NOVEMBER 27, 2007

SO CLOSE

Marin Gazzaniga

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

7:00PM

Have you ever loved someone so much it made you actually crazy?

“So Close is a fascinating look into the complexities of abuse and survival from a truly character-based perspective. Marin Gazzaniga and John Conlee are great: powerful performances and very real.”   

- Robert May, producer of The Station Agent

“Very well acted and moving – haunting.”  

- Marilyn Agrelo, director of Mad Hot Ballroom

SO CLOSE

Love hurts. Never more so than in So Close.

Filling out a bureaucratic form in a nondescript waiting room, Claire (Marin Gazzaniga) is jolted by a simple question – and the five strangers sitting nearby become the characters in her recollection of her turbulent marriage to Joey (Tony-nominee John Ellison Conlee). So Close, inspired by interviews, takes the viewer on a stream-of-consciousness journey into the highs and lows of passion gone wrong. It will leave you questioning your own relationships, and wondering how close you could ever come to “crossing the line that shouldn’t be crossed.”

Also starring: Julia Gibson (Michael Clayton, The Exonerated), Perri Gaffney (As The World Turns, Intimate Apparel), Daniel Stewart and Nina Murano.  Music by Al Houghton. Edited by Johanna Witherby. Director of Photography Jon Hokanson. Produced by John Ellison Conlee. Written and Produced by Marin Gazzaniga. Directed by Michael Sexton and Rob Fruchtman.  For more info and to see a trailer: www.soclosefilm.com.

About the filmmaker:

Marin Gazzaniga wrote, produced and acted in the film version of her play So Close, directed by Michael Sexton and Rob Fruchtman. The play, which premiered at Soho Rep in NYC, was the recipient of a Pilgrim Project grant, and was named a “Don’t Miss” critic’s pick in Time Out New York.

Marin is the female lead in Gray Miller’s forthcoming 2K3 (IFP Rough Cut Lab,  www.2k3film.com) and is featured in Julie Talen’s Pretend (Best Fiction Film at Festivalito, MoMA mediascope series, Lincoln Center's Video Festival, The Hamptons, Mill Valley, Vancouver film festivals). Other upcoming film: Three Days in Dublin (Dir. Beth Lauren), Uncertainty (Dir. Scott McGehee and David Siegel).

Other film and television credits include: As the World Turns, Soldier’s Heart, Out of Love (Bogota and Cartagena Film Festivals) and the short film Rumpy (Savannah Film Festival). 

Theater: world premieres of So Close (Soho Rep), What Comes Next (Access Theater), The Bigger Thing (Red Room and Edinburgh Fringe Festival) and workshops of Clean (The Flea). 

She has trained with the Actor’s Center, Bob Krakower, Judith Weston, Adrienne Weiss, Nina Murano, the LAByrinth Theater Company and Naked Angels, among others. These credits have all been since 2001 when Marin returned to acting after getting her BA from Columbia College and working in journalism (while getting her MA in creative writing at night from CUNY).  She has written several books, numerous magazine and online articles and screenplays (her script Will’s Ride was a semi-finalist at the Austin Film Festival) and teleplays (most recently for As the World Turns).

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2007

PARANORMAL - SUPERNATURAL

CIRCLE

Whitney Hamilton

CHERRY VALLEY

Candace TenBrink

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

CIRCLE

Whitney Hamilton

12 minutes

 
Jeff Breggman works for the NSA. He leaves for a quiet weekend at his upstate farm, but it is anything but quiet when strange things begin to happen. All satellite communication is severed; phones, cable, the internet. Chalk drawing of crop circle designs manifest in the basement. Mysterious photos begin to appear accusing Jeff of sinister experiments. When a strange craft lands in one of his fields justice seems to be meted out as beings begin to hunt the accused. 

