Title: Maxed Out
Director: James D. Scurlock
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 90 min.
About the Documentary:
Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of "preferred customer" and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us."
Title: Divine Intervention
Director: Elia Suleiman
Year: 2002
Language: English, Arabic and Hebrew w English subtitles
Duration: 96 min.
About the Documentary:
In this darkly comic masterpiece, Palestinian director Elia Suleiman utilizes irreverence, wit, mysticism and insight to craft an intense, hallucinogenic and extremely adept exploration of the dreams and nightmares of Palestinians and Israelis living in uncertain times.
Subtitled, "A Chronicle of Love and Pain," Divine Intervention follows ES, a character played by and clearly based upon the filmmaker himself. ES is burdened with a sick father, a stalled screenplay and an unrequited love affair with a beautiful Palestinian woman (Manal Khader) living in Ramallah. An Israeli checkpoint on the Nazareth-Ramallah road forces the couple to rendezvous in an adjacent parking lot. Their relationship and the absurd situations around them serve as metaphors for the lunacy of larger cultural problems. The result is a palpable rage that is both personal and political.
Title: Negroes with Guns
Director: Sandra Dickson and Churchill Roberts
Year: 2004
Language: English
Duration: 67 min.
About the Documentary:
The story of a forgotten civil rights figure who dared to advocate armed resistance to the violence of the Jim Crow South. The Documentary Institute team of filmmakers, Sandra Dickson, Churchill Roberts, Cindy Hill and Cara Pilson, who previously collaborated on the critically acclaimed FREEDOM NEVER DIES: THE LEGACY OF HARRY T. MOORE, announced completion of their latest documentary, NEGROES WITH GUNS: ROB WILLIAMS AND BLACK POWER. Featuring a score by Terence Blanchard, NEGROES WITH GUNS combines modern-day interviews with rare archival news footage to tell the story of Rob Williams, the forefather of the Black Power movement and a complex man who played a pivotal role in the struggle for respect, dignity and equality for all Americans. Williams, dubbed the “violent crusader” by some, intended his philosophy of armed self-defense to work in concert with non-violent resistance; instead, he became the catalyst for what has been called a national showdown between these two opposing philosophies of the civil rights movement. In August 1961, Freedom Riders came to Monroe, North Carolina—Williams’ hometown—to assist Williams in his civil rights struggle and demonstrate that passive resistance rather than armed self-defense was the superior tactic in the civil rights struggle. But on August 27th all hell broke loose. By the end of the day, Freedom Riders had been bloodied, beaten, and jailed and Rob Williams was on the run from the FBI.
NEGROES WITH GUNS is not only an incisive look at a truly fascinating man but also a thought-provoking examination of our notions of patriotism and the acceptable limits of dissent.
Title: America: Freedom to Fascism
Director: Aaron Russo
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 95 min.
About the Documentary:
Determined to find the law that requires American citizens to pay income tax, producer Aaron Russo ("The Rose," "Trading Places") set out on a journey to find the evidence. This film which is neither left, nor right-wing is a startling examination of government. It exposes the systematic erosion of civil liberties in America since 1913 when the Federal Reserve system was fraudulently created. Through interviews with U.S. Congressmen, a former IRS Commissioner, former IRS and FBI agents and tax attorneys and authors, Russo connects the dots between money creation, federal income tax, and the national identity card which becomes law in May 2008. This ID card will use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips which are essentially homing devices used to track people. This film shows in great detail and undeniable facts that America is moving headlong into a fascist police state. Wake up!
Title: Commune
Director: Jonathan Berman
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 78 min.
About the Documentary:
In 1968, two hippies hiking near Mt. Shasta in Northern California stumbled across an unlikely property for sale: an abandoned goldmine and surrounding land, 300 acres for $22,000. Fueled by contributions from the Doors, the Monkees, Frank Zappa and others, they bought the property and named it Black Bear Ranch. It quickly became the prototypical 1960s commune, with the motto “Free Land for Free People.”
Utopian communities have always been a part of the United States, but in the 60’s and 70’s their audacious goal was to reshape the world with free love and common property – creating a revolutionary movement that would spread to the rest of society. But utopia is different for each person, and these experiments often brought strife, jealousy and sometimes even endangered lives.
Featuring interviews with several Black Bear alumni, including actor/activist Peter Coyote, alongside a wealth of photographs and home movies, this acclaimed documentary offers a candid look into the joys and difficulties of free love, nude farming, survival in the wilderness, multiple-parent childrearing and other fascinating aspects of communal living.
