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| Nov. 17 7:00 PM
| Between the Folds | Houston PBS Community Cinema | Vanessa Gold |
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| Description: | Between the Folds chronicles the stories of ten fine artists and intrepid theoretical scientists who have abandoned careers and scoffed at hard-earned graduate degrees - all to forge unconventional lives as modern-day paperfolders. | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the Public. The Houston PBS Community Cinema Program schedule is subject to change, so please check the website for more information. |
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| Nov. 15 7:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival presents BIOMODD (ATH1): A LIVING GAME COMPUTER AS SOCIAL STRUCTURE, guest director Morgan Riles | Presented by Morgan Riles | Morgan Riles |
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| Description: | Belgian artist Angelo Vermeulen, who has a PhD in biology and a photography diploma, works with installations, video, photography, and new media. He is best known for his experimental devices that combine living organisms, artificial life, and science fiction. Bringing together ecology, game culture, and installation art, Biomodd [ATH1] is an online multiplayer game and ecosystem created during the artist’s residency at the Aesthetic Technologies Lab in Athens, Ohio. The work tries to visualize and rework the intricate relation of organic life, technology, and consumption. A monumental custom computer is built as a form of expanded sculpture. Inside the case, the excess heat of overclocked processors is recycled by an elaborate living ecosystem. The computer hardware is used as the server for a new computer game that aims to bring some of the main themes of Biomodd into an imaginative multiplayer experience. The film follows the creative process and explores new ideas in contemporary installations from the perspective of Vermeulen’s young collaborators: Jeff Lovett, John Seyal, Daniel Monz, and Scott Sullivan. Filmmaker Morgan Riles directed this impressive production, featured in the International Festival of Films on Art, as her Ohio University thesis film. She says, “It is basically about art through the eyes of my generation, the way we see art.”
Tickets are $10.00 for this event | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org |
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| Nov. 15 4:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival presents PASSAGES FROM JAMES JOYCE'S FINNEGAN'S WAKE and PASTORALE | A tribute to Mary Ellen Bute | |
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| Description: | In this festival celebrating the ties between film and the other arts, we could not overlook Mary Ellen Bute, the pioneer experimental filmmaker, born in Houston in 1906. Bute’s work, and the two examples of it included in this program, crosses over film, painting, music, and literature. Mary Ellen Bute studied painting in Texas and Pennsylvania, but felt frustrated by the medium’s inability to wield light in time. This led her to study and practice stage lighting, and later experimental animation, where she created abstract forms and visualizations of music. One of her finest films, Pastorale creates continuous shapes, flows, vapors, and illuminations of colored light, swirling in different directions to evoke the multiple voices of J.S. Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze.
Bute’s interest in abstraction was rooted in a broader interest in the modernist aesthetic, including its manifestations in the literary works of James Joyce. She was a long-standing member of the James Joyce Society, and she devoted seven years to filming her interpretation of his last work, Finnegans Wake. Utilizing a stage adaptation by Mary Manning as her springboard, and the brains and resource materials of the James Joyce Society to help her illustrate and respond to Joyce’s challenging text, she produced, in Joyce scholar Zack Bowen’s view, “the most innovative cinematic interpretation of the spirit of Joyce 's last work ever attempted. Lillian Schiff writes in Film Library Quarterly, "Passages is a trove of superimpositions, flashbacks, varied angles, slow motion, intercutting, rapid motion, stop action, negative images, documentary footage, and finally sub-titles ... It brings in television, the H-bomb, the twist, interplanetary rockets. Bute believed that Joyce would have accepted the modern elements in a film based on his 1939 novel.”
Tickets are $6.00 for matinee events. | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org |
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| Nov. 15 1:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival presents REMEMBERING DICK ROGERS, presented by Susan Meiselas | Presented by Susan Meiselas | Susan Meiselas |
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| Description: | The Houston Cinema Arts Society will present REMEMBERING DICK ROGERS.
