Film Descriptions
This year's festival selection draws on the entire 11-year UNAFF archive. We're excited to include some of our favorites from years past along with timely recent releases on current issues.
Abstaining From Reality
Kenya/Uganda/USA (9 min.)
Director: Daniele Anastasion
Filmed in Kenya and Uganda, this short documentary provides a snapshot of the Bush administration's abstinence-only approach to HIV prevention as part of its global HIV/AIDS assistance. Abstaining from Reality examines how these ideologically-driven programs are actually endangering the lives of the people they're supposed to be protecting. This policy is disconnected from the reality of the lives of women and young people, who are disproportionately affected by the epidemic. The film urges a balanced, comprehensive approach to preventing HIV infections by providing full and accurate information and a range of services that empower individuals to make informed decisions. Abstaining from Reality is a short documentary that demonstrates in stark and powerful detail the grave consequences of the United States' abstinence-only approach to HIV prevention.
Official website
Damage Done: The Drug War Odyssey
Canada (54 min.)
Director: Connie Littlefield
After thirty years of the War on Drugs, illegal narcotics have gone down in price, up in purity and availability, and way up in demand. The heroes of this film are veterans of the Drug War, and they urge us to consider ending drug prohibition both at home and around the world. They have had a complete revolution in their thinking: now they are working to end the War on Drugs. Find out what happened to change their minds and how they became the first truly radical cops.
Official website with trailer and reviews
Dangerous Art
Canada/Mozambique (7 min.)
Director: Sean Kelly
Dangerous Art is a story of a deadly civil war, which ended in the African nation of Mozambique in 1992. Thousands of guns, grenades and landmines remain a continuing threat to the hard-won peace. As a result, a group of artists came up with a better use for the weapons - they are turning them into sculptures. (From the UNAFF 2001 Archive)
The Devil Came on Horseback
Sudan/USA (89 min.)
Director: Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern
The Devil Came on Horseback exposes the tragedy taking place in Darfur as seen through the eyes of an American witness who has since returned to the U.S. to take action to stop it. Using exclusive photographs and first-hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, The Devil Came on Horseback takes the viewer on an emotionally-charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of its black-African citizens. As an official military observer, Steidle had access to parts of the country that no journalist could penetrate. Ultimately frustrated by the inaction of the international community, Steidle resigned and returned to the U.S. to expose the images and stories of lives systematically destroyed. This compelling film bears witness to unmentionable atrocities, celebrates the courage of a refugee community desperately trying to survive while posing the question: Why has the West not taken more urgent action to stop genocide this time?
Official website with trailer and reviews
The Digital Dump : Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa
Nigeria/USA (23 min.)
Director: Jim Puckett
The Digital Dump: Exporting High-Tech Re-use and Abuse to Africa exposes the ugly underbelly of an escalating global trade in toxic, obsolete, discarded computers and other e-scrap collected in North America and Europe, which is sent to developing countries by waste brokers and so-called recyclers. In Lagos, while there is a legitimately robust market and some have the ability to repair and refurbish old electronic equipment including computers, monitors, TVs and cell phones, the local experts complain that of the estimated 500 40-foot containers shipped to Lagos each month, as much as 75% of the imports are junk and are not economically repairable or marketable. Consequently, this e-waste, which is legally a hazardous waste, is discarded and routinely burned in another cyber-age nightmare now landing on the shores of developing countries.
Official website
The Fighting Cholitas
Bolivia (20 min.)
Director: Mariam Jobrani, Kenneth Kraus, Teresa Deskins
Fighting Cholitas is short film about a group of bold and fierce female Bolivian wrestlers.These indigenous women jump into the ring every Sunday in their traditional, vibrant, multilayered skirts and perform the acrobatic maneuvers of Lucha Libre (a blend of Mexican and American professional wrestling). Fighting Cholitas goes behind the scenes to find out who these women are and what draws them to this unusual sport. Every Sunday, hundreds of men, women and children pack the Multifunctional Auditorium in El Alto, Bolivia, a sprawling lower income extension of La Paz. They come to watch fights between good and evil where good is usually triumphant.
Official website with trailer
MySpace page
Hidden Wounds
Afghanistan/Iraq/USA (57 min.)