About the filmmaker:

As a producer, Whitney Hamilton's projects include short films: Flores, Caught in Time and …go I. As a writer/director and producer: Spontaneous Human Combustion (1999), Seeing Red, The Discontent, The Delivery, which went on to the Seattle Underground Film Festival (2000). The Bellwatcher which premiered at the Film Fleadh in New York in March(2001) and Cinema 16 The New Orleans Film Festival. Circle premiered at the Summer Shorts Festival 2002 and was submitted to the Project Greenlight director's contest placing in the top fifty out of two thousand entries 2002. Circle won second place as best sci-fi short at the Dragon Con Sci-Fi Film Festival in Atlanta 2003. It was nominated as best sci-fi short at the Shockerfest film festival in California. My Brother's War, our first feature premiered at the Methodfest Film Festival 2005 – and was nominated for best low-budget indie and for best actress Whitney Hamilton. It went on to the Bluegrass Independent Film Festival, Temeculah Valley Independent Film Festival and New Filmmakers series NYC at the Anthology Film Archives. Whitney has also produced short industrials and spec spots.

CHERRY VALLEY

Candace TenBrink

72 minutes

A look into a real ghost town, Cherry Valley, New York. This film takes the viewer back to revolutionary times when the haunting began in Cherry Valley. Citizens from young to old share their personal accounts with the supernatural spirits as the directors find themselves face to… “face?” with ghosts. Three friends investigate a supposedly haunted house, what they discover changes their lives and belief in supernatural activity forever. With chilling occurrences, ghostly phenomena, and eccentric interviews, Cherry Valley brings the audience along on a discovery of the boundaries that separate our world from that of the supernatural.

Candace TenBrink founded Altos Entertainment, a production company dedicated to producing feature films with strong female content. Cherry Valley, a thrilling documentary about a truly haunted town, is Altos Entertainment’s first full-length film. Prior to producing, Ms TenBrink has had principle roles in eight films, including the highly acclaimed I Was a Teenage Mathlete Until I Met Margo Marris, two plays, and two comedy venues. She was featured in the Sundance 2005 premier of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 ½, directed by Bill Greaves and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh.

Prior to entering the entertainment field, Ms. TenBrink was an equity analyst for William Blair & Co., a highly respected, global investment bank. Among her numerous accomplishments, Candace TenBrink was named “Best on the Street” by the Wall Street Journal in 2001 for earnings forecasts and number two for stock picking.

Ms. TenBrink is an elected member of New York Women in Film and Television, a founding board member and former President of the University of Michigan Entertainment Coalition, a VP on the board of the Michigan (Ross) Business School Alumni Club and is fully committed to improving her community. Candace earned an MBA from the University of Michigan, where her studies emphasized finance and corporate strategy.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2007

 FREEHELD

Cynthia Wade

Two Boots Pioneer Theater 

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

7:00PM

Screening, filmmaker master class and Q&A

followed by

FREE Two Boots pizza, beer/soda  

Please join us for an inspirational evening -- 

a screening of the award-winning short documentary Freeheld, followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Cynthia Wade. If you have never heard Cynthia Wade speak, now is your chance to listen to her sharp, honest and memorable perspective on being a Sundance director, a successful video production business owner and professional camerawoman. This 90-minute program will be followed by an after-party downstairs at the Den of Cin.

ABOUT THE FILM

Lieutenant Laurel Hester is dying.

All she wants to do is leave her pension benefits to her life partner - Stacie, so Stacie can afford to keep their house. Laurel is told no; they are not husband and wife.

After spending a lifetime fighting for justice for other people, Laurel - a veteran New Jersey detective - launches a final battle for justice. Knuckle-biting, dramatic Freeheld chronicles a dying policewoman's bitter fight to provide for the love of her life

About the filmmaker:

Cynthia Wade is a NYC-based documentary filmmaker. Her short documentary Freeheld won a Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and her award-winning HBO documentary Shelter Dogs was broadcast in seven countries.  Wade directed the 1999 Cinemax Reel Life documentary Grist For The Mill, which The Hollywood Reporter called “a delight…full of quirky moments and clever humor” and Variety called “a jewel … extremely comical.”  She was co-producer and principal verite cinematographer for the 1998 PBS documentary Taken In: The Lives of America's Foster Children, which won a duPont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Journalism.  Wade has been a Director of Photography for PBS, HBO/Cinemax, Bravo, AMC, MTV, A&E, Discovery, TNT, Oxygen, LOGO and The History Channel. She received a BA cum laude from Smith College and an MA in Documentary Film Production from Stanford University. Wade runs a video production company and teaches advanced digital cinematography at the New School.