Richard P. Rogers—known to friends, students, and colleagues as “Dick”—was, if such a thing be possible, a filmmaker’s filmmaker. Although he never achieved the recognition of some of his friends or students, his work was admired greatly by his peers. If a nonfiction film was supposedly “about filmmaking,” you wondered how it compared to Moving Pictures: The Art of Jan Lenica. During the wave of autobiographical or diary films in the 1980s, Rogers’s 226-1690 stood out not only for its artistic rigor and invention but also for simple, sheer honesty. Much of those qualities were in full display in Alexander Olch’s beautiful meditation on the life and work of Dick Rogers, The Windmill Movie, screening in this festival. Rogers died in 2001 at the age of 57, robbing generations of students of his wisdom and inspiration and the world of his unique artistry. Happily, through the efforts of Rogers’s partner, acclaimed photographer Susan Meiselas, some of Rogers’s key works are now available and have been gathered for this program, which played to great acclaim at the Walter Reade Theater in New York this past June.
Elephants: Fragments of an Argument
United States, 1973; 27 minutes
Moving Pictures: The Art of Jan Lenica
United States, 1975; 19 minutes
226-1690
United States, 1984; 23 minutes | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org. Tickets are $6 for matinee events |
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| Nov. 14 7:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival presents THE YES MEN FIX THE WORLD | With YES MAN Andy Bichlbaum | |
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| Description: | Winner of the Panorama Audience Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, The Yes Men Fix the World is a screwball true story about the satirical activist team the Yes Men. Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno’s theatrical performances take place on unusual stages. Dressed in thrift-store suits, posing as top executives of corporations they consider criminal, the Yes Men lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets in outrageous, yet strangely plausible ways. They do everything they can to wake up their audiences, at the conferences and through the media coverage of their pranks, to the danger of letting greed run our world. Example #1: Andy, playing the role of a Dow Chemical spokesperson, somehow gets on the BBC News and, before 300 million viewers, announces that Dow will finally clean up the site of the largest industrial accident in history, the Bhopal catastrophe. People around the world celebrate, but the market punishes Dow for doing the right thing by slashing its stock value. For a moment, reality was altered, and a large audience was awoken to the possibility of a better world they could create. As they journey from Britain to Bhopal to New Orleans (where they address 1000 New Orleans contractors alongside Mayor Ray Nagin), the layers of lies are peeled back to reveal the planetary self-destructiveness of the market and the possibility of change. Note: This film has one of the very few underwater ballet scenes you will ever see in a political documentary! Tickets are $10 for this event and $6 for students. | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org Co-presented with DiverseWorks |
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| Nov. 14 4:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival presents LIVING AT RISK: THE STORY OF A NICARAGUAN FAMILY, with guest filmmaker Susan Meiselas | Presented by Susan Meiselas | Susan Meiselas |
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| Description: | Living at Risk is a snapshot of the life of a family during a period of civil war, uncertainty, and despair, five years after the Sandinistas gained power in Nicaragua, overthrowing the brutal and long reign of the Somoza family. Subtitled “The Story of a Nicaraguan Family,” the documentary centers on five brothers and sisters who commit themselves to work with the Sandinista revolutionary government and to contribute to the social changes in their professional and personal lives. In the best tradition of direct cinema, the film gives us the human dimension of everyday life, a sense of how people live in the midst of extraordinary difficulties and social transformation. Clearly there is understanding and trust between the filmmakers and their subjects, but the filmmakers remain objective and level-headed. They convey to the viewer the quiet heroism of proceeding with the daily routines of raising a family, treating the sick, feeding the hungry, and finding entertainment, laughter, and love in the midst of difficulties, strife, and scarcity. This documentary earned numerous international awards and serves as a preface to the larger and broader historical analysis that would come when the same team of filmmakers would once again focus on Nicaragua, ten years after the revolution, with their acclaimed featured documentary Pictures from a Revolution. Meiselas and Guzzetti are working on an update on the family, and a preview excerpt from that is likely be included in this program. Tickets are $6 for matinee events. | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org |
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| Nov. 14 1:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival: THE TIME WE KILLED, with guest filmmaker Jennifer Reeves | Presented by Jennifer Reeves | Jennifer Reeves |
