Film Descriptions
ARISTIDE AND THE ENDLESS REVOLUTION
Haiti/USA (80 minutes) triumph
Director: Nicolas Rossier
An hour south of Miami, the elected president of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation has twice been forced from office with the complicity of the international community. "ARISTIDE and the Endless Revolution" investigates the tragic events that led to the second violent expulsion of Jean Bertrand Aristide from Haiti. This documentary reveals the tangled web of hope, deceit, and political violence that has brought the world's first black republic to its knees.
ARMENIAN LULLABY
Armenia/Russia/US (5 min.)
Director: Irina Patkanian
Filmmaker Irina Patkanian's great great grandfather, Rafael (1832-1892) wrote a poem about an Armenian mother whose baby can only go to sleep to the sound of battle songs in a land ravaged by wars. In the summer of 2003, Irina visited Armenia to shoot her film Armenian Lullaby. She created a moving video poem - a beautiful montage of images propelled by the reading of Rafael Patkanian's poem by Lilit Pipoyan.
BOXERS AND BALLERINAS
Cuba/USA ( 90 min.)
Director: Mike Cahill, Brit Marling / Nick Shumaker, David Brown
Boxers and Ballerinas is a film about four young people forever united by their cultural heritage and forever divided by ninety miles of water and over forty-five years of political conflict. The documentary traces the lives of a boxer and ballerina in Miami, Florida and a boxer and ballerina in Havana, Cuba. The film displays the political noise of the US-Cuba relations amongst the sweat, grace and aggression involved in chasing their dreams.
BRIDE KIDNAPPING IN KYRGYZSTAN
Kyrgyzstan/UK/USA (51 min.)
Director: Petr Lom
When a Kyrgyz man decides to marry, often he and several friends hire a car, stake out his bride-to-be's movements, and abducts the woman he has chosen. Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan documents in harrowing detail four such abductions, from the violent seizures on city streets and the tearful protests of the women who are physically restrained, to the eventual acquiescence or continued refusal of the young women. The film is a remarkably illuminating look at what will seem to most Westerners, a shocking social custom but one that, at the same time, raises provocative questions about the nature of love and marriage.
Bullets in the Hood: A Bed-Stuy Story
USA (22 min.)
Director: Terrence Fisher / Daniel Howard
Terrence Fisher isn’t a gang member. He is a normal teen living the Bedford-Stuyvesant housing projects in Brooklyn where he has had seven of his friends shot and killed with guns. A few months after the production of his own documentary about gun violence in Bed-Stuy, Terrence lost Timothy, his best friend from elementary school who was shot and killed by a police officer. The Bed-Stuy residents were outraged by the killing of an innocent teen which the Police Commission assessed was an “unjustified” killing. This documentary contains images that could only be captured by someone like Terrence, who has spent his entire life in the projects and experienced the fear and sadness of gun violence in his everyday life.
Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story
USA (26 min.)
Director: Jordan Mechner, Don Normark, Andrew B. Anderson, Mark Moran
Short-listed for Best Documentary Short, Academy Awards®
In 1949, photographer Don Normark stumbled on Chávez Ravine, a closely-knit Mexican-American village on a hill overlooking downtown Los Angeles. Enchanted, he stayed for a year and took hundreds of photographs, never knowing he was capturing on film the last images of a place that was about to disappear. While Los Angeles had evicted the 300 families of Chávez Ravine to make way for a low-income public housing project, the real estate lobby, sensing a great opportunity built Dodger Stadium on site instead. CHAVEZ RAVINE combines contemporary interviews with archival footage and Normark’s haunting black-and-white photographs to reclaim and celebrate a beloved community of the past.
EN ROUTE TO BAGHDAD
Brazil/Cambodia/East Timor/Mozambique/North Korea/Iraq/USA (56 min.)
Director: Simone Duarte, Ane Soanes, Kristine Candeso
In June 2003 Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello, Kofi Annan's special envoy to Iraq, delivered a message of hope to a country shattered by war—an end to occupation and promises of humanitarian aid, reconstruction, refugee return, economic development and legal and judicial reform. Unfortunately, Sergio’s work in Iraq would be left unfinished. On August 19th, 2003 a bomb exploded just outside the UN headquarters in Baghdad killing 22 people, among them, Sergio Vieira de Mello. While the film is a tribute to the life and work of Vieira de Mello, it also explores issues that impact the ability of UN humanitarian initiatives to move forward.
