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MARCH
24,
2009
SUGAR
An
interview with RYAN
FLECK the writer / director of SUGAR — the
story of Miguel Santos, a.k.a. Sugar, a Dominican pitcher from San
Pedro De Macorís, struggling to make it to the big leagues
and pull himself and his family out of poverty. Playing professionally
at a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic, Miguel finally
gets his break at age 19 when he advances to the United States’ minor
league system; but when his play on the mound falters, he begins
to question the single-mindedness of his life’s ambition.
Filmmakers Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden burst onto the independent
film scene in 2006 with their feature debut Half Nelson, a sensitively
wrought drama that earned five Spirit Award nominations and brought
its star, Ryan Gosling, an Academy Award ® nomination for best
actor. A lifelong baseball fan, Fleck thought he knew everything
there was to know about the game. He knew that for decades the small
island nation of the Dominican Republic has been supplying American
teams with some of their most talented players: home run hero Sammy
Sosa, the Alou brothers, pitching greats Juan Marichal and Pedro
Martínez, and many more. But until a couple of years ago,
he had no idea why. When Fleck and his partner Anna Boden learned
that the Dominican Republic is home to training academies for every
major league team in America, they were immediately drawn to the
human side of the phenomenon.
MARCH
17,
2009
THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY
An
interview with DANIEL
JUNGE the Director of THEY
KILLED SISTER DOROTHY — a documentary on the killing of
73-year-old Catholic nun and activist Sister Dorothy Stang in February
2005, in the state of Pará (Brazilian rain forest), where
she, for 30 years, fought along with environmentalists and the underprivileged
local communities against the exploitation of powerful loggers and
landowners. Junge’s first documentary CHIEFS, in the Wynoning
Indian basketball team, won the best documentary at the 2002 Tribeca
Film Festival and broadcast nationally on PBS. His feature documentary
IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA, on Africa’s first elected female resident,
premiered at the Toronto Film Festival won two wards at the Banff
Television Festival, THEY KILLED SISTER DOROTHY premieres on HBO Wednesday
March 25th at 8 pm ET and PT.
FEBRUARY
24,
2009
MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH
An
interview with MORGAN
DEWS the director of MUST
READ AFTER MY DEATH. Dews was very close to his grandmother
Allis, but it wasnit until after her death in 2001 that he became
aware of an astounding archive shed amassed throughout the 1960s.
Filled with startlingly intimate and candid audio recordings detailing
her family's increasingly turbulent lives, the collection also contained
hundreds of silent home movies, photographs and written journals.
Using only these found materials, Dews has fashioned a searing family
portrait documentary that affords fly-on-the-wall access to one
family's struggles amid an America on the verge of dramatic transformation.
An accomplished writer, Dews has published numerous articles, stories
and poetry. Dews' short film, Elke's Visit, was an official selection
of the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. MUST READ AFTER MY DEATH is
his first feature.
FEBRUARY
17,
2009
MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY
An
interview with BARRY JENKINS the
director of MEDICINE FOR
MELANCHOLY — a love story about a one-night stand told through
two African-American twenty-something's dealing with issues of class,
identity, and the evolving conundrum of being a minority in a rapidly
gentrifying San Francisco — a city with the smallest black population
of any other major American City. When Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey
Heggins) stumble into the brightness of a sunny San Francisco day after
a hook-up, Jo' can't wait to escape the uncomfortable silence, but a shared
cab ride and a lost wallet soon bring a well intentioned Micah to her
front door. As caution turns to curiosity, the young couple sets off on
a romantic ramble through eclectic neighborhoods and their own lives as
they swap views on everything from the meaning of blackness to the letting
go of heartbreak. Jenkins is the writer-director of the short films MY
JOSEPHINE and LITTLE BROWN BOY. MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY is his first feature
film.
FEBRUARY
10,
2009
SUNDANCE DOCUMENTARIES
An
interview with RAHDI
TAYLOR Associate Director of the SUNDANCE
DOCUMENTARY FILM PROGRAM. Taylor administers the Sundance Documentary
Fund which nurtures courageous, independent artists worldwide who surface
true stories of human rights, social justice, freedom of expression, civil
liberties, and other pressing issues for global audiences. At the core
of the Sundance Documentary Program is the Sundance Documentary Fund,
which offers a continuum of support through the life of a project, from
research to production and post-production, through to distribution and
audience engagement. By supporting innovative nonfiction storytelling
by both emerging and established documentary filmmakers, the fund promotes
the diverse exchange of ideas by artists and audiences, and reflect Sundance
Institute’s celebration of documentary as an increasingly important
global art form and a critical cultural practice in the 21st century.
