrop of recent Iranian history, their points of view are often
at odds, but a mutual respect eventually takes hold and a moving, unusually
intimate portrait results.
2009 Sundance Film Festival: Nominated, Grand Jury Prize,
World Cinema – Documentary
Nahid Persson Sarvestani was born and raised in Iran. In
Sweden, she began formalized study of television and film production and in
2003 attended Dramatiska Institutet.
She has made films in Iran under dangerous conditions, among them PROSTITUTION
BEHIND THE VEIL, an Emmy-nominated documentary for which the Iranian
authorities detained her for more than three months. This and other films have
made Persson Sarvestani the most award-winning documentary filmmaker in Swedish
history.
ASTRONAUT PAM: COUNTDOWN TO COMMANDER
DOCUMENTARY, US, 2008, 39 MINUTES
Producers: Renee Sotile, Mary Jo Godges
LOCAL LINK!
Mary Jo Godges and Renee Sotile in attendance!
Know any folks who dream of becoming astronauts? Make sure
they catch this fast paced, fascinating film about Rochester's own Pam Melroy,
who's living her dream as a NASA astronaut. Filled with insights about the
joys, fears, thrills, and sheer hard work of a "space cowboy's" life,
Astronaut Pam follows Melroy on her 2006 mission, when she became the second
woman (after Eileen Collins) to command a space shuttle. The STS-120 crew
visited the space station during Expedition 16, commanded by Peggy Whitson.
Whitson is the first female ISS commander, making the STS-120 mission the first
time that two female mission commanders were in orbit at the same time. The
amazing "on-location" footage puts us into space with Melroy, whose
infectious enthusiasm (ask her about her job and she says, "Being an
astronaut is totally cool. It's the coolest job in or out of the world.")
makes her the ideal companion for the trip of a lifetime. NOTE: This is the
world – and universe – premiere.
Renee Sotile & Mary Jo Godges premiered their first
feature documentary, CHRISTA MCAULIFFE: REACH FOR THE STARS at the High Falls
Film Festival in 2005. The film Won the Audience Choice Award for Best
Documentary and went on to air on CNN Presents. Renee and Pam Melroy are
Rochester homies.
500 DAYS OF SUMMER
Narrative, US/Australia, 2009, 95 MINUTES
Producers: Jessica Tuchinsky
Production Designer: Laura Fox
Cast: Zooey Deschanel, Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Full of delightful, crazy surprises (dance numbers,
split-screen scenes, surreal dreams wherein the hero imagines himself in a
bunch of Bergman and New Wave films) surrounding a deeply serious center, this
Sundance "buzz" film bounces around among the days in question
tracing the ups, downs, and sideways of Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer's
(Zooey Deschanel) at turns comic and heartbreaking relationship. They both work
at a greeting card company, so they're naturally suspicious of easy sentiment.
But Tom really is looking for true love, and when he finally works up the nerve
to ask Summer out, we can't help hoping he's found it. Sweet, touching, and thoughtful about the
eternal question of commitment, the viewer is left wondering until the final
frame about the fate of these two erstwhile characters. Whether together or
apart, however, it's clear the journey has been worth the trip.
Jessica Tuchinsky is a partner/producer at Watermark
Pictures in Los Angeles. She is an
executive producer of GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST and was thanked for her
assistance on LOST IN TRANSLATION.
Production Designer Laura Fox's previous credits include ALL
GOD'S CHILDREN CAN DANCE.
SKIN
Narrative, US/AFRICA, 2008, 107 minutes
Director/Co-Producer/Co-Writer: Anthony Fabian
Original Music: Helene Muddiman
Cast: Sophie Okonedo, Sam Neill, Alice Krige
In English and Zulu
Anthony Fabian's debut feature tells the extraordinary true
story of Sandra Laing, whose experiences with South African apartheid expose
the depth of that vile system's insanity. Although the biological daughter of a
white couple, she was born with undeniably black features, hair, and "colored"
(according to apartheid's taxonomy) skin, a genetic phenomenon explained in the
film. Her case became a national cause
celebre when her parents asked the Supreme Court to classify her as
"white." Because apartheid laws forbade people of different races living
together, they risked losing her if the court refused. But when white society rejected her, and she
fell in love with black man, she fought to change her classification to
"colored." Featuring
brilliant performances by Sam Neill and Alice Krige as her complex, torn, often
misguided parents, and Sophie Okonedo (so memorable in HOTEL RWANDA) as Sandra
(who still lives in South Africa), SKIN is a not-to-be missed experience.