TUESDAY, JULY 24 2007

CREAM O' THE CROP STUDENT FILMS 2007

featuring:

LADIES OF THE LAND

Megan Thompson

TAXISTA

Enrica Perez

THE RED SCARE

Amanda Laws

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

LADIES OF THE LAND

Megan Thompson

NYU Tisch School of the Arts Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television

30 minutes

As small, family farms continue to disappear, and large, mechanized farms dominate American agriculture, a new kind of farmer is sprouting up across the land: women.  The film follows new women farmers in Pennsylvania and Minnesota, exploring the the ways in which they are challenging the traditional agricultural model, the difficulties they face, and the reasons why they love the land.

About the filmmaker:

Megan Thompson made Ladies of the Land while completing her master’s degree at New York University.  A native of Minnesota and Michigan, she has long been interested in issues of health, agriculture and the environment.  

She currently works in television New York City, and is always looking for opportunities to get back out in the field (no pun intended).

TAXISTA

Enrica Perez

21 minutes

Columbia University Film School

"Once in, there's no way out."

This is the story of Alberto, an honest taxi driver who in order to survive in the sordid city of Lima, gets involved in the underground business of buying and selling drunken passengers and to his own surprise ends up becoming a cold-hearted criminal.

About the filmmaker:

Enrica Perez is currently an MFA candidate in Film at Columbia University. A voracious reader, she developed an interest in theatre and drama since her high school years and later on pursued a career in Communications in the University of Lima, where she discovered her passion for filmmaking. As a college student she directed several short films, two of which won prizes for The Best Fiction of 1999 and The Best Aesthetic Presentation of 2000, in the Young Filmmakers Festival sponsored by the national NGO Calandria of Peru. After graduating Enrica worked as an Assistant Director in national TV series and films and later on she was hired to work in the French film Te Quiero and had the opportunity to assist Manuel Poirier, the award-winning director of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. In 2003, Enrica moved to New York to start her graduate studies at Columbia University where she received the prestigious FMI Scholarship from the Film Division, a Directing Faculty Assistant Fellowship and a Teaching Assistantship with Professor Richard Peña, Program Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. As an MFA film student she has directed four short films, one of which was recently accepted in Frameline 31, the San Francisco International LBGT Film Festival. Taxista, her thesis film is the recipient of a Development Award from the 2006 International Short Film Festival La Noche de los Cortos in Lima and was one of the seven Faculty Selects short films of the Columbia Film Festival of 2007 in New York, where she received The Adrienne Shelly Award for Best Female Director.

THE RED SCARE

Amanda Laws

NYU Tisch School of the Arts

Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television

When Molly goes hunting Communists close to home, she gets a different kind of Red Scare.

About the filmmaker:

Amanda Laws grew up in New England and attended the rebel stronghold of Evergreen State College where she majored in Media Studies.  Her films frequently explore the relationships between youth and authority. 

Program Curators: 

Maria Pusateri and Vicki Vasiloupolos

JUNE 26, 2007

CWNY and NYWIFT present...

THE MAKING OF A GLOBAL FILM:
A Master Class with Jennifer Fox 

A Case Study & Sneak Preview of

 FLYING: CONFESSIONS OF A FREE WOMAN

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

7:00PM

Meet Jennifer Fox as she presents a case study and sneak preview screening of a one-hour episode of her acclaimed six-part film, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman.

Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such autonomy to construct a life of their own creation. Yet, the terrain is still rocky and 'choice' does not necessarily bring happiness, let alone freedom.  Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women everywhere.

In this six-hour tour de force, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman, master storyteller Jennifer Fox lays bare her own turbulent life to penetrate what it means to be a free woman today. As her drama of work and relationships unfolds over four years, our protagonist travels to over seventeen countries to understand how diverse women define their lives when there is no map. Employing an ingenious new camera technique, called "passing the camera", Fox creates a documentary language that mirrors the special way women communicate. Over intimate conversations around kitchen tables from South Africa to Russia, India and Pakistan, she initiates a groundbreaking dialogue among women, illuminating universal concerns across race, class and nationality. Part delectable soap opera, sociopolitical inquiry, and narrative experiments, Flying sweeps us up into an addictive international adventure chronicled with sincerity, innovation and elegance.

