Occupation: Dreamland is an unflinchingly candid portrait of a squad of American soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraq city of Fallujah during the winter of 2004. A collective study of the soldiers unfolds as they patrol an environment of low-intensity conflict creeping steadily towards catastrophe. Filmmakers Garrett Scott and Ian Olds were given access to […]
Shot in Washington DC on January 20, 2005, Aftershock: American Voices (Bob Grey, Anne Derwent) chronicles counter inaugural events. It is an inspirational piece featuring such anti-war notables as Celeste Zappala, of the Gold Star Families For Peace and independent journalist Amy Goodman. The film also features performance pieces by Billionaires For Bush and the […]
In late 2003, weary of the overall failure of the US media to accurately report on the realities of the war in Iraq for the Iraqi people, Dahr Jamail went to the Middle East to report on the war himself, where he has spent more than one year in Iraq as one of only a […]
Thousands of people try to cross the Mexico/U.S. border every year. Al Otro Lado (To the Other Side) directed by Natalia Almada, tells the human story behind illegal immigration and drug trafficking between the U.S. and Mexico through the eyes of Magdiel, a 23-year-old fisherman and aspiring composer who dreams of a better life. For people […]
Awake Zion (Monica Haim) is a documentary that explores the unsuspecting connections between Rasta, Reggae, and Judaism, through one woman's beat-laden adventure into the meaning of identity. All the way back to the alleged sultry affair between the Jewish King Solomon and the African Queen of Sheba, Jewish influence is evident in the spiritual history […]
Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival co-director Kathy Brew visits The Sanctuary For Independent Media to present a selection of shorts. Ryan is a 2004 Oscar®-winning animated short by Chris Landreth, produced by the National Film Board of Canada. It is a biography of Ryan Larkin, former animator for the NFB. Larkin was in his heyday […]
Bride Kidnapping in Kyrgyzstan (Petr Lom, 2005) is the first film to document the custom of bride kidnapping, an ancient marriage tradition in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic in Central Asia. When a Kyrgyz man decides to marry, he often abducts the woman he has chosen. Typically, he and several friends hire a car, stake […]
Home (2005) will be presented by director Jeffrey Togman and cinematographer Pierre Defendini. On a gang-controlled, dead end street, Sheree Farmer is raising her six children alone. With the help of Mary Abernathy, a former fashion industry executive turned community activist, Sheree struggles to buy her first home and escape her violent and drug-infested Newark […]
Dennis O'Rourke's latest documentary Land Mines: A Love Story (2004) is part observational and part essay – driven by a polemic that is both angry and subtle, and a damning portrayal of the human costs of war. Land Mines is a compelling anti-war film set in Afghanistan, a country that has become synonymous with conflict. It […]
This lecture was built upon the following premises: first, any action within the cultural landscape performed from a minoritarian position will be perceived by authority as contestational act; and second, once challenged any or all of a variety of disciplinary agents will be sent to restabilize the discourses of the status quo through the managing […]
Chasing Buddha (2000) is a documentary by acclaimed Austrian filmmaker Amiel Courtin-Wilson about Robina Courtin, an Australian ex-Catholic, ex-political activist and feminist who has been a Buddhist nun since 1978. Teaching Buddhism around the world, she shatters the stereotype of a Buddhist nun, her intense and direct style leaving an indelible impression on everyone she […]
Jim de Séve's 2004 documentary Tying the Knot digs deeply into the meaning of marriage today. From an historical trip to the Middle Ages, to gay hippies storming the Manhattan marriage bureau in 1971, this eye-opening exploration of the embattled institution looks at rights, privilege and love as gay activists and right-wing politicos lock horns […]
Mat Callahan's The Trouble with Music (2005) explores the crisis facing music. The signs are everywhere, from the saturation of public space by tuneful trivia to the digital downloading controversy. Quantity has replaced quality. The number of units sold is now the criteria by which music is judged and high-gloss, mass-produced, low-content music is everywhere. […]
Quantum leap, a physics term deriving from the mid 1900s indicating significant and swift advances (originally via a sudden shift in energy within an atom), became the title of an early 1990s American television series featuring a time traveling, body-swapping, do-gooder scientist. In 2006 this inspirational screening of new video follows suit, cataloguing heroes, compressing […]
The creation of the Low Power FM radio service stands as one of the greatest successes in recent efforts for grassroots media reform. As a result, hundreds of new low power community stations are broadcasting that otherwise would not be—operated by civil rights groups, schools, farmworker organizations, environmentalists, cultural organizations, and others. Low power radio […]
How to Turn Distress into Success: A Parable of War and its Making is a funny, poignant, radical, occasionally violent response to the 9/11 attacks, filtered through the coolest puppets you'll ever see. It's a layered event; a commentary on a puppet administration, put on by puppet masters who, more than just about anyone, know […]
Author and filmmaker Heather Rogers will screen her documentary on the political history of rubbish in the United States, "Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage" and talk about her new book of the same name. Every day a phantasmagoric rush of spent, used and broken riches flows through our homes, offices, and cars. The […]
Lee Hirsch's 2002 film Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony documents South African musicians, playwrights, poets and activists as they recall the struggle against apartheid from the 1940s to the 1990s that stripped black citizens of South Africa of basic human rights, and the important role that music played in that struggle. The documentary uses a mixture of interviews, musical performances […]
Galen Joseph-Hunter and Tom Roe will discuss the field of "Transmission Arts," and free103point9. Free103point9 has an array of goals toward which it is perpetually working, each ultimately focused on expanding the scope of radio's possibilities and advancing the genre of Transmission Arts. The nonprofit organization's online radio transmissions introduce audiences to aggressive and challenging […]
Barbara Ettinger's 2006 documentary Two Square Miles tracks the conflicts in the small town of Hudson, New York as a proposed multinational coal-fired cement plant threatens to reshape the community. With its thriving main street, diverse population, and healthy rate of revitalization, Hudson, New York could be seen as a model of small-town America. But underneath […]
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