Category: Short | Double Feature Country: France Language: English Rating: PG Runtime: 29 min. Director: Thibault Le Texier Producer: Alice Beckmann Website:Thibault Le Texier Films
In 1914, an engineer sent away to reorganize a factory exchanges letters with his wife. As he tells her about his experiments in taylorism, she picks up bits and pieces of this method and to apply it to her daily tasks at home. While he gets disappointed by the Taylor system, his wife become a true domestic engineer.
End of the Road – How Money Became Worthless
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: Australia Language: English Rating: PG Runtime: 56 min. Director: Tim Delmastro Producer: Tim Delmastro Website:End Of The Road Film
Wall Street is being occupied. Europe is collapsing in on itself. Around the world, people are consumed by fear and anger, and one question is on everyone’s lips: Is the financial crisis over, or are we headed towards economic disaster?
In 2008 the world experienced one of the greatest financial turmoils in modern history. Markets around the world started crashing, stock prices plummeted, and major financial institutions, once thought to be invincible, started showing signs of collapse. Governments responded quickly, issuing massive bailouts and stimulus packages in an effort to keep the world economy afloat.
While we’re told that these drastic measures prevented a total collapse of our system, a growing sense of unease has spread throughout the population. In the world of finance, indeed in all facets of modern life, cracks have started to appear. What lies ahead as a result of these bold ‘money printing’ measures? Was the financial crisis solved, or were the problems merely ‘kicked down the road?’
Thursday: 10:00 pm – Rotary Center Saturday: 11:00 am – Rock County Historical Society Saturday: 1:30 pm – Cheese People/ Nikki’s Café
My Way Home
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: USA Language: English Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 57 min. Director: Joe Sacco Producer: Jennifer Plevin
Twenty-Three year old filmmaker Dao Chang is looking for answers. As a young Hmong-American Woman she yearns for information about her family’s past, her cultural identity, and the war that changed her destiny. But she can’t seem to find the answers she needs, at least not here, some eight-thousand miles from the place she was born.
After insurmountable road-blocks in communication prevent her from getting answers from her father, she turns to other members of her family and community, but she still needs more; she needs evidence of a life she can’t remember.
She must return to Laos- the country her family was forced to flee some twenty years ago so she can see it for herself. There she meets a long-lost aunt and discovers what her life might have been like if her family hadn’t escaped.
My Way Home was produced by docUWM, a documentary media center at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. The film was conceived, edited, and shot by four university students, including Chang, with guidance and support from executive producer Brad Lichtenstein (Almost Home), consulting producer Aaron Woolf (King Corn), supervising producer Jenny Plevin, and the Peck School of the Arts Film Department.
Old Growth
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: USA Language: English Rating: PG-15 Runtime: 32 min. Director: Charlotte Buck Producer: Charlotte Buck Website:Charlotte Buck
Phoebe has graduated from college in the past year, and is living alone in her family’s brownstone in Brooklyn. After the death of a her mother a couple years prior, her father, Charles, moved to a country house. Phoebe visits Charles for the weekend, hoping to have a ‘father-daughter’ weekend, and soon realizes he has other ideas in mind. While walking in the woods after a fight with Charles, she discovers a traveler kid living in the woods, and the two form a quiet friendship while learning about each other’s vastly different lives–and subtle similarities.
Friday: 4:00 pm – Hendricks Art Center Sunday: 5:00 pm – Rotary Center
S A L A Y
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: Sierra Leone Language: English Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 44 min. Director: Ali Kamanda Website:S A L A Y
Desperate to escape her circumstances of cultural pressures and poverty, eighteen year old Salay is intent on getting an education and carving out her own path in life, and is willing to risk leaving behind everything she knows in her father’s Sierra Leonean village.
A visit from her long lost uncle provides her with the opportunity she’s been waiting for when he offers her a place in his city home and access to a good education at his expense. With little knowledge of her uncle, a ‘businessman’ who deals in girl-child trafficking, a perfect opportunity may turn into a living nightmare. This is a coming-of-age story of one strong-willed teenager fighting for what she wants. But at what cost?
Suddenly, Zinat…
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: Iran Language: English Subtitles Rating: PG-17 Runtime: 21 min. Director: Navid Azad Producer: Navid Azad
http://vimeo.com/39862069
Simin, a 35 years old teacher, has been renting her child, Nafas, from a drug addicted woman, Nasibeh, for 4 years now. As Nasibeh’s husband is being released from life sentence, Nasibeh wants her child back. Now Simin confronts a reality that will change her life forever.