Hear how Jennifer trekked solo around the globe, filmed in 17 countries, developed characters and content, raised film funding, secured broadcast on seven networks, international film festivals and theaters, and created a co-production deal with an international programmer.  Jennifer will share what this experiment taught her about the craft of documentary and discuss the business side of creating a six-part personal memoir series -- as a woman. Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman will open theatrically on July 4 at the Film Forum in NYC and is scheduled for a national theatrical and college tour. It will be broadcast on the Sundance Channel in spring 2008.

About the filmmaker:

Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning director, producer, camera woman and educator who has been involved in countless documentaries over the last 25 years. Her first film, Beirut The Last Home Movie, was broadcast in 20 countries and won seven international awards, including Best Documentary Film and Best Cinematography at the 1988 Sundance Film Festival and The Grand Prix at the 1988 Cinema Du Reel Festival, in Paris. She directed the groundbreaking ten hour PBS television series An American Love Story, which received a Gracie Award for Best Television Series and was named "One of the Top Ten Television Series of 1999" by The New York Times and five others major American papers. Her current work, the cutting edge six part film, Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman was made through a unique Danish American co-production and was funded by the Danish Film Institute, TV-2 Denmark, BBC, ARTE, YLE-1, SBS, SVT, ICON & Humanist Channels Netherlands and HBO -- and was awarded a prestigious Creative Capital Grant. Flying had its world premieres at IDFA, in Amsterdam, and the Sundance Film Festival 2007 and is gearing up for its American theatrical premiere in New York City at the Film Forum in July to be distributed around the country for the following 9 months. It will air on the Sundance Channel in the US in Spring 2008. Fox is currently preparing to edit a new feature documentary, filmed over fifteen years, called Learning to Swim, co-produced with the Dutch Buddhist Television Network (BOS). Fox has executive produced many films including the award-winners:  Love & Diane; On the Ropes; Double Exposure; Project Ten: Real Stories from a Free South Africa; Cowboys, Lawyers and Indians; and the soon to be released, Absolutely Safe. She has consulted on numerous documentaries, including Southern Comfort and Stone Reader. Fox is one of the subjects of two documentaries on filmmaking, The Heck With Hollywood! by Doug Block, and Cinema Verite, Defining The Moment, by Peter Wintonick.

Special thanks to NYWIFT 

Terry Lawler, Exec. Dir. 

Simone Pero Audi, and Adella Ladjevardi.

MAY 22, 2007

Poetic interpretations of how love and longing  animates our relationships

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

 7:00PM 

THE LOVERS

Myra Sito Velasquez

KEY CHAIN

Pei-lin Kuo

CONTEMPLATING EMILY

Sarah Shively and Lisa Rothe

I AM AN APARTMENT BUILDING

Lara Azzopardir

THE LOVERS

Myra Sito Velasquez

30 minutes

Taking on the still highly controversial and, at times, dangerous subject of Japan's wartime aggressions, The Lovers is the tale of a Chinese American woman and Japanese man whose passion for each other forces them to confront the legacies of their families in Nanking at the time of the Japanese invasion in 1937.  The Lovers had its world premiere at AMPAS recognized 13th Annual Palm Springs Intl Festival of Short Films & Film Market.

KEY CHAIN

Pei-Lin Kuo

Key Chain is a story about the Electra complex. A fiction film that explores the conflict between subconscious and conscious.

CONTEMPLATING EMILY

 Sarah Shively and Lisa Rothe

Reflecting on a past relationship, Elizabeth Richards, an English as a Second Language teacher writes to the woman who captured her heart some time ago. Jumping back in time, we join Lulu Yao, a 22-year-old modern day Emily Dickinson, who travels from Taipei to New York City. Re-inventing herself for the occasion, Lulu assumes the name “Maggie” and enrolls in English classes. By day, her teacher, Elizabeth shares Dickinson’s poetry in class, and by night, she privately indulges in a deep and wild fantasy affair with the dead poet. 

Maggie’s self-exploration goes more than skin deep as she is emotionally and physically drawn to her teacher. Upon learning that Elizabeth is lesbian, her adventure deepens and she heads down the turbulent path of identity and sexual preference.  Things spin out of control for Maggie, and she suffers an emotional breakdown that takes her out of school but into herself.  Her personal journey becomes poetry while the spirit Emily Dickinson serves as the emotional conductor for the two women’s relationship.