Title: In-Laws and Outlaws
Director: Drew Emery
Year: 2005
Language: English
Duration: 97 min.
About the Documentary:
In a collaboration with EQUALITY TOLEDO http://www.equalitytoledo.org/main.htm we will be screening "In-laws and Outlaws" What do you get when you fall in love? Inlaws & Outlaws cleverly weaves together the true stories of couples and singles both gay and straight and all into a collective narrative that is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking. At the top of the film, you meet real people one on one. You dont know whos gay or straight or whos with whom. As their stories unfold and stereotypes fall by the wayside, you wont care because youll be rooting for everybody. With candor, good humor, great music and real heart, Inlaws & Outlaws gets past all the rhetoric to explore what we all have in common. We love. We lose. We all want to belong. And were all making this up as we go along.
Title: Anarchism in America
Director: Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 75 min.
About the Documentary:
Emmy and Guggenheim Award-winning filmmakers, Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher take a road trip to map anarchism as a distinctly American tradition, interviewing a diverse cast of characters: from "ordinary" truckers and farmers to famous anarchists like Kenneth Rexroth, Ursula LeGuin, and Murray Bookchin.The film touches quite a few bases. It presents newsreel footage of key figures in the history of American anarchism, among them Sacco and Vanzetti, and Emma Goldman. ("What is your opinion of Italy?" a reporter asks her. "Beautiful country minus Mussolini," she snaps in reply.) And there are contemporary interviews with figures including Mollie Steimer, Emma Goldman's girlhood friend, and the poet Kenneth Rexroth, who reads his Sacco and Vanzetti poem. There is also some discussion of what the film makers take to be anarchism's practical applications, such as food co-ops and town meetings.
Karl Hess, formerly a Newsweek writer and speechwriter for Barry Goldwater, discusses his evolution from Republican to anarchist. And the writer and teacher Murray Bookchin gives an exceptionally articulate description of his own ideological development.
Title: Occupation: Dreamland (This is Falluja. Be careful of Falluja.)
Director: Garrett Scott and Ian Olds
Year: 2005
Language: English
Duration:
About the Documentary:
Occupation: Dreamland is an unflinchingly candid and darkly humorous portrait of a squad of American soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraqi city of Falluja during the winter of 2004. The film chronicles the daily life of young soldiers on patrol in an environment of low-intensity conflict creeping steadily towards catastrophe. Occupation: Dreamland documents the city's waning stability before the final Marine assaults of 2004. www.occupationdreamland.com
Title: The Tipping Point: Changing Perceptions of the U.S. Israel Relationship
Director: Council for the National Interest Foundation
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration:
About the Documentary:
The Tipping Point: Changing Perceptions of the U.S. Israel Relationship is a debate on the influence of the Israel Lobby on U.S. foreign policy between Dennis Ross, Tony Judt, Rashid Khalidi, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Martin Indyk, and John Mearsheimer. Held at Cooper Union in New York City by the London Review of Books on September 28,2006, the debate featured advocates for the current U.S. relationship with Israel, including former Middle East Advisers Ross and Indyk and former Israeli Foreign Minister Ben-Ami, as well as critics such as Professors Mearsheimer, Khalidi, and Judt.
Title: August in the Empire State
Director: Gabriel Rhodes and Keefe Murren
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration:
About the Documentary:
August in the Empire State is a film about division and defiance at the 2004 Republican National Convention. Following three outspoken individuals, the film captures the climate of conflict confusion and confrontation that gripped New York City in the days leading up to the GOP convention. www.rncfilmproject.com/
Title: The Death of A prophet (Malcolm x)
Director: Woody King Jr.
Year:
Language: English
Duration: 62 Minutes
About the Documentary:
This film follows the events in the final twenty four hours of the life of conterovesial religious and political leader Malcolm x. Fanatics tried to firebomb his home. They tried to murder him while he slept. Why was he so hated? Where were the police on the day of his assassination? How did his killers manage to escape?
Title: Born into Brothels
Director: Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski
Year: 2005
Language: English
Duration: 1 hr 23 minutes
About the Documentary:
A tribute to the resiliency of childhood and the restorative power of art, Born into Brothels is a portrait of several unforgettable children who live in Calcutta's red light district, where their mothers work as prostitutes. Spurred by the kids' fascination with her camera, Zana Briski, a New York- based photographer living in the brothels and documenting life there, decides to teach them photography. www.bornintobrothels.com
Title: Poison Dust
Director: Sue Harris and Peoples Video Network
Year: 2005
Language: English
Duration: 1hr and 39 minutes
About the Documentary:
Poison Dust tells the story of young soldiers who thought they came home safely from the war, but didn't. Of a veteran's young daughter whose birth defects is strikingly similar to birth defects suffered by many Iraqi children. Of thousands of young vets who are suffering from the symptoms of uranium poisoning, and the thousands more who are likely to find themselves with these ailments in the years to come.