Thursday: 12:00 pm – Cheese People/ Nikki’s Café Friday: 11:00 am – Hendricks Art Center
Memoirs of a Scatterbrain
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: Netherlands Language: English Rating: PG Runtime: 52 min. Director: Jan Thijssen Producer: Jan Thijssen Website:Memoires Van Een Vergeetal
The Memoirs of a scatterbrain documentary about Eindhoven-born and bred artist René Daniëls (° 1950, Eindhoven – The Netherlands) tells the story of a career cut short in its prime and goes on to explore how Daniëls – in spite of his disability – manages to communicate through his recent paintings.
Heralded as a very promising young painter in the late 1970s, he went on to exhibit his work in Amsterdam, Paris and Kassel. His paintings were selling well and he was even being likened to Van Gogh and Mondriaan when on Christmas Eve of 1987, he was struck by a brain haemorrhage. Had the pressures of the international world of art literally become too much to bear?
Memoirs of a scatterbrain shows us Daniëls in his early years: hard at work in his workshop, shooting live footage in Eindhoven’s pop temple De Effenaar and out clubbing with the Sex Pistols in the wee hours. But the documentary also shows us how Daniëls is grappling with his disability, having lost the faculty of speech and his ability to communicate now confined to a thumbs up or a thumbs down.
We see Daniëls at his Eindhoven home where he arranges his memories in a little notebook, but also out to the haunts of yore he used to frequent: New York, Ghent and Paris.
Memoirs of a scatterbrain is a poignant portrait of a great artist who, in the wake of his brain haemorrhage and subsequent rehabilitation, has managed to find his own way to share his thoughts and images.
Left Bank Bookseller
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: USA Language: English Rating: PG Runtime: 24 min. Director: Lisa Reznik Producer: Lisa Reznik Website: Left Bank Bookseller Facebook:Left Bank Bookseller
Sylvia Beach, a woman from Princeton NJ established the first English-language bookshop in Paris, Shakespeare and Company, which became a popular meeting place for The Lost Generation and for experimental writers. When Sylvia Beach attended a Sunday afternoon party with partner Adrienne Monnier, she unexpectedly met Irish author James Joyce who, became a member of Beach’s lending library. Joyce confided his struggles to publish his novel Ulysses to Beach.
Thursday: 10:00 pm – Hendricks Art Center Friday: 11:00 am – Rotary Center Saturday: 6:30 pm – Katie’s Cup
Suffering Grasses
When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: USA Language: Arabic w/ English subtitles Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 52 min. Director: Iara Lee Producer: Al-Omariya Website: Suffering Grasses
Over a year later, with thousands dead and counting, the ongoing conflict in Syria has become a microcosm for the complicated politics of the region, and an unsavory reflection of the world at large. Against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, NATO’s toppling of Moammar Qaddafi in Libya, and the complicated politics of the region, this film seeks to explore the Syrian conflict through the humanity of the civilians who have been killed, abused, and displaced to the squalor of refugee camps.
In all such conflicts, large and small, it is civilians—women and children, families and whole communities—who suffer at the leisure of those in power. While focusing on the plight of those caught in the crossfire of the hegemons, we seek to unravel the conflict by exploring the motivations of its actors—the Ba’athist regime of Bashar al-Assad, the Free Syrian Army and other geopolitical players like the United States, Israel, Russia, China, Iran, Lebanon, Turkey, the Gulf countries… When elephants go to war, it is the grass that suffers. This is a film about the elephants, but made for the grasses.
The Fourth World
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: USA Language: English Rating: PG Runtime: 55 min. Director: Mark Volkers Producer: Mark Volkers Website: The Fourth World Facebook:The Fourth World
Jovelyn Alquino-Philippines. Jovelyn is a 16-year-old girl who wants to be a nurse. She lives under a freeway bridge above a canal that empties into the Bay of Manila. Jovelyn, her parents and her four little brothers dig in Manila’s garbage each day looking for items to recycle. She spends her mornings at the local school. She is the only one of the five children that her parents can afford to educate.
Felix Ochieng—Kenya. Felix, 16, lives in Mathare Valley, one of the dirtier and nastier slums in Nairobi. Felix divides his time between school and selling maize in the muddy alleyways of Mathare to help the family finances. A typical day for him starts at 4 a.m. and ends with him earning about $1.40 for a full day’s work.
Selma—Guatemala. Selma’s mother sold her into the sex trade when she was nine years old. Believe it or not, the story gets worse from there.
Tanya—Guatemala. Shot in the spinal cord when she was 15 years old, Tanya now spends her days in a wheelchair at a busy intersection in Guatemala City, begging so she and her ailing father can live. Each morning, her father pushes Tanya out of the La Limonada slum into the city so she can earn the money needed for her medicines, catheter, food and shelter. If beggars are a nameless, annoying “group” to you, Tanya’s story will make you think twice next time you see one.