Returning to Elizabeth’s musings on the by-gone affair, we share in her nostalgia about a moment in time in which she played the foreign lover for a distant traveler. While Maggie’s adventurous spirit brought her half-way around the world to learn a fundamental truth about herself, Elizabeth’s role in the affair is encapsulated in the words of a tender, but fleeting poem – as light, cold and passing as the winter snow.

I AM AN APARTMENT BUILDING

Director: Lara Azzopardi

(13 mins)

A reality television show plays in the background of five different apartment units while the realities of life and love play out in the forefront. Five apartments, five different relationships, connected by one TV show and one building. The film recently screened at the Tribeca Film Festival.

About the filmmakers:

Myra Sito Velasquez (The Lovers) is of Chinese, German and Mexican heritage, and was born and raised in Tokyo.  A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Myra's debut film Mother's Blood is the recipient of the Lawrence Kasdan Best Narrative Film Award, Grand Prize and Best Actress Award, Chicks With Flicks NYC and has screened at numerous festivals around the country and abroad. Her feature screenplay Diana is the BlueCat Screemplay Competition Award winning Finalist 2006.  Myra's latest film The Lovers had its world premiere at The 13th Annual Palm Springs Intl Festival of Short Films and most recently at the 13th Sedona Intl Film Festival. Along with developing Diana with a Manhattan- based production company, Myra is in pre-production with her first action comedy short. 

Pei-Lin Kuo (Key Chain) is a filmmaker now settled in New York, born and raised in Taiwan. After graduating with a drama degree in her native land, she worked for a production company in Taipei which made music videos, commercials, and television programs. After four years of doing this, Pei-Lin recalls, "I wanted something new and I wanted more than one culture." She relocated to New York in 2002 and started to pursue her career as a filmmaker. Pei-Lin’s first short film Everyday won the Someone to Watch 2005 from the CineWomen NY and broadcast by PBS ‘Reel New York’ in 2007. Her second short film A.K.A.08494#### was awarded the First runner up and the Most original prizes in the 72 hours film shootout competition presented by MTV World, ACV and AAFL. Her third short film Key Chain was selected into Big Apple Film Festival 2006 and Washington DC Independent Film Festival 2007. Her music video true story was screened at 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

Sarah E Shively (Contemplating Emily) holds an MFA from the Professional Actor Training Program at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a member of SAG and AEA.  Inspired by the knowledge that two actresses cum screenwriters had created the script for the award winning cult classic film, Kissing Jessica Stein, Shively began writing her first feature script, Contemplating Emily. The story was an outgrowth of her work teaching ESOL (English as a Second or Other Language) where she has met many extraordinary people over the past seven years.  Currently she is a teacher of English as a Second Language for the International English Language Institute at Hunter College.  She is the recipient of a 2005 Filmmakers’ Fellowship from the MacDowell Colony. 

Lisa Rothe (Contemplating Emily) enjoys a multi-faceted career as an educator, actor, voice-over artist, and director.  Her recent directing credits include shows for the Summer Play Festival 2005 (Split Wide Open by Christina Gorman) and SPF 2004 (Anatomy 1968 by Karen Hartman); Milwaukee Shakespeare Company (As You Like It); Tony Randall's National Actors Theatre (associate director for The Persians); 59 E 59th Street and Blue Heron Arts Center (premiere of Ellen McLaughlin’s Mermaid); Yale School of Drama (Balm in Gilead); NYU’s MFA acting program (Gum and Top Girls and the world premiere of Amy Kohn’s radio-opera, One Plum Square for WNYC.  Future Projects include Kara Corthron’s Downward Sparkle with Voice & Vision, Ah, Wilderness! and Stop Kiss for NYU’s Graduate Acting Program. Other directing credits include: Agnes of God, The Maids, Dream of a Common Language, Fen, Escape From Happiness, Between Daylight and Boonville, and Bus Stop.