FACING THE DEAD
Germany/Russia ( 52 min.)
Director: Gabrielle Pfeiffer / Carl Ludwig Rettinger
In the years that Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, photographs of the 20 million people, so-called "enemies of the state" who were killed or perished in labor camps, were banned on pain of death. Families cut loved ones out of group portraits, school children blacked revolutionary heroes out of their history books, and the secret police destroyed whatever was left. In FACING THE DEAD, filmmaker Gabrielle Pfeiffer follows British photo archivist, David King, through today's Russia on a quest for photographs of the lost faces of a generation.
THE FLUTE PLAYER
USA/Cambodia (60 minutes)
Director: Jocelyn Glatzer
When the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia in 1975, Arn Chorn-Pond was nine years old. He was separated from his family and thrust into the darkness of Cambodia's ghastly Killing Fields for four years. Now, after living in the U.S. for 20 years, Arn returns to Cambodia to save its once outlawed traditional music from extinction. Arn Chorn-Pond's story provides insight about the specific ways in which the past continues to influence the lives of refugees living in the United States today by illuminating and probing some of the most critical issues of our time: What does war do to the psyche of individual survivors? What steps can a country and its people take to rebuild after experiencing profound destruction? Why is the preservation of culture important to personal identity and survival? "The Flute Player" explores these questions as it tells a riveting and enlightening story about hope, healing and the will to survive in the aftermath of war.
GOD SLEEPS IN RWANDA
Rwanda/USA (28 min.)
Director: Kimberlee Acquaro / Stacy Sherman
The 1994 Rwandan genocide left the country nearly seventy percent female, handing Rwanda’s women an extraordinary burden and an unprecedented opportunity. An inspiring story of loss and redemption, God Sleeps in Rwanda focuses on the spirit of women survivors to overcome the genocide’s legacy of grief and loss. The film follows five courageous women as they rebuild their lives and, in doing so, redefine women’s roles in Rwandan society and bring hope to a wounded nation.
HEART OF THE CONGO
Congo/USA ( 57 min.)
Director: Tom Weidlinger
In the heart of the Congo, at the end of a war, a handful of aid workers help refugees who have lost everything. They mobilize villagers to dig wells for clean water, train health workers and nurse children with acute malnutrition back to health. They are confronted with threats of violence from roving militias, systemic corruption, and a legacy of colonial dependency. And there are times when it is very clear that these workers exist apart from those they aim to help, benefiting from services and luxuries of the modern world that are beyond the reach of the rural Congolese. In spite of this, the Congolese and European aid workers struggle to encourage the will of the people, and build the skills necessary for a self-sufficient future. Heart of the Congo is a film about courage, hope and perseverance.
INDIAN QUEEN (RANI HINDUSTANI)
India ( 24 min.)
Director: Priti Chandriani / Dace Productions
Rani Hindustani is the story of a woman who has rebelled against many social traditions in the process of discovering her own identity. Today she lives life by her own rules. Unable to come to terms with male insensitivity experienced with her father and later, her husband, she disowned both the surnames that suffixed her name Hemlata. Instead, she chose the name Poonam (after Poona, her hometown) Maharashtra (her state, which, she feels, is like a father to her) Hindustani (after India, the country she‚s from). She chose to have a child out of wedlock when the option of adopting one was denied to her, and has dared to take on a profession that is entirely dominated by men˜truck driving. Today she lives with an adopted mother, brother and a friend, under the family name Hindustani.
MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA
China/ USA (62 min.)
Director: David Redmon
Nominated for Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival
Mardi Gras: Made in China is a story of globalization told through humor and sadness, hope and violence by various characters including the owner of a bead factory in China, the largest Mardi Gras bead distributor in the world; Carnival revelers who exchange beads during Mardi Gras and four teenage workers in China who make Mardi Gras beads. By confronting an increasingly globalized world where consumers and producers are alienated from each other, the film attempts to re-establish human connections through curiosity and humor as it renders visible the seemingly invisible bead trail from the factory to the festival. The film shows revelers and factory workers encounter each other for the first time, as both attempt to understand each others‚ motivations.
