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Marcel Schüpbach, Switzerland, 2006, 100m, video, doc
In French and English with English subtitles
Filmmaker Marcel Schüpbach was given unprecedented access behind the scenes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. In an atmosphere of high tension, where everything plays out like a poker game, prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and her team relentlessly pursue notorious perpetrators of crimes against humanity, such as Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, still at large. Both Serbia and Croatia —as well as the International Community—pledge total cooperation in helping locate the suspects, but this does not seem to produce any concrete results. And time is running out: in September 2007, Del Ponte’s appointment as prosecutor ends. Moving between The Hague, New York, Zagreb, and Washington, Carla’s List vividly brings to life Del Ponte’s dogged race against the clock in pursuit of justice. *Please note that Carla's List is only available for one screening per venue.
Distributor: Wide Management www.widemanagement.com
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Sebastián Moreno Mardones, Chile, 2006, 80m, video, doc
In Spanish with English subtitles
During Pinochet’s long regime, a motley crew of photojournalists shot and framed Chile’s people and turmoil from many points of view. In the streets, in the middle of bloody riots and protests, these fearless photographers learned their craft and created many of the now legendary images which helped focus world attention on the Pinochet regime’s repressive tactics. For them, taking pictures was a form of involvement, even resistance, a way of being more than mere spectators but vital actors. Pinochet had the power and the guns, but these photographers had the camera—the people’s weapon. They lived dangerously and they lived to tell. This is their story.
Distributor: Las Películas del Pez peliculasdelpez@yahoo.com
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Alejandro Landes, Argentina, 2007, 94m, video, doc
In Spanish and Quechua with English subtitles
Cocalero is a film about controversial Bolivian president Evo Morales and his rise to prominence. The story follows the presidential campaign of Morales as he moves from union meetings in the Andes and Amazon to formal fundraising dinners and mass rallies in cities. The political rise of Morales, an outspoken critic of the United States whose political power base is in the coca-growing areas of central Bolivia, dates to his work with farmers resisting a coca eradication drive prompted by the US-backed war on drugs. In 2005 Morales, of Aymara Indian heritage, was elected as Bolivia’s first-ever indigenous president, winning the election by the largest majority in the country’s history. *Nominee, Grand Jury Prize, World Cinema, Sundance Film Festival 2007
Film’s website: www.cocalerofilm.com
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Annie Sundberg, Ricki Stern, 2006, USA/Chad, 85m, video, doc
Unwilling to accept a desk job but desirous of “serving his country,” Marine Captain Brian Steidle quits his job with the US Marine Corps and accepts a six-month post with the African Union as an unarmed military observer in the western Darfur region of Sudan. Soon after arriving in Darfur, however, Steidle realizes that things are going terribly wrong in this huge, remote province bordering Chad. Unable to intervene, Steidle uses his camera to document what some, including the US Government, have called a genocide—and which without doubt has involved what international law calls “crimes against humanity and war crimes” on a massive scale—the conflict in Darfur that has claimed at least 200,000 lives and displaced 2.5 million people since early 2003. Filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern’s astonishing film allows us to witness Steidle’s transformation from soldier to observer to witness and, finally, to activist. Steidle’s journey becomes ours as the more than 1,000 photographs he took become evidence of a crisis that cannot be denied.
Film's Website: www.thedevilcameonhorseback.com
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Katy Chevigny, USA, 2007, 84m, video, doc
In English
Ambitious in scope and emotionally resonant, filmmaker Katy Chevigny’s (Deadline) latest film, Election Day, crisscrosses a large swathe of the US, from the plains of South Dakota to the muggy Florida panhandle, to tell the remarkable story of twelve Americans determined to make their votes, and the votes of others, count on election day 2004. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, a woman waits on line for hours in the rain with her infant child, only to discover her name is not on the voter list and she must travel to another polling place to vote. In New York City, a 50-year-old ex-felon is able to vote for the first time, but will his affidavit ballot be counted? Meanwhile, in Stockholm Wisconsin, community members register on the spot, vote with paper and pencil, and know each other by first name. With the next presidential election race already in full swing, Election Day is a call to action for all who value their right to vote. *Official Selection, South by Southwest Film Festival 2007, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival 2007
Film's Website: www.electiondaythemovie.com
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Eva Mulvad, Director; Anja Al-Erhayem, Co-Director, Denmark, 2006, 58m, video, doc
In English, Farsi and Pashto with English subtitles