Director: Iris Adler
It's estimated that one-in-five troops returning from the current war in Iraq will suffer some form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Symptoms may include intrusive memories and dreams, flashbacks, hypervigilance, impaired memory, diminished affect, and feelings of estrangement from others that interfere with a return to civilian work and family. A powerful documentary, Hidden Wounds explores this painful reality through the stories of three veterans and their struggles to overcome the trauma of their experiences. Nate Fick, a Dartmouth College graduate, was a platoon commander in the elite Marine "Recon" unit. He fought in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, but on his return to the United States he became seriously depressed for close to a year. In dealing with his feelings, he turned to writing, resulting in the book One Bullet Away. Sgt. Russell Anderson served in the Army for four years after graduating from high school in the late sixties. However, he remained in the Army Reserve, and in 2004 he volunteered to go to Iraq. Hostile and depressed after his return, he refused to seek counseling, considering it a sign of weakness. Jeff Lucey joined the Marine Reserves as a high school senior, and then spent a year as a truck driver in Iraq. Returning home, he began drinking heavily, experienced panic attacks, and became increasingly despondent. Despite his parents' pleas, the Veterans Administration would not agree to commit him for treatment of his post-traumatic stress disorder until he stopped drinking. He committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. His parents have become activists in the campaign to ensure adequate government funding for PTSD treatment.
Review
India Inhales
India/USA (25 min.)
Director: Amanda Rudman
Every day in India, another 55,000 children start smoking -- compared to the 3,000 children who take up the habit in the US, where numbers are falling. Tobacco is one of India's favorite pastimes: Indians spit it, chew it, smoke it, roll it everywhere, throughout the continent. And, inspired by advertising for Wills cigarettes which sponsors the Indian cricket team, children believe that smoking improves cricketing techniques. Hardly surprising, then, that with declining markets in the West, and 50% of India's population under the age of 25, the major tobacco companies are increasingly targeting India as their new growth market. Film INDIA INHALES explores the cynicism of the major global tobacco companies' campaigns in India, and the work of the activists who have pledged to try to stop them -- and halt the soaring increase in cancer cases in India that result from smoking. (From the UNAFF 2001 Archive)
Producer's website with trailer
Filmmaker's website
Like a Ship In the Night
Ireland/UK/USA (30 min.)
Director: Melissa Thompson
Abortion is illegal in Ireland, North and South, potentially punishable by life imprisonment. Yet at least 8,000 Irish women a year travel to England for abortions. They make this journey in secret and return in silence, some of them never telling a soul. Like a Ship in the Night is a 30-minute documentary, which follows a young painter, a working class mother of five, and a self-proclaimed country girl as they plan their secret journeys across the Irish Sea. Along the way we hear from community workers, doctors and counselors about the history of the laws and social attitudes that make their journey necessary. Louise, Mary and Siobhan are welcomed in England by grassroots activists who support Irish women during their stay. After their abortions, the women head home, each armed with a "catalog of lies" to explain their absence. At the end of a long, often emotional journey, they are afraid to tell anyone where they have been or what they have been through. Although the three women begin their journeys with different views on abortion rights, they all return silenced, terrified and angry at their country.
Official website with reviews
A Minority Report
Italy/Serbia (54 min.)
Director/Producer: Stefano Giantin
A Minority Report is the result of more than two years of research and shooting in the UN administered province of Kosovo. The film analyzes the human rights situation of Kosovo minorities after eight years of international administration through interviews with IDPs (internally displaced persons), refugees and returnees as well as with the international civil servants that have ruled the province for the last seven years. Those who returned have found their properties destroyed or occupied. They live in ghettoes dispersed throughout Kosovo, often without access to basic services. Threats, harassments and isolation are part of the daily life of returnees.
Official website
Nisha
India/ Netherlands (31 min.)
Director: Duco Tellegen
Every child has the right to obtain information and to make information known, according to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. But what should Nisha's mother tell her about AIDS? Nisha is the heartfelt story of an eleven-year-old Indian girl living in a slum. She is often ill, but no one has told her why. Secluded from the other children and confused by her recurring illnesses, her world unravels when her mother confesses that they are both infected with the HIV virus - the virus that caused the death of Nisha's father. Nisha is an intimate, moving portrait of a young girl's brave struggle to come to terms with her fatal illness and the stigma attached to it if revealed to an AIDS-phobic society. (From the UNAFF 2002 Archive)
Sadako’s Cranes
Japan/USA (5 min.)
Director: Yvette O’Neill
A short, powerful film, Sadako’s Cranes was shot when Yvette O’Neill was in Japan with her son in 2001. It is the story of Sadako Sasaki who was three years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. As a result, Sadako contracted leukemia, known in Japan as the atom bomb disease. While in the hospital, hoping to be cured and to return to her family and friends, Sadako tried to fold one thousand origami paper cranes which, according to legend, would make one’s wish come true. She died before her project was completed and her friends and classmates folded the rest for her so she could be buried with one thousand cranes. In 1958, at the Peace Park in Hiroshima, a shrine was erected to the children who died as a result of the atomic bomb and an image of Sadako stands at the top. Every year, on Peace Day, thousands of children come to the shrine and leave paper cranes in memory and with a spirit of hope. O’Neill had read the story of Sadako and was moved by it. She had visited the Peace Park in the 1970’s and wanted her son to see it, too, so she returned with him in August of 2001 while a memorial exhibit about Sadako was installed in the Peace Park museum. The message of the children’s monument is: “This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.” (From UNAFF 2003 Archive)
Saudi Solutions
Saudi Arabia/USA (77 min.)
