With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers – one mixed-race and one Korean – Brooklyn teen Avery grew up in a unique and loving household. But when her curiosity about her African-American roots grows, she decides to contact her birth mother. This choice propels Avery into her own complicated exploration of race, identity, and family that threatens to distance her from the parents she’s always known. She begins staying away from home, starts skipping school, and risks losing her shot at the college track career she had always dreamed of. But when Avery decides to pick up the pieces of her life and make sense of her identity, the results are inspiring. Off and Running follows Avery to the brink of adulthood, exploring the strength of family bonds and the lengths people must go to become themselves.
A beautifully detailed documentary following a year in the lives of three champion racehorses at an Irish stable. Director Mermin (Shot in Bombay) captures everything that an equine athlete must go through to compete, keeping the film as close to the horses themselves as possible. Trainers and owners get their say but overall the film is about what it’s like to be a racehorse, something it achieves without recourse to sentiment or anthropomorphism.
It seems that your experiences as an Arab-American have really shaped the way you tell stories. I remember reading in another interview of yours that the story behind Amreeka is a personal one. Could you talk a little bit about that? Cherien Dabis: The story is very much inspired by my family and the love, strength and pride that held us together during a difficult time. I grew up in a small town in Ohio where there was no anonymity. So everyone knew that my parents were Arab and that we spoke Arabic at home and went away to Jordan and the West Bank every summer. That was all it took for people to treat us differently. Mostly they were just ignorant, asking questions like: Are there cars in Jordan? It wasn’t until the first Gulf War when ignorance turned into racism. My father – who’s a physician – lost a lot of his patients because people didn’t want to support an Arab doctor. We got death threats on a daily basis. And the secret service even visited my high school because of a tip that they got that my 17 year-old sister allegedly threatened to kill the president. I was 14 years old at the time and actually lost a lot of my friends, that’s how ostracized we were. When a so-called friend came up to me at my locker one day and said, “my brother could go to war and die because of you,” I knew it had gone too far. I knew that I needed to try to do something about it. But not only is the film loosely based on what happened to my family in 1991, my family members also inspire the characters in the film. In fact, the main character Muna is inspired by my Aunt who immigrated to the U.S. with her teenaged son in 1997. What struck me about my aunt was her attitude. She was so full of hope and optimism, despite the daily challenges that she faced. She was so trusting of people that she unknowingly disarmed them. Even people who didn’t want to like her or would have otherwise been suspicious of her couldn’t help but ultimately fall in love with her. It’s this quality that inspired Muna. When I sat down to write the script, I kept thinking: If more people were like my aunt, the world would be a better place.
Darren and Annie have an enviable relationship built on love, trust, and communication. After seven years of marriage, they wouldn’t change their relationship one bit. They still enjoy each other’s company and laugh at each other’s jokes, but, unfortunately, they can’t remember the last time they had sex. When a dinner party conversation leads to an honest discussion about the state of their love life, and a bikini photo shoot leads to crossword puzzles instead of sex, they begin to flirt with a way to spice things up. The deal: one night of no-strings-attached sex with a stranger for each of them. Can one night of freedom be just what they need?
With a keen eye and fresh take, Katie Aselton’s directorial debut shines. The Freebie is an insightful, humorous look at love, sustaining relationships, and the awkwardness of monogamy when the haze of lust has faded.
Nothing on YouTube yet, but if you click the Sundance link above, it'll take you to a trailer.
As an impoverished boy in Kenya, Chris Mburu's life was dramatically changed when an anonymous Swedish woman sponsored his primary and secondary education. Now a Harvard-educated human-rights lawyer, he hopes to replicate the generosity he once received by founding his own scholarship fund to aid a new generation. The challenges Mburu faces instituting his new program seem at times insurmountable but lead him down the path to discovery. Who is Hilde Back, the person who signed the checks that gave him a chance to succeed?
With clarity and grace, Jennifer Arnold's film bears cinematic witness to the lasting ramifications of a small ripple of human kindness. Using a strong narrative thread, she unearths fascinating accounts and weaves them together seamlessly. It doesn't hurt that her subjects have pure motivations and back stories to match. The secret of A Small Act was destined to be discovered, if only to remind and inspire others to take such a chance—and change a life.
