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This film is a powerful American documentary about the 10,000 men of who are flown in yearly to Florida, to do work that no American will do: cutting sugar cane. H-2 Worker, which won a prize for “Best Documentary” at the Sundance Film Festival, marks the debut of 28-year-old Stephanie Black, who, with a crew of mostly women, filmed clandestinely a brutal season and amplified this footage with actual texts of the men’s personal letters and amazing archival footage.
(introduction by director)
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Mon March 27: 1:30
Introduction by director
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In April 1983, LIFE Magazine staff writer Cheryl McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark went to Seattle, Washington, to research an article on runaway children. Published in the magazine’s July 1983 issue, “Streets of the Lost” explored the environment of these street dwellers. The article was highly acclaimed, winning for photographer Mark a Robert F. Kennedy Award and the Canyon Photo Essayist Award; but McCall and Mark felt the only way to communicate the full scope of what they found in these young lives was through the medium of film. Moving quickly, before their potential subjects drifted to other cities, were jailed or killed, McCall and Mark returned to Seattle in mid-August 1983. With them was British director and cinematographer Martin Bell, who is also Mark’s husband. McCall, Mark and Bell scouted locations and renewed friendships with the runaways of Pike Street. Filming began on Labor Day and lasted through Halloween, a two-month shoot that required 14-hour days, talking with the children and waiting for something to happen....
followed by
In 2005 Bell and Mark, who had kept in touch with Erin (Tiny) all these years, went back to film her life. Today she is married and the mother of nine kids. Erin incorporates some footage of Erin and her family from 1983, 1990 and 2004. What emerges is a surprising second act.
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Mon March 27: 3:15
Introduction by Bell & Mark
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An impassioned debate about a miraculous surgical procedure affects three generations of the Artinian family in this powerful, emotionally searing exploration of the society and culture of the Deaf. Two brothers, one who hears and one who is deaf, and their wives struggle to decide if their children should receive cochlear implants. The hearing parents are convinced it will enable their son to hear and learn to speak; the other parents believe the operation to be a cruel procedure that will destroy American Sign Language and an established culture for the Deaf. In cinema verité style, filmmakers Josh Aronson and Roger Weisberg thoughtfully capture the anguished, opposing views of the grandparents and parents as well as the vibrant and affectionate children whose futures are of concern to everyone in this complex family. A film not to be missed.
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Tue March 28: 1
Introduction by director
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A portrait of Tammy Faye Bakker — narrated by drag queen RuPaul, featuring chapter headings announced by a pair of hand-puppets, is much more than a camp extravaganza. Directors Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato review Tammy Faye’s tragic and sometimes triumphant life, providing insight and perspective on a woman whose name usually evokes no more than an image of smeared mascara. This highly entertaining and revealing chronical of one of our most controversial public figures gives us Tammy Faye’s take on Jerry Falwell and the scandal that polarized Christians and sent her husband Jim to prison. Whatever one thinks of her views and her mission, Tammy Faye is surely a fascinating subject for this expertly crafted film.
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Tue March 28: 3
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Some of the most exciting films are those that appear the simplest, and so it is with Goshogaoka, a mesmerizing work that refreshes the eye and ear as it liberates the mind. Not far outside Tokyo, there is Goshogaoka, a junior high school with a girl’s basketball team. Sharon Lockhart, an American visual artist, attended practice and recorded dead-on some of the routines that constitute the workout. Goshogaoka may be read as pure ethnography, detached and calibrated, but that would be missing just about everything in this most pleasurable film. Although there is no narrative, there is surprise, expectation, and even the creation of a new entity: out of the synchronous behavior of the adolescent girls comes the group. The film invites speculation on the notion of communal achievement, the melancholy of transience, and the beautiful sound of footfalls.
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Wed March 29: 1
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In 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys, all brutally murdered, were found in a shallow creek in West Memphis, Arkansas. A surprise confession implicated two teenagers known for their interest in the occult and their penchant for black clothes and heavy metal music. With remarkable access to the suspects, their families and the victims’ families, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Brothers Keeper) have created a richly detailed, intimate study of these emotionally charged trials as well as of that dark corner of contemporary American life in which “difference” carries its own sentence.
Wed March 29: 2:30 (introduction by directors) In 1993, the bodies of three eight-year-old boys, all brutally murdered, were found in a shallow creek in West Memphis, Arkansas. A surprise confession implicated two teenagers known for their interest in the occult and their penchant for black clothes and heavy metal music. With remarkable access to the suspects, their families and the victims’ families, filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (Brothers Keeper) have created a richly detailed, intimate study of these emotionally charged trials as well as of that dark corner of contemporary American life in which “difference” carries its own sentence.
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Wed March 29: 2:30
introduction by directors
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With irrepressible delight, David Hockney unravels a 17th-century Chinese scroll and reveals how a vivid story can emerge through the art of altered perspective and selective detail. Although not explicit, the film provides us with a deeper understanding of Hockney’s own work. A witty conception, beautifully rendered.
followed by
It is fitting that Sievernich’s touching documentary on John Huston’s last film The Dead transcends the genre of films on filmmaking. The power of Huston’s vision and personality and his sense of mortal irony are unmistakable, as is the affectionate respect of his final colleagues. An intelligent and loving souvenir.
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Thurs March 30: 1
Introduction by Philip Haas
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A nonfiction murder mystery in which the Chicana filmmaker, Lourdes Portillo, plays detective. Oscar, a favorite uncle, has been shot, and Portillo returns to her hometown in Mexico to discover what happened. But the devil has been very busy in Chihuahua and the more she learns the less she knows. Far from the simple man she remembered, Oscar, it turns out, had some volatile involvements, any one of which may have been lethal. Portillo, in investigating the life and times of Uncle Oscar, presents a fond melodrama of contemporary Mexico where the dead and living mingle and appearances count most.
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Thurs March 30: 3:30
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So here we are fifteen years later — a man (Charlie Clements) who came from a military family that had nothing but the highest military ideals has come full circle. From sitting in the cockpit flying aircrafts in Vietnam, he’s ended up with a backpack down in the jungle in El Salvador being bombed by the same airplanes he used to fly.
followed by
“I had no intention of creating a general portrait of all Germans, or of all German women, nor did I intend to explain the origins of the war or Naziism. The film began as a personal investigation of my mother’s life before and during the war, primarily from age 10 to 28... I wanted to stay close to her text and work within the confines of a single life... I restricted my found footage of Germany to that of Ulm, which I acquired on a trip in 1982. Even though nothing in the images distinguishes them as shots of Ulm, it was important for me to know that it was her hometown rather than just ‘images of war’... I understood that she was courages....” – Su Friedrich
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Fri March 31: 1
Introduction by the Su Friedrich
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Vincent Chin’s murderer is known, and to an extent has accepted responsibility — but that’s not the incisive point of this complex and ambitious documentary. The filmmakers, Tajima and Choy, chart the collision of two American dreams outside a topless bar one hot Detroit night in 1982, and describe the labyrinthine course that justice, susceptible to competing pressures, took over the next four years. Revealing interviews with the surviving principals are integrated not only with newsreel and archival footage but with some of Motown’s own sound. This independently made film places a single awful incident within the turbulent social network of an America so deep in change that even its citizens, fearful of unemployment and of other races, don’t understand what’s happening.
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Fri March 31: 3:15
Introduction by director
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