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| Description: | The Houston Cinema Arts Festival presents THE TIME WE KILLED with guest filmmaker Jennifer Reeves.The Time We Killed is the first feature by avant-garde filmmaker Jennifer Reeves, who had been generally known for her formal experimentation with optical printing and painting directly on film (as in the extraordinary When It Was Blue, screening Friday) and her exploration of a range of topics including women’s sexuality, mental health and recovery, poetry, and dogs. The Time We Killed is a surprising departure, a remarkably assured narrative feature. The film’s title has a double meaning, signifying both the boredom and isolation of the protagonist and her country’s run-up to the Iraq war. It has the raw intimacy of a filmed diary as it focuses on the daily life of Robyn, an agoraphobic writer who shuts herself in her Brooklyn apartment after the events of September 11, 2001. It is a visually stunning and evocative meditation on Robyn’s inner world filled with memories, past loves, childhood visions, and life failings. The imagery is beautiful, capturing the light reflecting on the East River and the nature surrounding Robyn, reflecting Reeves’s avant-garde experience as a cinematic painter of light. The film won multiple awards at the Berlin Film Festival (2004), New York’s Tribeca Film Festival (Best NY Narrative Feature 2004), and screened at the Whitney Museum, and at the Rotterdam, Sundance, and New York film festivals. Tickets for matinee events are $6. | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org |
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| Nov. 13 7:00 PM
| 2009 Cinema Arts Festival : WHEN IT WAS BLUE, Jennifer Reeves and Skúli Sverrisson | Live Music by Skúli Sverrisson | Film by Jennifer Reeves |
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| Description: | The Houston Cinema Arts Society presents WHEN IT WAS BLUE, a double-projector performance by Jennifer Reeves with live musical accompaniment by Skúli Sverrisson. When It Was Blue is an ode to nature and 16mm film as they rapidly vanish. This double-projection 16mm film rejoices in the splendor of seasons, landscapes, and wildlife as we traverse land and ocean. An elaborate montage connects diverse ecosystems, spanning from the northeastern USA to Iceland, Canada’s Pacific coast, New Zealand, and Central America. Reeves hand-painted the 16mm film, creating impressionistic textures and colors that mimic the qualities of land, water, and trees, and fuse with the photographic imagery. A frenetic and complex visual journey ensues through decades and seasons, trying to “capture” as much of the natural world as possible, before it disappears. Andrea Picard, who programmed this film’s triumphant premiere at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival, writes: “When It Was Blue not only reprises themes characteristic to Reeves’s prolific output—most notably that of natural ecosystems—but also substantially expands her impressive 16mm visual repertoire in a virtuosic display of luminescent overlapping imagery.” Houston-based critic Michael Sicinski remarks that her “collaboration with Icelandic guitarist/composer Skúli Sverrisson is key to this remarkable capaciousness: his soaring minimalist score, with its arpeggiated movements and accelerations, provides a perfect sonic analog to Reeves’s ranging motion and agitated brushstrokes.” Chris Stults sums up: “The resulting film, created out of a sense of sincere need, transcends the beautiful to tap into deep, resonant emotions in the viewer.” | | Additional Information: | http://www.cinemaartssociety.org
Tickets for WHEN IT WAS BLUE are $10 general admission/ $6 students. |
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| Nov. 8 6:30 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents HOUSTON WE HAVE A PROBLEM: LIFE, LIBERTY & THE PURSUIT OF CHEAP ENGERGY (USA) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | Take a look inside the energy capital of the world to see the truths about oil, from Texas oilmen themselves. For decades politicians have decried our addition to foreign oil, yet US energy policy has stayed largely defensive with little focus on sustainability. Now in the face of growing competition for oil, new forms of Wildcatting in alternatives have emerged. And many within the industry are starting to realize we must change, advising that it is going to take everything to meet America's future energy needs. | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 8 3:30 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents THE DEVIL CAME ON HORSEBACK (Sudan/USA) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | Tragedy taking place in Darfur as seen through the eyes of an American witness who has since returned to the U.S. to take action to stop it. Using exclusive photographs and first-hand testimony of former U.S. Marine Captain Brian Steidle, The Devil Came on Horseback takes the viewer on an emotionally-charged journey into the heart of Darfur, Sudan, where an Arab run government is systematically executing a plan to rid the province of its black-African citizens. | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 8 1:00 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents THE LINGUISTS (Bolivia/India/Russia) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | Half the world's languages are on the verge of extinction. David and Greg are scientists racing to document languages on the verge of extinction. In Siberia, India and Bolivia, The Linguists confront head-on the very forces silencing languages: institutionalized racism and violent economic unrest. Their journey takes them deep into the heart of the cultures, knowledge and communities at stake. The film is an amazing cultural journey to some of the most obscure linguistic niches of our planet. (Some Subtitles) | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 