Andrei Nekrasov, with directing partner Olga Konskaya, returns to Sundance with a formidable documentary that energetically delves into the violent and bewildering conflicts in the Caucasus, with Russia pitted against the former Soviet state of Georgia, and involving Georgia’s troubled regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Boldly visiting conflict zones rarely filmed, the codirectors uncover damning evidence of Russian violence, incidents whose few recorded images are often reprocessed in mass-media reports as evidence of other people’s crimes (often, supposedly, residents of Georgia).
Parsing the complex history of the region, as well as oversimplified cultural assumptions about internecine ethnic conflicts, Nekrasov and Konskaya construct a portrait of a cynical Russia willing to engage in secret wars and manufacture conflicts and media reports simply to consolidate power. With immediacy and passion, but also with a commanding mastery of film form, their documentary dignifies the struggles of powerless people and holds a sobering mirror up to a superpower and its media.
Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), a married couple who run a successful business reselling estate-sale furniture, live in Manhattan with their teenage daughter, Abby. Wanting to expand their two-bedroom apartment, they buy the unit next door, planning to knock the walls out. However, before doing so, they have to wait for the occupant, Andra, a cranky elderly woman, to die. The wait becomes complicated when the family develops relationships with Andra and her two grown granddaughters.
Nicole Holofcener infuses her story of love, death, and liberal guilt with a rare balance of humor and complexity that stems from her uncanny ability to understand people—their motivations, interactions, and contradictions. Her characters go to great pains to navigate a world of moral confusion; we want to feel good about ourselves, but we never feel quite good enough. In avoiding judgment, she offers a funny and philosophical reflection on the give and take of modern life.
Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. His "Sugar Children" series portrays the images of deprived children of Caribbean plantation workers using the sugar from their surroundings. When acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker trains her camera on Muniz, he is cultivating a new idea for a project. He knows the material he wants to use—garbage—but who will be the subject of the new series of works?
Waste Land is a wonderfully resonant documentary that chronicles Muniz's journey to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He collaborates with an eclectic band of catadores, or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials, and photographs these inspiring characters as they recycle their lives and society’s garbage. Walker gains fantastic access to the entire process and, in doing so, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the dignity that can be found in personal determination.
A couple, Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore), live with their teenage children, Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson), in a cozy craftsman bungalow in Los Angeles. As Joni prepares for college, her younger brother pesters her for a big favor—help him find their biological father. Against her better judgment, she makes a call to the sperm bank; the bank, in turn, calls Paul (Mark Ruffalo) and asks him if he’s willing to meet his daughter. He agrees, and a complicated new chapter begins for the family.
Director Lisa Cholodenko returns to Sundance (Laurel Canyon played at the 2003 Festival, and High Art won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1998 Festival) with this vibrant, astute, and richly drawn portrait of a modern family. Once again, Cholodenko demonstrates her uncanny ability to reach beneath the gloss of Southern California to illuminate the emotional and transformative power of human vulnerability and, in doing so, establishes herself as one of America’s most formidable auteurs.
The relationship between an abused housewife and her new neighbor yields unexpected tragedy in his drama from first-time writer/director Nancy Kissam. Her kids can't stand her, her husband is a tyrant, and her family may live in the middle of nowhere, but Anora Fleece (Laura Harring) still does her best to make the most out of life. When Imogene Cochran (Jill Marie Jones) moves in next door, the two women become fast friends. Imogene sells cosmetics for Kathy K. Kosmetics, a company that caters exclusively to the cocoa-skinned woman. Despite the fact that such women aren't generally welcomed with open arms in Anora's neck of the woods, it isn't long before she and Imogene have found a common ground. And before long, their friendship develops into something more serious. But Anora's husband, Cheb (Oded Fehr), is exactly the kind of intolerant brute that has cemented their town's backward reputation, and when he discovers the truth about the two women, all hell breaks lose. In the chaos, Anora grabs a gun and accidentally shoots her husband dead. With nothing to lose and nowhere to run, Anora and Imogene toss Cheb's corpse in the trunk, load the kids in the car, and head out on a "family" road trip to bury the man who caused them so much grief.