Enemies of Happiness is a film about personal courage and conviction. It centers on Malalai Joya, who became one of Afghanistan’s most famous and infamous women in 2003 when she challenged the power of warlords in the country’s new government. Two years later, the 28-year-old ran in her country’s first democratic parliamentary election in over 30 years. A survivor of repeated assassination attempts, she campaigned surrounded by armed guards. How do you introduce democracy in a country where a majority of the people are illiterate, votes are for sale, and warlords use threats and bribes to control the ballots, and many women cannot leave their children to vote? As the film eloquently illustrates, it takes more than Western soldiers and diplomats. Joya is a controversial voice for a nation ruined by war, still ruled by fear, but desperate for a change for the better. * Winner of the 2007 HRWIFF Nestor Almendros Prize and the Sundance Film Festival, World Cinema Prize: Documentary
Distributor's website: www.wmm.com
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Daniel B. Gold, Judith Helfand, USA, 2006, 100m, video, doc
In English
In their signature comedically insightful style, veteran filmmakers Daniel Gold and Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl) weave an absorbing, character-driven, behind-the-scenes tale about the world’s ‘big problem’: global warming. In this new self-described “toxic comedy,’ Everything’s Cool, they chronicle the struggle between two groups of global warming messengers: the "good guys"—which include a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who repeatedly tries to retire but can't; the Weather Channel's first climatologist with a "global-warming beat" who must pack her Ph.D. into 30-second sound bites—and the "bad guys," mostly industry-sponsored hacks who have until now derailed media and public attention and paralyzed the nation with their manufactured doubt. As much about messaging as it is about the messengers, as much about human nature as it is about humans' impact on nature, filmmakers’ Gold and Helfand explore what it will take to move the US from laggard nation to world leader on global warming. *Nominee, Grand Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2007
Film’s website: www.everythingscool.org
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Shimon Dotan, Israel, 2006, 89m, video, doc
In Hebrew, English and Arabic with English subtitles
About nine thousand Palestinians are imprisoned in Israeli jails on "security" charges. For most Israelis they are assassins and criminals. For most Palestinians they are heroes and freedom fighters. Shot inside the Ber Sheba, Ashkelon, Hadarim, and Megiddo prisons, Hot House is a unique, probing documentary-feature that explores the emergence of a Palestinian national leadership within Israeli prisons. The film offers a rare look at the experiences, motivations, and mindsets of a number of key inmates, men and women, from Fatah and Hamas, serving multiple life sentences and the remarkable degree to which they influence the political process in the outside world. Hot House provides a unique opportunity to observe events of historic proportions at their nascent beginnings while shattering the two-dimensional stereotypes and the often polarizing commentary presented by the mainstream media on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. *Winner of the Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival 2007.
Distributor's Website: www.frif.com
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Miroslaw Dembinski, Poland/Belarus, 2006, 51m, video, doc
In Polish and Belarusian with English subtitles
A Lesson of Belarusian is about young activists who never give up believing that Belarus will one day be free. Franek Viacorka studies at an elite school established by his father to promote the Belarusian language. However, the school has been banned and operating underground since 2003, a victim of the anti-democratic rule of President Alexander Lukashenko. Franek and his classmates are both passionate and thoughtful, expressing their critical attitude to the government by issuing an underground newspaper, recording music with activist lyrics, and organizing an opposition concert. Despite the imprisonment of Franek’s father and the constant threat of their own arrest, they are undeterred. In the March 2006 presidential election, they support the democratic opposition candidate in a mass demonstration in Minsk’s main square. While the candidate is powerless to combat Lukashenko’s corruption and use of riot police, Franek and his classmates realize that fearlessness is a victory in itself.
Distributor's Website: www.studioeverest.pl
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Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Nelson Walker III, Directors; Louis Abelman and Lynn True, Co-Directors, Democratic Republic of Congo/USA, 2007, 72m, video, doc
In Swahili, French and English with English subtitles
The agonies of war-torn Africa are deeply etched in the bodies of women. In eastern Congo, vying militias, armies, and bandits use rape as a weapon of terror. Recently engaged to a young man from her village, 20-year-old Lumo Sinai can’t wait to have children and start a family. But when she crosses paths with marauding soldiers who brutally attack her, she is left with a fistula— a condition that renders her incontinent and threatens her ability to give birth. Rejected by her fiancé and cast aside by her family, Lumo finds her way to the one place that may save her, a hospital for rape survivors. Buoyed by the love of the hospital staff, including a formidable team of wise women known to all as “the Mamas,” Lumo and her friends keep alive the hope of one day resuming their former lives, thanks to an operation that can restore them fully to health. A feisty young woman with a red comb perpetually jutting from her hair, Lumo faces the challenge of recovery with remarkable courage. As she and her friends recover from surgery, they pass the days by gossiping and sharing their dreams of one day finding love. But when it looks like her operation may have failed, Lumo’s faith is thrown entirely into question. On this uncertain road to recovery, Lumo proves that the solidarity of women can bind even the most irreparable of wounds.