Lara Azzopardi acts as director, writer and executive producer on her directorial debut, I am an Apartment Building. The project began six years ago, shortly after Lara finished high school. It was truly a labor of love for Lara and her producing partner Julia Cohen, who together with their shingle Building Productions made this film happen from day one, under the mentorship of one of Canada’s premier producers Frank Siracusa. Because of the success of I am an Apartment Building Lara signed with Fever Films as a commercial director. New Day, a public service announcement Lara directed for the Bereaved Families of Ontario, came in second at the Big Night Out commercial competition. She is also in pre-production for her next short, Rewind, starring Gemini Award winners Martha Burns and Tom McCamus.  Since graduating with Honors in English Literature and Drama from The University of Toronto, she has received numerous prestigious awards and nominations including The George Metcalf Apprenticeship grant, during which she worked with DVxT theatre for a year as an artistic associate. She has assistant directed under Daniel Brooks, Vikki Anderson, Ross Manson, Lazslo Marton and many others. 

Programmed by Maria Pusateri with assistance from Vicki Vasilopoulos

APRIL 24, 2007

ENVIRONMENTAL SHORTS

Three moving stories of people and

their relationships with the environment,

from nature in all its splendor

to man-made toxic communities.

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

RECYCLED LIFE

Leslie Iwerks

DIRT: KEEPING OUR WILD PLACES WILD

Susan Cohn

and

TEXAS GOLD

Carolyn Scott

TEXAS GOLD

Carolyn Scott

21 minutes

Diane Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman and mother of five, began her fight with the giants of the petro-chemical industry in 1989, when she discovered that her small Texas county had been named the most toxic place in America. Witness to the mass die off of dolphins along the Gulf Coast and the slow death of her once thriving fishing community, Diane boldly took action. Part eco-detective, part muck-raking humorist, this “unreasonable woman” recounts the hunger strikes and civil disobedience that have made her Public Enemy No. 1 to the powerful and lawless industries that routinely spill millions of pounds of toxins into our air, soil & water. The wanton release of deadly chemicals into the Gulf, sealed the fate of many fishermen by employing them in their plants. Exposed to lead, mercury, asbestos and a host of other carcinogens many, like Lucky Bucky, are so riddled with cancer that they can no longer work to support themselves or their families. In response, Diane decides to bottle contaminated water at one of the worst superfund sites in the country and send it back to 'the businessman where it come from'. The result of Diane’s new business venture: Texas Gold. Surviving imprisonment, surveillance and constant harassment—even becoming an outcast in her own community—Diane’s often lonely struggle exemplifies her belief that good intentions are not enough—putting your life at risk is where change happens.  www.texasgoldmovie.com.

DIRT: KEEPING OUR WILD PLACES WILD

Susan Cohn

23 minutes

Marathons are now for lazy folks; Ultraruns (100 miles in 30 hours or less) are the rigour de jour. Dirt documents the Western States Trail 100. A lottery gets you in; something indescribable gets you through. Dirt profiles runners who love running on trails and making a living thinking green as well. Begin thinking these folks are nuts, end wondering when you’ll run it yourself and switch to a green career!

RECYCLED LIFE

Leslie Iwerks

38 minutes

For over sixty years, children have been born and raised here, parents and grandparents eat and survive here… Thousands of families have thrived in the largest and most toxic and dangerous area in all of Central America.  For decades, theuatemala City Garbage dump and its inhabitants (“guajeros”) who recycle the city’s trash have been shunned by society and ignored by the government, until a disastrous and fateful event in January 2005 forever changed the face of this landfill and the many people who’ve called it home.  Through this compelling story, the filmmakers have captured the beauty, humor and remarkable contrast that resonate throughout this vast wasteland of garbage, as generations of families struggle through an ongoing cycle of life. Recycled Life was nominated for an Academy Award and has won six top film festival awards. www.recycledlifedoc.com.

About the filmmakers:

Susan Cohn

Dirt

Susan Cohn has directed, produced and written the documentaries Green Fire: Lives of Commitment and Passion in a Fragile World, and Richard Nelson's Alaska both of which have an environmental focus and were aired on PBS affiliates.  Running Madness, also with an eye to the balance between man and nature, won multiple awards including the prestigious platinum Aurora award. In addition Susan has made other shorter documentaries such as Dirt. Susan is a board member of the Alaska Conservation Foundation and is completing her memoir Arctic Prayers about her time living in the far north. She is also in pre-production planning with her first feature narrative as well.