7 7:00 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents TRIAGE: DR. JAMES ORBINSKI'S HUMANITARIAN DILEMMA (Somalia/Rwanda/Congo) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | Racing against time with limited resources, relief workers make split-second decisions: who gets treatment; who gets food; who lives; who dies. This impossible dilemma understandably haunts humanitarians like Dr. James Orbinski, who embarks on his most difficult mission to date-writing a deeply personal and controversial book that struggles to make sense of it all. Orbinski travels to war-torn Somalia, then to Rwanda, where he was MSF Head of Mission during the 1994 genocide. | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 7 3:30 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents ON A TIGHTROPE (China/Norway) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | In an orphanage in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, children study tightrope walking. The children are Uighurs, the largest Muslim minority in China. Youngsters are forbidden to profess their religion, and the regime jumps at every opportunity to glorify the unity of China. Walking the tightrope is an age-old Uyghur tradition. The film follows four children in the orphanage in their struggle to build a better life for themselves. | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 7 1:00 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents TIGER SPIRIT (South Korea/North Korea/Canada) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | Tiger Spirit begins in the Korean foothills, where the filmmaker Min Sook Lee joins videographer Lim Sun Nam in his obsessive quest to prove tigers still live in the DMZ's swath of wilderness. Lim believes finding the tiger will reconnect Koreans to their spirit and fuel the reunification train. Lee takes us deeper than symbols, asking the crucial question-how will the two Koreas be put back together? | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 7 10:00 AM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents IRON LADIES OF LIBERIA (Liberia/USA) | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | After Decades of brutal civil war, on Jan. 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated as Liberia's First Elected female president & Africa's first freely elected female head of state. Sirleaf must not only find ways to reform a corrupt authoritarian government saddled by astronomical debts, but also confront opponents loyal to former President Charles Taylor-all without alienating her voter base. | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- |
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| Nov. 6 8:00 PM
| United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival presents SALIM BABA and FACE2FACE | United Nations Association Travelling Film Festival | |
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| Description: | The United Nations Association Houston chapter's Traveling Film Festival Opens with SALIM BABA and FACE2FACE. First film begins at 8:00pm - SALIM BABA (India). Salim Muhammad, a 55-year-old man who lives in North Kolkata, India with his wife and five children. Since the age of ten he has made a living by screening discarded film scraps for the kids in his surrounding neighborhoods using a hand-cranked projector that he inherited from his father. Salim runs his projector with his sons in the hopes that they will carry on his legacy of showing films to the local children. Next at 8:30pm we present- FACE2FACE (Palestine/Israel/France), March '07, French photographer, street artist JR and his friend Marco embarked on the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. They photographed both Palestinians and Israelis doing the same jobs in each of their respective communities-then they posted these images face to face, in huge formats, in unavoidable places, on both sides of the Wall of Separation, as well as in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities. The aim of the project was to contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians. The film portrays people from different political and religious backgrounds who come together to speak about being torn apart. | | Additional Information: | Tickets are $10 General Admission, $8 student/senior citizen and Festival Passes may be purchased in advance by visiting http://www.unahouston.org/una-film-festival- Special prices apply to opening night. See the website listed above for further information. |
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| Oct. 28 7:00 PM
| OUT IN THE SILENCE | | Joe Wilson |
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| Description: | With profound restraint and candor, Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer’s engrossing, award-winning documentary follows the compelling struggle of a mother and her son as they battle homophobia in their small town high school.
Beginning with the incendiary publication of Wilson and Hamer’s wedding announcement in Wilson’s hometown newspaper, the couple receives a pleading letter from Kathy Springer, the mother of C.J., an openly gay high school student under perpetual threat of serious bodily harm. Kathy’s concern for her son’s physical and emotional wellbeing compels the couple to return to Oil City, Pennsylvania to not only document and support C.J. and Kathy’s struggles with the conservative school board, but also to better understand the social and political mindset of this rural community. What unfolds is a surprisingly quixotic journey in which unlikely alliances are formed and a once-stagnating community finds itself galvanized towards positive change.