2009 AFI Dallas International Film Festival: Audience Award,
Narrative Feature
2009 Los Angeles Pan African Film Festival: Audience Award
and Jury Award
2009 Santa Barbara International Film Festival: Audience
Choice Award
Composer Helene
Muddiman says, "When [director Anthony Fabian] . . . invited me to write
the score of SKIN, we talked about creating a sound world that would reflect
the nature and emotion of the story and give a clear sense of time and place.
Using Western and African instruments .
. . allowed me to explore a variety of styles and come up with a unique, 'world
music' hybrid."
MERMAID (RUSALKA)
Narrative, Russia, 2007, 115 minutes
Director/Writer: Anna Melikyan
In Russian with English subtitles
For her second film, a whimsical fable about a young woman
with special powers, Russian writer/director Anna Melikyan won the World Cinema
Directing Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Born nine months after a chance encounter
between her lusty mama and a drunken sailor, Alisa (a radiant performance by
Masha Shalaeva) moves to Moscow at age eighteen, able to shift objects
telekinetically, but unable to budge the hearts of those she would love. There
she encounters a variety of bizarre characters (including a man who sells
property on the moon and repeatedly tries to commit drunken suicide), finds
prophetic messages on billboards, and battles a malevolent blonde for the
affections of a young ad-man.
Emotionally rich, deeply moving, MERMAID seamlessly mixes magical
digital effects, bravura cinematography, and superb acting to create an
Amelie-like modern fairy tale that builds to what one critic calls an
absolutely "gasp-inspiring denouement."
2009 Sundance Film Festival
World Cinema Directing Award
Nomination, Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema - Dramatic
2008 Berlin Film Festival
FIPRESCI Prize
2008 Karlovy Vary Film Festival
Independent Camera
Award
Anna Melikyan was born in Azerbaijan, raised in Armenia, and
moved to Moscow to attend film school. She directed fiction and nonfiction for
television before making her first feature, MARS, in 2004. She says she is most
inspired by "Italian films, especially neo-realism, but Fellini remains my
favorite film director." She wrote
MERMAID for lead actress Masha Shalaeva, a college friend.
SLINGSHOT HIP HOP
Documentary, US, 2008, 80 minutes
Director/Co-Producer: Jackie Salloum
In Arabic with English subtitles
Jackie Salloum and Abeer in attendance!
Arab-American multimedia artist and filmmaker Jackie Salloum
braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in the West Bank,
Gaza, and inside Israel as they discover hip-hop and turn it into a tool to
overcome divisions imposed by poverty, occupation, and cultural tradition. She focuses on groups like DAM, from the
impoverished ghettoes of Lyd within Israel, P.R. from Gaza, and on the young
woman rapper, Abeer, who represents an extreme challenge to traditional male
Arab attitudes toward women. As Salloum
says, Abeer had "to challenge ideas [about women] that want to keep them
at home to cook and clean . . . [She] had to fight against threats from her
cousins in order to get up on stage and sing. She had to do most of it in
secrecy." Inspiring, provocative, and just plain entertaining, SLINGSHOT
HIP HOP celebrates young people using music to confront the problems that beset
them.
2009 Sundance Film Festival: Nominated, Grand Jury Prize – Documentary
Jackie Salloum is an Arab-American multimedia artist and
filmmaker. Her projects focus on challenging the stereotypes of Arabs in the
media and include PLANET OF THE ARABS, about Hollywood images of Arabs and
Muslims, an award winner at the Cinematexas film festival and a 2005 Sundance
selection.
GARRISON KEILLOR: THE MAN ON THE RADIO IN THE RED SHOES
Documentary, 2008, 86 minutes
Producer/Director: Peter Rosen
Writer: Sara Lukinson
Featuring: Garrison Keillor, Tim Russell, Sue Scott
Go behind the scenes of what may be America's most popular
national radio show, A Prairie Home Companion, and inside the imagination of
the man who created it. Director Peter
Rosen and writer Sara Lukinson spent more than a year following and filming
Garrison Keillor as he took his skits and jokes, music and monologues across
the country in his traveling radio show. The result is a free form, intimate
look at the private man in the public spotlight, who mingles fact and fiction
to develop one of the country's favorite places, Lake Wobegon. His weekly show, begun in 1974, is credited
with reviving the lost art of live radio entertainment, and his pungent but
poignant take on America earns him comparisons with everyone from Mark Twain
and Will Rogers to H. L. Mencken and James Thurber. As this untraditional
biography reveals, his is a unique and valued voice.