Paul Collier: In 2010, Paul was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global honors. In his native England, he was appointed CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He is Professor of Economics at Oxford University and the director at the, Centre for the Study of African Economies. He is also author of several important books, including:
The Plundered Planet
Wars, Guns and Votes
The Bottom Billion
Soukenya Ndiaye Ba: Soukenya is a former member of the Senegal government and is currently the executive director of INAFI, the International Network of Alternative Financial Institutions. This organization “envisions a world where the poor are empowered and given the opportunity to enjoy sustainable livelihood through affordable alternative financial services and active participation in their own development. A world where even the poorest of the poor enjoy life with dignity, sufficient food and income security to meet basic needs including shelter, clothing, health care and education.”
Mike Davis: Mike is an American Marxist social commentator, urban theorist, historian and political activist who lives and works in Southern California, USA. Mike is a distinguished professor in the department of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside. Mike is the author of several books, including:
Planet of Slums
Dead Cities, And Other Tales
In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire
Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb
Having a dozen people on one crew is way too many people when you’re working in the close quarters of a slum, so on these trips, our college students broke up into small teams of about three per team. We laid the ground work months in advance for each team to spend about a week with a Christian NGO to help them develop promotional material to help advance their work.
While a few students worked with Volkers on The Fourth World, the rest worked on helping their NGO tell their story and promote their work among the poor. The end result is that not only are we able to produce The Fourth World, but we have also produced several smaller pro bono pieces to help those organizations that are doing excellent work among some of the world’s poorest people.
Traveling with college students to shoot in some of the most impoverished places on earth was a rare treat not just for the producer, but for the people we encountered on the way. With the world as small as it is, a 20-year-old American can very quickly find common ground with a 20-year-old Kenyan or Guatemalan or Indian or whatever the country may be. It was a two-way street as one challenged the other to see things in new ways, to respond to one another in new ways. Seeing the Fourth World through fresh eyes was a privilege.
Friday: 1:30 pm – Rotary Center Saturday: 11:00 am – Hendricks Art Center
50 Year Old Freshman – Suzanne Heim-Bowen
Category: Documentary Country: USA Language: English Rating: G Runtime: 54 min. Director: Deborah J. McDonald Producer: Deborah J. McDonald
“A 50 year old Masters Hall of Fame swimmer is recruited by perrenial college swimming powerhouse, Diablo Valley College, and joins their swim team.
This multi award winning documentary captures that record-smashing season and the preceeding 30 years of open water exploits, including the first of 3 successful crossings of the English Channel.
It explores the universal themes of hardwork and discipline and examines the attitude that remaining relevant and vibrant as one ages is a state of mind.”
What’s The Time Mr. Wolf?
Category: Documentary Country: United Kingdom Language: English Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 60 min. Director: Sal Anderson Producer: Geraldine East Website: What’s The Time Mr. Wolf?
A seizure is like a wolf, creeping up on you, ready to pounce’
The film gives voice to a group of people with epilepsy as they share their experiences at an acting workshop. From the anxiety and fear of living with the condition comes a film of joy and friendship. This feature length documentary takes the unconventional form of imagistic storytelling
Thursday: 12:00 pm – Rotary Center Sunday: 2:30 pm – Bagels & More
Much Ado About Knotting
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: India Language: English Rating: G Runtime: 55 min. Director: Geetika Narang Abbasi and Anandana Kapur Producer: Rajiv Mehrotra Website:
Born into a society obsessed with marriages, a young girl, a not-so-young man, and an NRI (Non-Resident Indian) couple are compelled by tradition to look for matches via classifieds, matchmaking bureaus and websites. Confronted with innumerable criteria that determine who is acceptable and who isn’t, they question themselves and their choices.
As they introspect, the melee of the matchmaking industry continues. At every turn, there are service providers who are ready to snoop, style and solicit potentials on their behalf. People are searching for the ideal one endlessly and the oft-heard question is – When are you getting married? ‘Much Ado About Knotting’ is a lighthearted chronicle of this very predicament that almost every Indian faces.
This Is My Sister
Category: Short | Double Feature Country: USA Language: English Rating: PG Runtime: 62 min. Director: Frank G. Caruso Producer: Website: Frank G. Caruso Facebook:This Is My Sister
‘This Is My Sister’ is a journey of Love, Strength and Commitment, all taught by example, by Earl & Marion Fischer to their three daughters.
In 1957, when nearly all babies born with developmental disabilities were institutionalized, Earl & Marion said, ‘No, not Mary,’ even as the doctors said Mary would not even know their name or may even harm their family. The sisters take Earl & Marion’s example of what unconditional love is, redefining it evermore.
‘This Is My Sister’ is a rare, life-affirming journey from those who have been in the shadows, doing the hard work of everyday living. They are the eternal flame of dignity and grace. They ask for nothing and give everything without pause.
Old Growth