By refraining from both confrontation and exploitation, OUT IN THE SILENCE allows for an open, intelligent, and impassioned dialogue, resulting in the inspiring transformations of both subjects and audiences alike.
Joe Wilson, producer, co-director, and writer, will be in attendance. A panel discussion will immediately follow the screening. | | Additional Information: | OUT IN THE SILENCE
is presented in collaboration with the Houston GLBT Community Center and Rice University on-campus sponsor, Queers & Allies, and QFest 2009. High School and College students will be admitted free with a student ID. All others will be asked to consider contributing a $5 donation at the door. |
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| Oct. 21 7:00 PM
| Copyright Criminals | Houston PBS Community Cinema | Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod |
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| Description: | Can you own a sound? It depends who you ask. For more than thirty years, innovative hip-hop performers from Public Enemy to De La Soul have been re-using portions of previously recorded music in new and otherwise original compositions. But when record company lawyers got involved everything changed. What was once referred to as a "borrowed melody" became a "copyright infringement." | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the Public. The Houston PBS Community Cinema Program schedule is subject to change, so please check the website for more information. |
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| Oct. 18 7:00 PM
| Cocalero | The New Latin American Left Film Festival | Alejandro Landes |
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| Description: | Born out of the US War on Drugs, an Aymara indian named Evo Morales – backed by a troop of coca leaf farmers – travels through Andes and Amazon in jeans and sneakers, leading a historic bid to become Bolivia’s first indigenous president. Traveling alongside Morales and the Movement to Socialism party (MAS) as they campaign through remote mining towns and far-away peasant villages, Cocalero reveals scenery as diverse and fractured as the country’s people, painting a vivid picture of a political phenomenon while raising an open historical question.
Moderator: Dr. Isabella Alcañiz, University of Houston | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Studies, Political Science and History at Rice University. The Department of Political Science at the University of Houston and Cinema Tropical. |
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| Oct. 16 5:00 PM
| Intermissions | The New Latin American Left Film Festival | João Moreira Salles |
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| Description: | Entreatos follows Brazilian candidate Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during the last leg of his fourth presidential bid in 2002 with unanticipated insight into the behind-the-scenes of this man’s life, his family and his campaign. Entreatos shows us a sophisticated political polyglot, documenting his increasing moderation in order to appeal to a wider part of the electorate, and thus also revealing some the Brazilian political and social backgrounds that made him win the election.
MODERATOR: Dr. Alida Metcalf, Rice University | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Studies, Political Science and History at Rice University. The Department of Political Science at the University of Houston and Cinema Tropical. |
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| Oct. 12 7:00 PM
| Fraude, Mexico 2006 | The New Latin American Left Film Festival | Luis Mandoki |
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| Description: | A controversial documentary feature film from acclaimed director Luis Mandoki, Fraude, Mexico 2006 follows the most recent presidential election in Mexico, which polarized the country and has continued to haunt the local political landscape. The film recapitulates –using in some instances footage from ordinary citizens—many of the irregularities, inconsistencies and misdeeds before, during and after this very contested election that ultimately raised issues about its validity and fairness. Moderator: Dr. Moramay López Alonso, Rice University | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Studies, Political Science and History at Rice University. The Department of Political Science at the University of Houston and Cinema Tropical. |
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| Oct. 11 7:00 PM
| I President | The New Latin American Left Film Festival | Mariano Cohn and Gastón Duprat |
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| Description: | An unapologetic and unflinching historical summary of Argentina's recent political past presented through direct interviews with practically all Argentinean presidents since the country's return to democracy in 1983. Starring Carlos Menem, Fernando de la Rúa and Eduardo Duhalde, among others, YO PRESIDENTE offers a sardonic, and at times hopeless, perspective of those in charge. Moderator: Dr. Mark Jones, Rice University | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Studies, Political Science and History at Rice University. The Department of Political Science at the University of Houston and Cinema Tropical. |
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| Oct. 10 7:00 PM
| The General's Daughter | The New Latin American Left Film Festival | Maria Elena Wood |