Title: What we want, what we believe
Director: The Roz payne archives and Newsreel films
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 720 minutes
About the Documentary:
What we want, what we believe, the Black Panther party library. These materials-over 12 hr- are crucial to our continuing understanding of the Black Panther Party and their legacy.
Title: Anarchism in America
Director: Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher
Year: 2006
Language: English, Yiddish with English subtitles
Duration: 55 minutes
About the Documentary:
Anarchism in America, filmmakers Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher took a rambling cross-country trip. Their mission was to search out evidence of anarchist activity in communities from rural Atkins Bay, Maine to cosmopolitan San Francisco.
Title: Darfur Diaries
Director: Aisha Bain, Jen Marlowe and Adam Shapiro
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 57 minutes
About the Documentary:
This timely documentary examines the genocide in Darfur that continues today. They set out with the goal of providing a platform for the people of Darfur to speak for themselves about their experiences, their fears, and their hopes for the future.
Title: Freedom Fries
Director: Carl Christman
Year: 2006
Language: English
Duration: 50 minutes
About the Documentary:
Freedom Fries takes a whimsical look at patriotism and consumerism in America. It explores the absurdity of many of the symbolic gestures that have recently pervaded our culture, such as the wasting of perfectly good French Wine and the waving of Chinese-made America flags.
Title: "Koyaanisqatsi" Life out of balance
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Year: 1983
Language: English
Duration: 1 hour 27 min.
About the Documentary:
Koyaanisqatsi contrasts the tranquil beauty of nature with the frenzied hum of contemporary urban society. Uniting breathtaking imagery with a hauntingly evocative, award-winning score, it is "original and fascinating" (People) – "one of the greatest films of all time" (Uncut).
Title: "Powaqqatsi" Life in transformation
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Year: 1988
Language: English
Duration: 1 hour 37 min.
About the Documentary:
Bold, haunting and epic in scale, this extraordinary film calls into question everything we think we know about contemporary society. By juxtaposing images of ancient cultures with those of modern life, Powaqqastsi masterfully portrays the human cost of progress.
Title: War Game
Director: Dave Unwin
Year: 2002
Language: English
Duration: 30 minutes
About the Documentary:
One Christmas day, in the trenches of World War One, as if by a miracle a soccer match is started between the German and English soldiers. Based on a true event. War game is the award-winning story of three English boys who leave their idyllic country lives to fight in the Great War.
Title: "SNOG" Adventures in capitalism
Director:
Year: 2003
Language: English
Duration:
About the Documentary:
Snog perform their inimitable blend of ballads, melodies and tuneful tenderness on this collection of videos. Tracks include "Late 20th Century Boy," "Born To Be Mild," "Make The Little Flowers Grow," and more.
Title: Palestine for Beginners
Director: Palestine information project
Year: 2004
Language: English
Duration: 72 Minutes
About the Documentary:
www.palestineinformation.org
Title: The Iron Wall
Director: Mohammed Alatar
Year: 2006
Language: English and Arabic with subtitles
Duration: 58 Minutes
About the Documentary:
Following the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the aim of the settlement movement became clear; to creat facts on the ground and make the creation of a Palestinian state impossible. More than 200 settlements and outposts have been built so far, in violation of the international law and at the expense of a contiguous and viable Palestine entity. www.theironwall.ps/
Title: Route 181
Directors: Eyal Sivan, Michel Khleifi
Year: 2004
Language: Arabic and Hebrew (English Subtitles)
Duration: 270 minutes
About the Documentary:
In the summer of 2002, for two months, a Palestinian (Khleifi) and Israeli (Sivan) director traveled together from the south to the north of their country of birth, tracing their trajectory on a map and calling it Route 181. This virtual line follows the borders outlined in Resolution 181, which was adopted by the United Nations on November 29th 1947 to partition Palestine into two states. Their journey carries them to the heart of the many physical and social fault lines that today divide and define the peoples of this land.
Title: Writers on the Borders
Directors: Samir Abdullah, Jose Reynes
Year: 2004
Language: Arabic, French and Hebrew (English Subtitles)
Duration: 80 minutes
About the Documentary:
A delegation of internationally-renowned writers and intellectuals travel to Palestine - in part as representatives of the International Parliament of Writers, in part to participate in a cultural event in honour of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, but also to see first-hand life under Israeli military occupation.