Writer Sara Lukinson is an award-winning writer and producer
of arts documentaries, television specials and live events, known mostly for
her moving biographical portraits. She has won two Emmy Awards and six Writers
Guild Awards. For the past 20 years, she has produced and written the film biographies
for The Kennedy Center Honors and recently wrote the Obama Inauguration Concert
at the Lincoln Memorial.
ROUGH AUNTIES
Documentary, UK, 2008, 103 minutes
Director/Cinematographer: Kim Longinotto
Women Make Movies Executive Director Debbie Zimmerman in
attendance!
More than fifteen years ago, in a Durban, South Africa still
plagued by apartheid, five courageous women (Eureka, Jackie, Mildred, Sdudla,
and Thuli) formed Bobbi Bear, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping
sexually-abused children and bringing their abusers to justice. Today, these
"rough aunties" and their multi-racial staff continue to battle tirelessly
against the powerful forces that protect the criminals and discourage reporting
abuse: fear, ignorance, and cultural traditions. Multi-award-winning
documentary director Kim Longinotto's intimate look at their compassionate
counseling methods, which involve letting children use teddy bears to
communicate their experiences, and their vigorous work with authorities to
capture and incarcerate the abusers, transforms a painful, disturbing subject
into an inspiring example of how a few dedicated individuals can cross lines of
class, culture and race, and truly change their society.
2009 Sundance Film
Festival: Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema – Documentary
Kim Longinotto's
films have won international acclaim and dozens of premiere awards. Credits
include: SISTERS IN LAW (RHFIFF '05), winner of a Peabody Award and two Cannes
awards; HOLD ME TIGHT, LET ME GO (2007), winner of the Special Jury Prize at
the International Documentary Film Festival, Amsterdam (IDFA); THE DAY I WILL
NEVER FORGET (2003), winner of the Amnesty International Award/IDFA; DIVORCE
IRANIAN STYLE (1998) and many more.
BLAST!
Documentary, US, 2008, 74 minutes
Director: Paul Devlin
Producer: Claire Missanelli
Claire Missanelli in attendance!
BLAST! is astrophysics Indiana Jones style, a wildly
entertaining adventure story that flies around the world and across the
universe following a group of scientists as they try to launch a revolutionary
new telescope by using a balloon.
Five-time Emmy-Award-winner Paul Devlin follows his brother, Mark
Devlin, PhD, as he leads the group's effort to peer into the past and study the
origins of… everything. They go from Arctic Sweden to Inuit country in Canada,
where catastrophe forces them to try all over again on the desolate ice in
Antarctica. But what's most surprising
is the number of subjects the film explores: family relationships, the
existence of God, the tensions between religion and science, the price of
success (and failure), and much, much more. This is a must-see, with no science
diploma required.
Producer Claire Missanelli co-produced POWER TRIP, which won
two jury awards at the Berlin Film Festival, eight awards at other festivals,
and was nominated for a 2004 Independent Spirit Award, as well as SUPER STAR
DUMB and SLAMNATION, a documentary about the slam poetry movement shown on
HBO/Cinemax and Encore/Starz. She also
works as a consulting and outreach producer for documentary projects.
VISUAL ACOUSTICS
Documentary, US, 2008, 83 minutes
Director/Co-Producer: Eric Bricker
Writers: Eric Bricker, Phil Ethington
Co-writers: Lisa Hughes, Jessica Hundley
Forget all those trite, sticky Hollywood fictions about the
"triumph of the human spirit."
Here's the real thing, in the person of still active 98-year-old
architectural photographer, Julius Shulman. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual
Acoustics explores his monumental career using his own images plus interviews
with a striking array of artists, architects, actors, designers,
cinematographers, writers, and more. Shulman's photographs combine human models
and stunning landscapes, modern urban design and organic nature, and helped
document the careers of some of the twentieth century's most noted
architects. From his earliest work,
photographing homes designed by architect Richard Neutra, to his later work
with Mies Van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and numerous others, Shulman
championed modernist design that sought harmony and balance with nature, and
attacked over-development and cold, inhuman abstraction. Today his work is
enjoying a new popularity, influencing the creators of contemporary design, and
inspiring a new generation of ecological activists.
2009 Palm Springs International Film Festival: Audience
Award, Best Documentary
MY MOTHER'S GARDEN
Documentary, US, 2008, 69 minutes
Director: Cynthia Lester
Producers: Elisabeth Harris, Susannah Ludwig, Adi Amit,
Alessandra Dobrin
Cynthia Lester and Elisabeth Harris in attendance!