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| Description: | In 2006 Michelle Bachelet made history by becoming Chile's first woman president, despite being a socialist, single mother and agnostic in arguably one of South America's most conservative nations. Filmmaker Maria Elena Wood spent one year following Bachelet as she traveled through Chile on the campaign trail. Through the letters written by her late father, a general in the Chilean Air Force imprisoned after Pinochet seized power in 1973, we learn the trajectory of a middle-class Chilean family profoundly marked by the collapse of democracy. The General’s Daughter tells the story of Michelle Bachelet’s life, her surprising journey along the road to the presidency and documents a series of experiences that are emblematic to Chile’s recent history. Moderator: Dr. Margarita de la vega Hurtado | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Studies, Political Science and History at Rice University. The Department of Political Science at the University of Houston and Cinema Tropical. |
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| Oct. 9 7:00 PM
| The Revolution Will Not be Televised | The New Latin American Left Film Festival | Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain |
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| Description: | In September 2001 Bartley and O'Briain began a documentary on the charismatic and unorthodox Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. They were still shooting in April when the found themselves in the middle of a coup. The media played a major role in the drama, as private television stations actively supported the coup by spinning the truth for the world press. Their film records what was probably history's shortest-lived coup d'état. It's a unique document about political muscle and an extraordinary portrait of the man The Wall Street Journal credits with making Venezuela "Washington’s biggest Latin American headache after the old standby, Cuba."
MODERATORS: Dr. Beatriz-González Stephan and Dr. Luis Duno-Gottberg, Hispanic Studies, Rice University | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Department of Hispanic Studies, Political Science and History at Rice University. The Department of Political Science at the University of Houston and Cinema Tropical. |
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| Oct. 4 7:00 PM
| In Search of Lin Zhao's Soul and Though I am Gone | Asian Film Festival | Hu Jie |
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| Description: | For the close of our festival, we present two documentaries from Chinese director Hu Jie that display the bloodiest page of modern Chinese history. The first is about Lin Zhao, a student and writer imprisoned twice by Mao, and finally executed in 1968. The second recounts the story of the death of Bian Zongyun in 1966 at the hands of the Red Guards who beat Bian to death, Song Binbin. To date Song never apologized to her crime. Naxiu Qian, Professor of Chinese Literature at Rice, will introduce the films and lead a discussion afterwards. | | Additional Information: | In collaboration with the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Transnational China Project, Office of Multicultural Community Relations at Rice University and The Asia Society Houston. This film is Free and Open to the public. |
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| Oct. 3 7:00 PM
| Cape No. 7 | Asian Film Festival | Wei Te-Sheng |
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| Description: | The highest grossing film ever produced in Taiwan, Cape No. 7 portrays the rise of a small town rock band and the discovery of a cache of undelivered love letters from 1940's Japanese-occupied Taiwan that become the catalyst of another inter-cultural love affair 70 years later.Cape No. 7 also explores the unwavering pursuits of music, dreams and love intertwined with themes of generational differences, cultural diversity and small town life. Rice faculty Lily Chen will introduce the film and lead a discussion. | | Additional Information: | Sponsored by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Houston and in collaboration with the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Transnational China Project, Office of Multicultural Community Relations at Rice University and the Asia Society, Houston |
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| Oct. 2 7:00 PM
| The World | Asian Film Festival | Jia Zhangke |
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| Description: | Jia Zhangke casts a compassionate eye on the daily loves, friendships and desperate dreams of the twenty-somethings from China's remote Provinces who come to live and work at Beijing's World Park. A bizarre cross-cultural pollination of Las Vegas and Epcot Center, World Park features lavish shows performed amid scaled-down replicas of the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, St. Mark’s Square, the Pyramids and even the Twin Towers. “The most important filmmaker in the world” – Stuart Klawans, The Nation. | | Additional Information: | In collaboration with the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Transnational China Project, Office of Multicultural Community Relations at Rice University and Asia Society, Houston. Free and Open to the public |
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| Sept. 30 7:00 PM
| The Least of These | Houston Indy Media and ACLU - Houston Chapter | Clark Lyda, Jesse Lyda & Rice Alumnus Marcy Garriott |