Unraveling like a lush, gripping novel that constantly subverts expectations, The Oath is the interlocking drama of two brothers-in-law, Abu Jandal and Salim Hamdam, whose associations with al Qaeda in the 1990s propelled them on divergent courses. The film delves into Abu Jandal's daily life as a taxi driver in Sana’a, Yemen, and Hamdan’s military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay prison. Abu Jandal and Hamdan’s personal stories—how they came to serve as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver respectively—act as prisms through which to humanize and contextualize a world the Western media demonizes. As Hamdan’s trial progresses, his military lawyers challenge fundamental flaws in the court system. As charismatic Abu Jandal dialogues with his son, Muslim students, and journalists, he generously unveils the complex evolution of his belief system since 9/11.
Exquisitely constructed so multiple threads and time periods commingle seamlessly, and gaining astonishingly intimate access to subjects and information, The Oath illuminates a realm too long misunderstood.
Facebook page here (still getting going, apparently).
As the first woman to lead an Islamic nation, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's life story unfolds like a tale of Shakespearean dimensions. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Bhutto evolved from pampered princess to polarizing politician battling tradition and terrorism in the most dangerous country on Earth. Her father, the first democratically elected president of Pakistan, chose Benazir over his eldest son to carry his political mantle. Accused of rampant corruption, imprisoned, then exiled abroad, Bhutto was called back in 2007 as her country’s only hope for democracy. When she was struck down by an assassin, her untimely death sent shock waves throughout the world, transforming Bhutto from political messiah to a martyr in the eyes of the common people.
With exclusive interviews from the Bhutto family and never-before-seen footage, filmmakers Jessica Hernández and Johnny O'Hara have crafted a sweeping epic of a transcendent, yet polarizing, figure whose legacy will be debated for years to come.
The movie's website is here, and you can become a fan on Facebook.
Louis Ives, a lonely dreamer who fancies himself the hero of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, leaves his job and heads to Manhattan to become a writer. He rents a room in the ramshackle apartment of Henry Harrison, a wildly eccentric, but brilliant, playwright who happens to be an “extra man”—a social escort for the wealthy widows of New York’s high society. The two form an unexpected bond.
Paul Dano and Kevin Kline couldn't be better suited to bring to life these two dapper men lost in time, each lending his own distinct sensibility to the sharply conceived characters. Delicately balancing humor and pathos, writers/directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor) have a knack for bringing edgy tales to life with humanity, a rich universe, and a brisk compelling intellect that all combine to leave the audience splendidly satisfied. The Extra Man is a sophisticated comedy that will do just that.
In the summer of ’76, as President Jimmy Carter pledges to give government back to the people, tensions run high in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood where the Black Panthers once flourished. When Marcus returns—having bolted years earlier—his homecoming isn’t exactly met with fanfare. His former movement brothers blame him for an unspeakable betrayal. Only his best friend’s widow, Patricia, appreciates Marcus’s predicament, which both unites and paralyzes them. As Patricia’s daughter compels the two comrades to confront their past, history repeats itself in dangerous ways.
Night Catches Us masterfully reckons with the complexity of its characters’ revolutionary ideologies and internal desires. Bell-bottoms, Afros, potlucks, and Caddies set the scene as the film potently interweaves political media with an evocative soul-inspired score, summoning a vivid sense of place and time. The golden light that bathes characters’ faces seems to express the promise—and elusiveness—of the necessary change Marcus and Patricia struggle for so dearly—each by separate means.
During the cold war, public consciousness fixated on the atomic bomb. Then the cold war ended, and we retreated into denial. In fact, the danger of nuclear annihilation never disappeared; it only swelled. Countdown to Zero sweeps us into a scorching, hypnotic journey around the world to reveal the palpable possibility of nuclear disaster and frame an issue on which human survival itself hangs.