Everyone keeps a few things they ought to throw away. Pack rats keep a lot more. But people with hoarding disorder have a
serious psychological condition that can damage the lives of its victims and
their families. Filmmaker Cynthia
Lester's mother, Eugenia, is one of those victims, and this painfully personal
documentary recounts in remarkably candid detail how Cynthia and her three
brothers have tried to deal with it. Traumatized by her childhood experiences
in post-WWII Poland, where survival often depended on hoarding, Eugenia
eventually came to California and started filling her house with books,
clothing, cans, and other "treasures" culled from dumpsters. Her
problems psychologically scarred her children, who left home as soon as
possible. Now, as local authorities
threaten to evict Eugenia and condemn her house, they band together to try to
save her and the trash pit she calls home.
Fascinating and revelatory, MY MOTHER'S GARDEN takes an important look
at a previously ignored illness.
Part of the Reel Mind Film Series, a special collaboration
with National Alliance on Mental Illness – Rochester, Mental Health
Association, DePaul Community Services, Compeer, East House and the University
of Rochester Cluster on Human Values.
Director Cynthia Lester is the co-founder of Next Generation
Productions, offering inner-city students mentoring experience with film
professionals; she has also taught art therapy programs for mentally ill and
recovering addicts. Past credits include work with HBO Documentaries; RIKERS
HIGH, ANNAPOLIS, ELVIS BY THE PRESLEYS and THE FOUNTAIN. MY MOTHERS GARDEN is
her feature-length directorial debut.
FRENCH FILM
Narrative, UK, 2008, 87 minutes
Director: Jackie Oudney
Director Jackie Oudney gifts us with a remarkably
accomplished first feature in this smart, sweet, very funny, and very English
romantic comedy. So what makes it French? Thierry Grimandi
(played by Eric Cantona), an impossibly pompous Gallic filmmaker,
self-appointed expert on love, and film critic and failed novelist Jed's (Hugh
Bonneville) interview subject. Of course Jed's own long-term
relationship with Cheryl (Victoria Hamilton) is not going well, and there are
lots of questions about the seemingly perfect affair between his best buddy
Marcus (Douglas Henshall) and Marcus's partner Sophie (Anne Marie Duff). Things
get so complicated for the circle of droll, sophisticated professionals that a
horrendous thought strikes Jed: maybe the French guy really knows something
after all. Touching, insightful, but saved from sloppy sentimentality by its
sharp wit and superb comic timing, FRENCH FILM is delicious, delightful,
thought provoking fun.
Jackie Oudney was born and raised in Dundee, Scotland. She
has directed over 30 commercials in just three years, winning several
prestigious international awards including a Silver Lion at Cannes and a Silver
D&AD Pencil. She's also directed two award-winning short films; FRENCH FILM
is her feature directorial debut.
MACHAN
Narrative, Sri Lanka/Italy/Germany, 2008, 105 minutes
Director/Writer/Producer: Uberto Pasolini
Writer: Ruwanthie De Chickera
In English and Sinhala
A group of young men, slum dwellers in Colombo, Sri Lanka,
are desperate to change their futures by getting to the West. A chance
invitational handball tournament in Bavaria seems like the answer to their
dreams. Never mind that none of them knows what handball is, that the red tape
separating them from their visas could stretch to the moon…the Sri Lanka
National Handball Team will not be deterred!
Director Uberto Pasolini's tough minded dramatic comedy focuses on the
efforts of fruit-seller Stanley and his lifelong friend, barman Manoj, to
cobble together a team from an unlikely collection of buddies, creditors, and
cops. And if, by some miracle, they can
actually get to Germany, what will happen when they must face an arena full of
fans waiting to applaud their non-existent handball skill? [NOTE: The subtitles contain frequent usage
of the "F" word.]
2008 Venice Film Festival
FEDIC Jury Award
Label Europa Cinemas Award
2008 São Paulo International Film Festival
Nomination,
International Jury Award
2008 Kerala International Film Festival
Audience Award
MACHAN Co-writer Ruwanthie De Chickera is an award winning
playwright, screen writer and theatre director. Her plays have been produced in Sri Lanka, the UK, Japan, India,
Australia and the Philippines. Her
first play won the British Council International New Playwriting award in 1997
and was the first Sri Lankan play to be performed in London's West End. She co-founded
and is the artistic director of the Stages Theatre Group, a youth theatre
company in Sri Lanka.