Film's website: www.gomafilmproject.org
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Lynn Hershman Leeson, USA, 2007, 76m, video, doc
In English
Strange Culture chronicles the breathtaking miscarriage of justice that has befallen Steve Kurtz, a college professor, artist, and member of the politically charged art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble. In 2004 as Kurtz was preparing an interactive exhibition for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art that would have allowed participants to test food labeled “organic” for the presence of genetically modified organisms, his wife tragically died from heart failure. Distraught, Kurtz called 911, but when the police arrived and saw the scientific materials for the exhibition-all legally purchased-they called the FBI. Dozens of agents in haz-mat suits searched his home, impounded his computers, books, cat, and even his wife's body, and held Kurtz as a suspected bio-terrorist. Three years later, he faces up to 20 years in prison on mail and wire fraud charges relating to his acquisition of materials for the art exhibit. Filmmaker Lynn Hershman Leeson creatively enlists actors Thomas Jay Ryan, Tilda Swinton, Josh Kornbluth, and Peter Coyote to dramatize part of the story that Kurtz cannot legally discuss, while skillfully interweaving news footage, animation, testimonials, and footage of Kurtz himself-creating a fascinating, highly provocative documentary about post-9/11 paranoia and the risks artists face when their work questions government policies. *Official Selection, Berlin International Film Festival 2007
Film's website: www.strangeculture.net
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Dan Ollman, Nigeria/US, 2007, 65m, video, doc
In English and Yoruba with English subtitles
Focusing on the legendary African singer and activist Fela Anikulapo Kuti and his son Femi, Suffering and Smiling depicts the impact of their politically charged music. Following Nigeria’s independence in 1960, Fela used his songs to speak out against the country’s corrupt leaders. Since independence the military and political elite have enriched themselves by allowing Nigeria’s oil and natural resources to be stripped by multinational corporations with little benefit to ordinary Nigerians. Fela gave voice to Nigeria’s disenfranchised underclass and sang of a free and united Africa. Upon his death in 1997, Femi has continued his father’s legacy. Equally passionate and charismatic, he sings about the dire situation in his country, asks why the world’s most resource-rich continent has the poorest people, and struggles to maintain a vision of better days ahead for the common people of Nigeria.
Film's website: www.newafricashrine.com
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Laura Dunn, USA, 2007, 93m, video, doc
In English
Laura Dunn’s beautifully crafted documentary, (Executive Producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford), The Unforeseen, follows the career of Gary Bradley, an ambitious west Texas farm boy who went to Austin and became one of the state’s most powerful real estate developers, capitalizing on Austin’s boomtown growth beginning in the 1970s. At the peak of his powers, Bradley transformed 4000 acres of pristine Hill Country into one of the state's largest and fastest-selling subdivisions. When the development threatened a local treasure, “Barton Springs”—a natural spring-fed swimming hole—the community fought back and the subdivision became a lightning rod for environmental activism of the kind that flourished under Governor Ann Richards. However, when George W. Bush became governor, development laws change, and the water quality at Barton Springs, as well as the surrounding landscape of Austin, was irreversibly altered. The Unforeseen is a powerful meditation on the destruction of the natural world and the American Dream as it falls victim to the cannibalizing forces of unchecked development. It is an intricate tale of personal hopes, victories, and failures, and debates over land, economics, property rights, and the public good.
Film's website: www.theunforeseenfilm.com
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Sam Lawlor and Lindsay Pollock, Romania/UK, 2007, 75m, video, doc
In Romanian and English with English subtitles
We’ll Never Meet Childhood Again tells the remarkable, uplifting story of a courageous group of Romanian foster parents who adopted the children referred to as “Ceaucescu’s babies”— infants infected with HIV in Romanian hospitals and orphanages during the late 1980s, then left there to die. Health Aid Romania (a nongovernmental organization) established family homes to care for these children, unaware that over time the caregivers would become parents to those children who survived this turbulent period. The film charts these makeshift families’ extraordinary experiences over almost 17 years—through striking oral testimony, candid home video, and revealing observational sequences. We’ll Never Meet Childhood Again beautifully illuminates notions of family, parenthood, death and love—and reveals the societal hurdles and concerns of the children—now adolescents—as they arrive at the time when every child must mature, form their own identity and sexuality, outgrow their family, and aspire to create their own life and, possibly, their own family.
Filmmaker's Website: www.lawlor-pollock.com
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Steven Okazaki, USA, 2007, 86m, video, doc
In English, Japanese and Korean with English subtitles
As global tensions rise, the unthinkable now seems possible. The threat that nuclear “weapons of mass destruction” will be used is more real and more frightening than at any time since the height of the Cold War, perhaps since 1945. White Light/Black Rain, an extraordinary new film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Okazaki, puts a human face on what we’re really talking about. Even after 60 years, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to inspire argument, denial, and myth. Surprisingly, most people know very little about what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, two days that changed the world. Featuring unforgettable interviews with fourteen atomic bomb survivors, many of whom have never spoken publicly before, and four Americans intimately involved in the bombings, the film reveals both unimaginable suffering and extraordinary human resilience. These indelible accounts are illustrated with survivor paintings and drawings, and historical footage and photographs, including newly uncovered material. White Light/Black Rain stands as a powerful warning to today’s world—which harbors nuclear weapons with the firepower of 400,000 Hiroshimas—that we cannot afford to forget what happened on those two days in 1945.
Filmmaker's website: www.farfilm.com
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In addition to this year's officially booked Traveling Festival titles, we recommend the following films that can be contacted independently using the links below and/or the emails on our site. They are:
If you have questions about these titles or would like further information on them, please contact Andrea Holley at holleya@hrw.org.
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