At right is a video of the trailor to Ondi Timoner's "Be Like Others," a
Sundance Documentary Film Program project. An award-winning filmmaker
herself, Taylor's works as a writer and director have screened nationally
and internationally and garnered her a nomination for the Rockefeller
Fellowship for Media Arts. On Tuesday February 10, Taylor will present
the film makers at a screening of WOMEN
IN SHROUD at The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
FEBRUARY
3,
2009
THE GARDEN
An
interview with SCOTT HAMILTON
KENNEDY the producer / director of THE
GARDEN, a documentary that focuses on the fourteen-acre community
garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles — the largest
of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the
devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created
a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing
their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now,
bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis. THE GARDEN follows
the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to
the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America,
from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak
out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers. Scott’s
debut documentary, OT: our town, was an official selection and won awards
at some of the top film festivals in the world. In it’s theatrical
release, OT garnered rave reviews, was selected for several ‘best
of’ lists (including Kenneth Turan of the LA Times), and was nominated
for Best Documentary by the IFP Independent Spirit Awards. THE GARDEN
is nominated for a 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
JANUARY
27,
2009
THE OWL AND THE SPARROW
An
interview with STEPHANE
GAUGER the director of THE
OWL AND THE SPARROW a film following the fictional story of
three Vietnamese individuals over a period of five days as they
meet in Vietnam. Owl and the Sparrow is a fairy tale about a little
girl who searches for a family she can call her own. Pham Thi Han,
who plays ten-year-old Thuy, describes her character as “down
on her luck.” So she runs away from her uncle’s bamboo
factory, where her work is never good enough. A flower girl on the
streets of Saigon, she discovers two other castaway hearts, in a
man who takes refuge as a zookeeper (Le The Lu) and a flight attendant
(Cat Ly) who’s looking for love. Gauger's guerrilla-style
camera and small-scale mode of production flows with the traffic
of the city, but always in step with little Thuy and all that drives
her dreams. Gauger was born in Saigon and raised in Orange County,
California. The Owl and the Sparrow won Best Narrative Feature at
the 2007 San Francisco Asian American International Film Festival.
JANUARY
20,
2009
CINEMA EYE HONORS
An
interview with AJ SCHNACK and THOM
POWERS , co-chairs of CINEMA
EYE HONORS — a new nonfiction filmmaking award, recognizing
the wide breadth of documentary filmaking and also specific crafts
such as cinematography and editing that are being created from within
the documentary community. IndiePix, the internet based distributor
of independent film is the presenting partner and sponsor for the
awards. SHNACK is
a filmmaker and writer (whose 2008 Sundance Video Blog is on the
right) based in Los Angeles. He has directed two nonfiction feature
films - Kurt Cobain About A Son(2007) which was nominated for a
2007 Independent Spirit Award and Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns)
(2003) Since 2005, Schnack has written the highly-regarded film
blog All These Wonderful
Things, which focuses primarily on issues related to nonfiction
filmmaking. POWERS is
the documentary programmer of the Toronto International Film Festival
where he has presented premieres by veteran directors such as Werner
Herzog, Jonathan Demme, David Guggenheim and Kevin Rafferty; as
well as the first feature length works of Adria Petty, Kristopher
Belman and Jeffrey Levy-Hinte. His most recent documentaries are
Loving & Cheating (Cinemax), about monogamy and infidelity;
and Guns & Mothers (PBS), about women on both sides of the gun
control debate.
JANUARY
13,
2009
THE ORDER OF MYTHS
An
interview with MARGARET
BROWN the writer and director of THE
ORDER OF MYTHS a film that escorts us into the parallel hearts
of Mobile, Alabama’s two racially segregated Mardi Gras carnivals.
Brown traces the exotic world of secret mystic societies and centuries-old
traditions and pageantry; diamond encrusted crowns; voluminous,
hand sewn gowns, surreal masks and enormous paper mache floats.
Against this backdrop, she uncovers a tangles web of historical
violence and power dynamics, elusive forces that keep this hallowed
tradition organized along enduring color lines. Brown is the producer
and director of the acclaimed documentary Be Here to Love Me: A
Film About Townes Van Zandt. Brown directed the music video “Our
Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” for Okkervil River.
JANUARY
6,
2009
THE BETRAYAL
An
interview with THAVISOUK
PHRASAVATH co-director of THE
BETRAYAL — the epic story of a family forced to emigrate
from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S.
during the Vietnam War. A Lao prophecy says, "A time will come
when the universe will break, piece by piece, the world will change
beyond what we know." That time came for the small country
of Laos with the clandestine involvement of the United States during
the Vietnam War. By 1973, three million tons of bombs had been dropped
on Laos in the fight to overcome the North Vietnamese, more than
the total used during both world wars. With the rise of a Communist
government in Laos, killings and arrests became common among those
affiliated with the former government and the Americans. Families
were torn apart-some finally emigrating to the U.S. In a collaboration
spanning more than 20 years, Phrasavath the
main subject of the film worked
with co-director Ellen Kuras. Phrasavath takes us through his youth,
his escape from persecution and arrest in Laos, his family's reunion
and their journey as immigrants to America, and the second war they
had to fight on the streets of New York City. Drawing on the techniques
of experimental film and the traditions of Laotian culture, The
Betrayal is a tale about a country, a family, and a young man who
discovers the power and resilience of the human spirit.
VISIT
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