Scientists, world leaders, and security experts—including Valerie Plame herself—expose the absurdities and alarming realities of the situation. The 1990s heralded a second nuclear age. Many countries and terrorist groups are now actively acquiring fissile materials and construction blueprints. The possibility of an accident or miscalculation looms even larger. As the film projects a startling vision, interviews with Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, and Pervez Musharraf yield a unified message: our only option is to eradicate every-last nuclear missile. Luckily for us, getting to zero is possible—step by step. Let’s jump-start the change.
Deep in the Ozark Mountains, clans live by a code of conduct that no one dares defy—until an intrepid teenage girl has no other choice. When Ree Dolly's crystal-meth-making father skips bail and goes missing, her family home is on the line. Unless she finds him, she and her young siblings and disabled mother face destitution. In a heroic quest, Ree traverses the county to confront her kin, break their silent collusion, and bring her father home.
With thrilling tension, Winter’s Bone depicts an archetypal rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. Only this time, the young warrior is a girl. As our heroine braves immoveable obstacles, she redefines the notion of family loyalty and, in the process, discovers her own power. The spare precision of Debra Granik’s direction is effortlessly profound. Stunningly genuine performances and exquisite visual details capture the textures and rhythms of a world where the mythic and the naturalistic intermingle.
No trailer on YouTube yet (come on, people!), but there is a segment with Debra Granik...
On an unassuming corner in Fort Pierce, Florida, it’s easy to miss the insidious war that’s raging. But on each side of 12th and Delaware, soldiers stand locked in a passionate battle. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic. On the other, a pro-life outfit often mistaken for the clinic it seeks to shut down.
You can become a Facebook fan of the movie here. There is a trailer on the Sundance website linked above, but nothing embeddable, so here is an interview with Grady and Ewing:
When Lillian leaves town in search of stardom, her husband, Ray, and two precocious daughters, Ruby and Rose, are left to salvage the family. Ray’s emotional development is plagued by a past that won't go away. As he flails from woman to woman in search of a replacement mother for his girls, starry-eyed teenager Ruby is on her own path—discovering that her newfound sexuality is an easy way to get the attention she desperately craves. Separated only by their generations, father and daughter find themselves on similar journeys of sexual awakening.
Grown Up Movie Star is an accomplished first feature by Adriana Maggs. Using a remote small town in Newfoundland as her backdrop, she orchestrates a highly capable cast—with an especially riveting breakout performance by Tatiana Maslany as Ruby. Sharp, honest dialogue blurs the roles of parent and child and magnifies the pain of growing up . . . at any age.
Khoshjamal’s experience as a world-class athlete may be familiar, but captured here is the importance of the coach-athlete relationship. The bond she shares with her feisty and much-admired female coach is revealed through everyday moments as both struggle through inequality to make their mark—in sport and society. Though it’s still the male athletes who are ultimately celebrated in her country, Khoshjamal’s accomplishments and lasting influence on scores of girls in Iran are undeniable.
Believing he’s the last door-to-door encyclopedia salesman in the world, George decides to write The Obselidia, a compendium of obsolete things. George believes that love, among other things, is obsolete. In his quest to document nearly extinct occupations, he befriends Sophie, a beautiful cinema projectionist who works at a silent movie theatre. Sophie believes that nothing is obsolete as long as someone loves it. When they interview a reclusive scientist who predicts that 80 percent of the world’s population will be obliterated by irreversible climate change by the year 2100, the two must face the question, if the world is going to disappear tomorrow, how are we going to live today?
Diane Bell’s soft-spoken, profound, and disarmingly charming debut feature engages these fateful issues of our time with a warm, sparkling sense of beauty, sincerity, and compassion. Obselidia offers a rare and humane lens through which we can view a world increasingly preoccupied with and inhabited by extinction.
The film's website is here, you can find it on Facebook here, and there is even a blog that seems to be written by George.
In his short career, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a phenomenon. He became notorious for his graffiti art under the moniker Samo in the late 1970s on the Lower East Side scene, sold his first painting to Deborah Harry for $200, and became best friends with Andy Warhol. Appreciated by both the art cognoscenti and the public, Basquiat was launched into international stardom. However, soon his cult status began to override the art that had made him famous in the first place.