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| Description: | THE LEAST OF THESE explores one of the most controversial aspects of American immigration policy: family detention. The T. Don Hutto Residential Center opened in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility that houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the public |
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| Sept. 26 7:00 PM
| Touch of Evil | John Murfee Worsham Film Screening | Orson Welles |
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| Description: | For this year's Murfee Worsham screening, we present Orson Welles' film noir masterpiece, which Charleston Heston play a noble Mexican narcotics cop and the director himself plays one of the most outlandish villains in screen history. Also starring Marlene Dietrich, Janet Leigh, and a host of cameos. “Welles’s first American production in a decade is a garish, flamboyant thriller which has something but not very much to do with drugs and police corruption in a border town. What it really has to do with is love of the film medium and its stylistic possibilities; and if Welles can’t resist the candy of shadows and angles and baroque décor, he turns it into stronger fare than most director’s solemn meat and potatoes” – Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the public |
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| Sept. 25 7:00 PM
| Touch of Evil | John Murfee Worsham Film Screening | Orson Welles |
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| Description: | For this year's Murfee Worsham screening, we present Orson Welles' film noir masterpiece which Charleston Heston plays a noble Mexican narcotics cop and the director himself plays one of the most outlandish villains in screen history.Also starring Marlene Dietrich, Janet Leigh, and a host of cameos. “Welles’s first American production in a decade is a garish, flamboyant thriller which has something but not very much to do with drugs and police corruption in a border town. What it really has to do with is love of the film medium and its stylistic possibilities; and if Welles can’t resist the candy of shadows and angles and baroque décor, he turns it into stronger fare than most director’s solemn meat and potatoes” – Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the public |
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| Sept. 22 7:00 PM
| FRENCH SHORT FILMS | | Various Directors |
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| Description: | A series of notable short film from France, sponsored by Consulat général de France. Titles include: SKHIZEIN an animated film about what would happen if a 150 ton meteorite fell on you, (directed by Jeremy Clampin)| STRICTETERNUM a film about strange happenings and de ja vu in the suburbs, (directed by Didier Fontan)| ENTERTRAINMENT an animated film about what happens on a train when it breaks down unexpectedly, (directed by Emilie Sengelin) | ECHO, a film about a woman, alone in an apartment hears strange inexplicable noises and becomes obsessed by them (directed by Yann Gozlan) | MANON ON THE PAVEMENT, what has happened to Manon? Has she been in an accident? (directed by Elizabeth Marre, Olivier Pont) | THE HOLY FEAST, an animated film about big ogre celebration (directed by Anne-Laure Daffis and Leo Marchand) |
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| Sept. 18 8:00 PM
| Best of 2009 screening from the annual AV SWAP: Houston Artists | | various |
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| Description: | A showcase of the best of the 2009 entries from the annual film and music exchange. | | Additional Information: | http://www.theavswap.com |
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| Sept. 16 7:00 PM
| Pray the Devil Back to Hell | The Common Reading @ Rice film screening | Abigale E. Disney and Ginny Reticker |
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| Description: | This year's Common Reading is The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood, by Helene Cooper, a memoir of a difficult upbringing in war torn Liberia. To supplement the reading we bring you this extraordinary story of a small band of Liberian women who came together in the midst of a bloody civil war, took on the violent warlords and corrupt Charles Taylor regime, and won a long-awaited peace for their shattered country in 2003. Sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students, with special thanks to Matt Taylor. | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the public. |
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| Sept. 15 7:00 PM
| D Tour | Houston PBS Community Cinema | Jim Granato |
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| Description: | Pat Spurgeon had big dreams to make it as a rock musician. Just as his career was about to take off, he suffered from an incredible setback as his kidney begins to fail and he's faced with throwing his dreams away. Follow Pat on his emotional search for a living organ donor and the challenges of finding a viable match. Pat's choice to keep touring and working toward the band's goals is put to the test as he performs dialysis on the road daily and makes his health a top priority. | | Additional Information: | Free and Open to the public. The Houston PBS Community Cinema Program schedule is subject to change, so please check the website at for more information. |
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