Native New Yorker
USA ( 13 min.)
Director: Steve Bilich / William Susman
This silent documentary with an original score was filmed through the eye of a 1924 hand-crank spring-wound Cine-Kodak camera. The film features Terry 'Coyote' Murphy representing the Native American influence of the isle of Manhattan. Coyote, a Shaman Trail Scout, takes a journey which transcends time, weaving from inwood park where the island was traded for beads & booze, down a long native path now called 'the great white way,' more commonly known as 'Broadway,' to the lower reaches of Manhattan into 'ground zero,' which is now a sacred burial ground for not just the American Indian and the slaves of yesteryear, but for the newest natives of this island empire as well.
OMAR & PETE
USA ( 71 min.)
Director: Tod Lending
Omar and Pete explores the web of social and economic barriers that low-income African-American men face in the context of incarceration and release. The film examines existing support structures and those that are needed to help former prisoners successfully re-enter their families and neighborhoods. This compelling and highly personal film will challenge the public's perceptions and reveal the individual, family and community pathways that can lead to social change.
RECYCLERS
USA ( 27 min.)
Director: Jed Wolfington
Recyclers takes us into the world of people whose livelihood is sustained by collecting bottles and cans in San Francisco. The film features a strong line-up of colorful subjects from within the recycling community, presenting an expansive and nuanced reality that evades the polarized labels that mainstream media so often applies to socio-political issues—issues that are as complex as the people whom they affect.
SOMETHING OTHER THAN OTHER
USA ( 7 min.)
Director: Jerry A. Henry, Andrea J. Chia
Filmmakers Jerry Henry and Andrea Chia started to film a video diary on the day they found out that she was pregnant. As the parents of a multiracial child they examine racial identity in this experimental personal documentary. They filmed Quin’s birth in an unconventional way - instead of using video, they decided to shoot it on Super 8mm and to shoot it frame-by-frame, like an animation. New parents Jerry and Andrea have endured their own share of discrimination growing up. They hope their newborn son can grow up identifying as something other than "other."
SPEAK LUVO SPEAK JANE
Kenya/South Africa/USA ( 14 min.)
Director: Peter Jordan / The Bernard van Leer Foundation
In African communities plagued by AIDS, what has been the impact of the epidemic on the minds of the continent’s youngest children? With the disease still kept a secret, what have children been left to infer on their own about the sickness seen and heard everyday around them? In Speak Luvo Speak Jane eight-year-old Luvo and five-year-old Jane share their impressions growing up in South Africa and Kenya, as they struggle to overcome the deadly impact of AIDS on their families. Local nursery school children, equipped with plastic video cameras, document how children in their villages understand AIDS and what we can do to help their orphaned friends.
SUCKERFISH
Canada ( 8 min.)
Director: Lisa Jackson
When she was ten, Lisa Jackson fled Toronto to live with relatives in Vancouver to escape her mother’s depression, alcoholism and prescription drug abuse, legacies of the residential school experience. Now, sifting through her memories and her mother’s letters, she constructs a portrait of a mother whose drive to love her daughter triumphed over her demons of addiction. Animation, childhood photographs and stylized recreations add the young child’s whimsical voice to this moving, at times humorous, look at the director’s relationship to her mother and native identity.
TOO BRIEF A CHILD: VOICES OF MARRIED ADOLESCENTS
India/Philippiness/USA ( 13 min.)
Director: Robin Coblyn, Nancy Camp / Andrea Kalin
Million of girls around the globe marry before they leave adolescence. This is their story of lost childhoods, lost dreams and little hope of breaking the cycle of poverty and hopelessness that engulfs them. Too Brief A Child explores the reasons why girls marry so young and the pressures and beliefs that impel their families to support and often force this choice. The film is a compelling look at how illiteracy, poverty, high infant and mother mortality, HIV/AIDS and loss of personal freedoms are issues of global urgency that impact child brides more than any other group.
WAITING FOR SUNRISE
Pakistan/UK ( 6 min.)
Diretor: Aneel Ahmad
UNICEF UK Films4lives Award 2005
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