Director Tamra Davis pays homage to her friend in this definitive documentary but also delves into Basquiat as an iconoclast. His dense, bebop-influenced neoexpressionist work emerged while minimalist, conceptual art was the fad; as a successful black artist, he was constantly confronted by racism and misconceptions. Much can be gleaned from insider interviews and archival footage, but it is Basquiat’s own words and work that powerfully convey the mystique and allure of both the artist and the man.
A successful visual artist working in post-9/11 Manhattan, Asya lives the life of the hip and glamorous, replete with exclusive art parties, supermodels, and stretch limousines while she carefully follows the situation in the Middle East on television. Asya learns that her childhood friend, Faisal, has disappeared-the victim of a purported CIA abduction. That same night, she meets Javier, a sexy Mexican PhD student, and romance blossoms. Javier finds Asya's conspiracy theories overly paranoid-but nothing in Asya's world is as it seems. Asya's life is reflective of the themes of cultural fusion, and the complications and humor that arise simultaneously out of everyday life.
Zeina Durra's atmospheric debut feature is an alluring and intelligent look at the way the war on terror seeps into the texture of everyday American life. Gorgeous 16 mm grain imbues the film with an anachronistic feel that interestingly evokes times past. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is an exceptional work and heralds the arrival of Durra as an exciting new directorial talent.
There is a trailer at the link above; here is more Durra:
The Bolshevik revolution, the cold war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union defined the history of the twentieth century. With such a past, what does it mean to be Russian today? Robin Hessman's lovingly crafted documentary, My Perestroika, adopts the idea of the “everyman story,” suggesting that the unheralded lives of the last generation of Soviets to grow up behind the iron curtain hold the key to understanding the contradictions of modern Russia from the inside out.
Crafted during five years of researching and shooting, and based on almost a decade of living in Russia in the 1990s, Hessman's film poetically interweaves an extraordinary trove of home movies, Soviet propaganda films, and intimate access to five schoolmates whose linked, but very different, histories offer a moving portrait of newly middle-class Russians living lives they could never have imagined when they were growing up.
The film's official site is here, and its Facebook page is here.No trailer on YouTube, but here is an interview with Robin Hessman.
Of all the bands to come out of the 1970s Los Angeles music scene, The Runaways are by far the most uniquely fascinating. This is partially due to their music but more so to the fact that they were teenage girls whose wild and reckless lifestyle was the stuff of legend.
Focusing on the duo of guitarist/vocalist Joan Jett and lead vocalist Cherie Currie as they navigate a rocky road of touring and record-label woes, the film chronicles the band's formation as well as their meteoric rise under the malevolent eye of an abusive manager.
Acclaimed video artist Floria Sigismondi directs from her own script, and her luscious camerawork captures every sweaty detail—from the filthy trailer where the women practice to the mosh pits of Tokyo. What really makes the film cook are the sizzling performances by Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart. Not to be missed, The Runaways is an ode to an era and a groundbreaking band.
An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern-day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s breathtaking and often dangerous Absaroka-Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.The trailer looks amazing:
Two very different people find out they have more in common than they imagined in this emotional drama from Germany. Elaine Richter (Corinna Harfouch) is a middle-aged woman who approaches artist Max Hollander (Josef Bierbichler) with an unusual commission – she'd like a dual portrait of her two children, but while 22-year-old Lili (Karoline Herfurth) will be able to model for him, her son Alexander (Cyril Sjostrom) died a year ago at the age of 19 and the artist will have to work from photos and videos. Max agrees to the assignment, but he discovers that Lili isn't very enthusiastic about posing for him at first, especially after she informs him that Alexander's death was a suicide. With time Lili and Max begin to bond and come to understand one another's emotional crises. Lili is a gifted dance student who has lost a major role after an argument with her teacher and mentor, and she's sought solace in her relationship with Aldo (Misel Maticevic), an artist whose controlling nature is strangling her freedom. Meanwhile, Max finds himself drawn to Lili just as he's trying to come to terms with having romantic and sexual feelings for another man for the first time. Im Winter Ein Jahr (aka A Year Ago In Winter) earned Caroline Link "Best Director" honors at the 2009 Bavarian Film Awards.