The delegation includes Russell Banks (U.S., author of The Sweet Hereafter and Affliction), Bei Dao (exiled Chinese poet), Jose Saramago (Portuguese, Nobel Prize for Literature winner), and Wole Soyinka (Nigerian Nobel Prize for Literature winner).
Title: Close to Death
Director: Abdel Salam Shehadeh
Year: 1997
Language: Arabic (English Subtitles)
Duration: 26 minutes
About the Documentary:
A documentary film dealing with the impact of nearby Israeli settlements on the lives of the Palestinian families. A shocking film, illustrating the community’s continued suffering, post-Oslo, through the stories of three children- one killed, one kidnapped, one forced to walk every day through security areas in order to get to school
Title: Debris
Director: Abdel Salam Shehadeh
Year: 2002
Language: Arabic with English subtitiles
About the Documentary:
A Palestinian family’s land, once covered with olive trees and crops, has been bulldozed by Israeli forces. Debris is not simply the story of a farmer whose house is bulldozed and whose farm is destroyed. Debris is a fantasy… of dreams to fly far away in order to touch the sky, to break out of the despair of reality. Debris is the story of an entire generation who inherited humiliation and ignominy. It is a story of men crying…
Title: Rainbow
Director: Abdel Salam Shehadeh
Year: 2004
Language: Arabic (English Subtitles)
Duration: 40 minutes
About the Documentary:
The filmmaker is constantly facing experiences of horrific suffering and loss and yet struggling to find a sense of meaning or purpose on his side of the lens, he sets out to revisit friends, relatives, and - most painfully - those whose unfathomable personal losses he has documented from behind the camera. The film offers a rare glimpse of life after the cameras stop rolling, of the processes of healing and hurting that continue on both sides of the lens and as such it is a profound and moving study of the role of the news reporter.
Title: Gaza Strip
Director: James Longley
Year: 2002
Language: Arabic and French (English subtitles)
Duration: 74 minutes
About the Documentary:
"I wanted to make a film that would convey not only the hard facts of life inside the Gaza Strip, but also the emotions, sensations and driving desires of the people I filmed. I made the film to fill a gap in our knowledge and a blind spot in our thinking about this conflict, but more than anything this film is an attempt to record the humanity of the people I met there, the thing that is impossible to tell in words." (Director – James Longley)
Title: Jenin, Jenin
Director: Muhammad Bakri.
Year: 2002
Language: Arabic with English subtitles
About the Documentary:
A few days after the April 2001 invasion of the Jenin refugee camp by the Israeli military, a camera crew shoots at the site: it captures the camp at a time when the people still have not fully understood what happened. The film is not an informational report about these events, but a description of the traces left by the events that marked the souls of the inhabitants. It depicts resistance, heroism and victory despite disasters, despite victims, and despite the destruction of lives. (2003 Locarno Film Festival)
Title: Divine Intervention
Director: Elia Suleiman
Year: 2002
Language: Arabic with English subtitle
Duration: 92min.
About the Documentary:
In Nazareth, under a guise of normalcy, the town embraces folly. The Palestinian people, unable to act on their feelings of oppression, take out their hostilities on one another.
A love story takes place between two Palestinians: a man living in Jerusalem and a woman living in Ramallah. The man shifts between his ailing father and his love life, trying to keep both alive. Because of the political situation, the woman's freedom of movement ends at the Israeli army checkpoint between the two cities. Barred from crossing, the lovers' intimate encounters take place on a deserted lot right beside the checkpoint. The lovers are unable to exempt reality from occupation. They are unable to preserve their intimacy in the face of a siege. A complicity of solemn desire begins to generate violent repercussions and, against the odds, their angry hearts counter-attack with spasms of spectacular fantasy.
Title: Paradise Now
Director: Hany Abu-Assad,
Year: 2005
Language: Arabic with English subtitle
Duration: 90 Min. Oscar nominations. Another 2 wins & 5 nominations.
About the Documentary:
Paradise Now is the story of two Palestinian childhood friends who have been recruited for a major operation in Tel Aviv. It centers on what is presumably their final day on earth. They cannot utter a word of their plans to their families. The following day, the two are sent to the border. The bombs have been attached to their bodies in such a way as to make them completely hidden from view. However, the operation does not go according to plan and the two friends lose sight of each other, leaving each one up to their own fate, while struggling with their convictions.