Director: Bregtje van der Haak
In Saudi Arabia, one of the most religiously conservative societies in the Middle East, women are not allowed to vote or to drive a car. Men and women are segregated in most public spaces and work environments. A strict dress code enforced by religious police mandates that women cover their heads and bodies in public, where they must always be accompanied by a husband or other male guardian. In Saudi Solutions, filmmaker Bregtje van der Haak is the first Western filmmaker ever granted permission to film the lives of Saudi women. She profiles several women with professional careers--including a journalist, a doctor, a photographer, a television newsreader, a university professor and the nation's first female airplane pilot--and asks them to explain what it means to be a modern woman in a fundamentalist Islamic society. In offering Western audiences a fascinating and often shocking look at the social status of women in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Solutions also reveals that while Saudi society may be one in transition, involving a delicate balance between religious tradition and modernizing influences, the pace of change will be dictated by the Saudis themselves.
Official website with reviews
Soldiers of Conscience
Iraq/USA (86 min.)
Director: Gary Weimberg, Catherine Ryan
What does it take to kill for one's country? War is fought one bullet, one rifle, one soldier at a time. Soldiers of Conscience, a powerful documentary narrated by Peter Coyote, looks at what it takes to enable soldiers to kill, and what it takes for some soldiers to refuse to kill. From West Point grads to drill sergeants, from Abu Ghraib interrogators to low ranking reservist-mechanics, soldiers in the US Army today reveal their deepest moral concerns about what they are asked to do in war. Their message: every soldier wrestles with his conscience over killing. Although most decide to kill, some refuse. Soldiers of Conscience reveals that far more soldiers refuse to kill than we might expect. The film includes never before seen footage of basic training and the war in Iraq, with an original soundtrack from an Academy Award winner and composer. Soldiers of Conscience is a realistic yet optimistic look at war, peace and the power of the human conscience.
Official website with trailer and reviews
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." (From UNAFF 2005 Archive)
Official website
On a Tightrope
China/Norway (60 min.)
Director: Petr Lom
In an orphanage in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, children study tightrope walking. The children are Uighurs, the largest Muslim minority in China. Fearing the Uyghurs' separatist movement, China rules with an iron fist in Xinjiang. Youngsters are forbidden to profess their religion, and the regime jumps at every opportunity to glorify the unity of China. Walking the tightrope is an age-old Uyghur tradition, and their feats are spectacular. The children look up to their coach, but his intentions are dubious. After nine months of intense training, most children are told they have failed and will not be able to continue the course. The film follows four children in the orphanage in their struggle to build a better life for themselves. They talk about the frustration of having to practice so hard, only to find out that it was all for nothing. But they also discuss their life in the orphanage and the required loyalty to communism, and their dreams for the future come up on a regular basis. Though not all of them really want a career in tightrope walking, they still feel that they have failed. Then, an elderly retired tightrope walker shows up and becomes their new coach. Lovingly and patiently, he teaches the children to walk the tightrope, this time with success.
Official website with trailer and reviews
The Valentine 1955
USA (2 min.)
Director: Susan B. Price and Maria Cristalli
Two little girls face off. Where is the respect in fearful times? The Valentine 1955 is a two-minute short that serves as a conversation starter for those pondering the politics of diversity. (From UNAFF 2003 Archive)
Official website
Welcome to Womanhood
Uganda/UK (14 min.)
Director: Charlotte Metcalf
In the remote Kapchorwe region of Uganda, female circumcision ceremonies occur every two years. To combat the practice, the UN Population Fund initiated the REACH program that attempted to substitute other initation ceremonies in place of FGM. BBC reporter donu Kogbara returns to see whether the program has succeeded. (From the UNAFF 1999 Archive)
Official website with reviews
Home | About the Festival | Schedule | Film Descriptions | Locations & Tickets | Sponsors & Friends | Contact Us
UNA Traveling Film Festival Boston
United Nations Association of Greater Boston
44-46 Temple Place, Boston, MA 02111
Tel: 617-482-4587 Email: info@unagb.org
Web Design by Elytra Design, 2005