America's 50-million strong Evangelical community is convinced that the world's future is foretold in Biblical prophecy - from the Rapture to the Battle of Armageddon. This astonishing documentary explores their world - in their homes, at conferences, and on a wide-ranging tour of Israel. By interweaving Christian, Zionist, Jewish and critical perspectives along with telling archival materials, the filmmakers probe the politically powerful - and potentially explosive - alliance between Evangelical Christians and Israel...an alliance that may set the stage for what one prominent Evangelical leader calls "World War III."
The film opens with portraits of three Evangelical families – James and Laura Bagg, a Connecticut couple who work as military jet-propulsion engineers, Tony and Devonna Edwards in McAlester, Oklahoma, and Dr. H. Wayne House in Salem, Oregon—all certain that upon Christ's Second Coming they will be "raptured," or lifted into the skies to join Christ while the rest of humanity suffers for seven years during “The Tribulation." The Edwards' daughters, in particular, struggle with their own future. If they are raptured soon, how will they ever marry, or have children of their own?
Despite their very different lives and locations, all three families find the modern world laden with symbolism that suggests the End Times are at hand, and they proclaim the immense importance of Israel, where the battle of Armageddon will leave the earth ravaged, before Christ creates a new and perfect world.
The film then follows Wayne House and fellow minister Robert Dean as they lead a Christian Study Tour group to Israel — among the tens of thousands of Evangelicals who pour into the Holy Land each year. As Wayne and Robert baptize their entourage in the River Jordon, sing the US national anthem on the Sea of Galilee, proclaim love for Israel, and describe how the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites in Islam, must be destroyed in order for Jesus to return, a revealing and controversial relationship between Christian Evangelicals, Jews, and Muslims emerges.
Finally, we follow Wayne House and Robert Dean to a massive gathering in Dallas, Texas, where Evangelicals debate, in highly sophisticated terms, the need to spread Biblical literalism to counter the dangerous effects of post-modernism. The climax of the conference comes as Pastor John Hagee, the enormously influential Texas Minister of an 18,000-member megachurch, declares, "World War III has started."
By portraying the Evangelical apocalyptic worldview from within their community, Waiting for Armageddon seeks to clarify the elusive relationship between Christian Zionists and Jews, and foster dialogue among dissenting groups. In the end, the film asks whether this large American voting block is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of international holy war.
Hailed as "absorbing," "a must see," "Oscar material" and "the best movie at SXSW," Mine is a documentary about the essential bond between humans and animals, set against the backdrop of one of the worst natural disasters in modern U.S. history: Hurricane Katrina. This gripping, character-driven story follows New Orleans residents as they attempt the daunting task of trying to reunite with their pets who have been adopted by families all over the country, and chronicles the custody battles that arise when two families love the same pet. Who determines the fate of the animals—and the people—involved? A compelling meditation on race, class and the power of compassion, Mine examines how we treat animals as an extension of how we view and treat each other.
What prevents poor people from getting ahead? Banks refuse to give credit without collateral. Where commercial banks see insolvency, Nobel Prize–winning economist Muhammad Yunus sees opportunity. His groundbreaking Grameen Bank was built on the radical notion that if you loan poor women money within the context of peer support, not only will they repay and sustain the bank, but they’ll elevate their communities in the process.
With millions of microloans to rural entrepreneurs in developing countries, Grameen is now audaciously importing its methods to the bastion of first-world capitalism: the U.S.A. First stop: Queens, New York. With an intimate camera capturing both buoyant and despairing moments, To Catch a Dollar chronicles the evolution of the tiny new branch. Will the solidarity principles translate to a diverse group of inner-city women? As the banking industry collapses, will these intrepid social-justice financiers succeed? One thing’s clear: we need new models to ensure prosperity for all.
Can't find a trailer, but here is an interview with Muhammad Yunus:
"Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing," says neuroscientist Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research on the physiology of the brain's storage of memories. As he explains, memory is the glue that binds our mental life together and provides a sense of continuity in our lives.
In Search of Memory is a compelling blend of autobiography and history that recounts the life of one of the most important neuroscientists of the 20th century and illuminates scientific developments in our understanding of the brain's role in recording and preserving memory. In addition to archival footage and dramatic re-creations of Kandel's childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied Vienna and his formative years as an emigrant in New York, the film features discussions with Kandel, friends and family, as well as his public lectures in Vienna and New York, which explore both his professional and personal life, especially his emotional ties to Judaism.
Both through its personal journey into the memory of this amazingly spry and witty 79-year old, especially his traumatic experiences during the Holocaust, and a visit to his Columbia University laboratory, where Kandel and his colleagues demonstrate their experimental research, In Search of Memory examines how the brain stores memories, the difference between short-term and long-term memory, Alzheimer's and age-related memory loss, and structural modifications to the brain that enhance memory.
In revisiting the people, places and objects of Kandel's lifetime experiences, In Search of Memory reveals how everything we undergo changes the brain, even our genetic make-up, and can determine the focus of a life's work.
Filmed over four years, Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys – Adham, a bright precocious 17-year-old; Osama, a charming impish 16-year-old; Nabil, a shy artistic 18-year-old – born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, a ghetto located on the outskirts of Cairo. It is a world folded onto itself, an impenetrable labyrinth of narrow roadways camouflaged by trash; it is home to 60,000 Zaballeen (or Zabbaleen), Egypt’s “garbage people.”
For generations, the residents of Cairo have depended on the Zaballeen to collect their trash, paying them only a minimal amount for their garbage collection services. The Zaballeen survive by recycling the city’s waste. These entrepreneurial garbage workers recycle 80% of all the garbage they collect, creating what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system.
When the city they keep clean suddenly decides to replace the Zaballeen with multinational garbage disposal companies, the Zaballeen community finds itself at a crossroads. Face to face with the globalization of their trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.
Available from Netflix: Mansfield Park, directed by Patricia Rozema
Warning: This is a very "free" adaptation, more of a Jane Austen pastiche (with a very similar plot) than a faithful adaptation. If you haven't read the novel, you'll enjoy the movie, but if you have, the differences will drive you up a wall.
Freely adapted from a novel by Jane Austen, this period drama is set in the early 1800s, as a girl named Fanny (Hannah Taylor Gordon) is being raised by loving but desperately poor parents. Wanting a better life for Fanny, they send her away to live with her aunts, high-minded Mrs. Norris (Sheila Gish) and drug-addicted Lady Bertram (Lindsay Duncan), who share an estate called Mansfield Park. Fanny joins the family at Mansfield Park, which includes Lady Bertram's husband Sir Thomas (Harold Pinter), who made his money in slaves and West Indian plantations; Sir Thomas's son Tom (James Purefoy), an alcoholic; Tom's intelligent younger brother Edmund (Jonny Lee Miller); and his two sisters, Julia (Justine Waddell) and Maria (Victoria Hamilton). Fanny soon makes friends with Edmund, though she's shown little respect by the rest of the family. In time, Fanny grows to adulthood (now played by Frances O'Connor) and gains skill and poise as a horsewoman while developing her skills as an author. When the stylish but secretive siblings Henry and Mary Crawford (Alassandro Nivola and Embeth Davidtz) arrive at Mansfield Park, romantic sparks begin to fly; the two sisters fight over Henry, while Mary is soon engaged to wed Edmund — to the disappointment of Fanny, who has fallen in love with him.
As you may know, the percentage of women directors hovers around 9%, which is a ridiculous statistic in 2009 (or ever). It's not (just) that Hollywood is sexist—-if female directors brought in the big bucks on opening weekend, studio heads would certainly sit up and take notice, as might Oscar voters. But how to find out when these films are showing? Well... come here! (Update: Hmm, the same year I start this blog, the Academy nominates TWO female-directed movies for Best Picture! Coincidence?)