Carolyn Scott

Texas Gold

Carolyn Scott came to documentary filmmaking from an accomplished career as an environmental educator and activist. A long-time San Francisco and Bay Area resident, she was exposed at an early age to the wonder and power of cinema by her parents who were in the music and film industry. Carolyn founded The Asylum Theatre during her high school years and won full scholarships to study theatre at the University of Denver and in London. She founded the Living Puppet Theatre with grants from the San Francisco Education Fund and studied documentary filmmaking at San Francisco State University as a graduate student. Texas Gold launches Scott’s filmmaking career as an insightful storyteller with a powerful  improvisational directing style. “I believe Michael Moore got it right by taking us away from the ‘talking heads’ genre of documentary by plunging us head first into those deep waters of ‘in-the-moment’ discovery,” says Scott. “You aren’t just listening to activist Diane Wilson recount her trials and tribulations in Texas Gold, you experience Diane Wilson putting her life on the line,” says Scott.

Leslie Iwerks

Recycled Life

Academy Award® nominated director Leslie Iwerks is a third generation filmmaker from a two-time Oscar winning family.  Her recent documentary short film, Recycled Life, has been nominated for an Academy Award and has won six top film festival awards.  Leslie directed, photographed and edited the project, and along with her producing partner, Mike Glad, chronicled the thousands of people who have been living and working in the largest and most toxic landfill in Central America over the last sixty years - the Guatemala City garbage dump. Narrated by Edward James Olmos, the film has received accolades the world over.   Leslie is currently wrapping post-production on a ninety-minute feature documentary about the history of Pixar Animation Studios and a behind-the-scenes look at the computer animation art form they pioneered. The Pixar Story is scheduled for festival release in summer 2007.  Leslie has also co-authored the official 20th Anniversary book on Pixar Animation Studios entitled To Infinity and Beyond-The Story of Pixar Animation Studios, scheduled for release by Chronicle Books in Fall 2007.   Leslie directed, wrote and executive produced Disney’s 20th Anniversary Special for Pixar Animation Studios which aired on ABC on June 3, 2006.  The show stars John Ratzenberger as a curmudgeonly police officer in search of Lightning McQueen, the star of Pixar’s latest film Cars. The show also features Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Billy Crystal and a host of computer animated Pixar characters in an entertaining journey through Pixar’s fascinating history and state-of-the-art animation studio. The Ride is a big-wave reality-adventure surf film that Leslie directed and co-produced, starring Laird Hamilton and five of the world’s top surfers converging in Hawaii for the islands biggest swell in recent history. The 53-minute action-adventure surf film garnered the Best Picture Award at X-Dance Film Festival in January 2004. The Ride has been released on DVD, has aired on National Geographic Television in various countries around the world.   Leslie’s award-winning theatrical documentary for Walt Disney Pictures entitled The Hand Behind the Mouse -The Ub Iwerks Story chronicles the life of Leslie’s grandfather, Ub Iwerks, the original designer and co-creator of Mickey Mouse and Academy Award winning motion picture pioneer. Narrated by Kelsey Grammer, the film has screened in over twenty film festivals and aired on the Bravo Channel and IFC in the fall of 2001 and is currently available on home video.  In addition, Leslie co-authored an accompanying book of the same title which was published by Disney Editions in 2001, and won the 2002 E.G. Lutz Award for top animation book of the year. The Hand Behind the Mouse biography of Ub Iwerks is sold at the Disney Theme Parks, Disney stores, the Disney Cruiseline, and major bookstores.   Leslie is currently developing several new feature documentary projects, a live action feature film, and an animated short film.

Programmed by Maria Pusateri

MARCH 27, 2007

PIONEERING WOMEN AND THEIR STORIES: Alice Guy Blaché Retrospective and a revival of A Jury of Her Peers

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

7:00PM

Alice Guy Blaché 
directing My Madonna, 1915

Alice Guy Blaché  (1873-1968), the world's first woman filmmaker, was one of the key figures in the development of narrative film. From 1896 to 1920 she directed over a thousand films (including over 100 synchronized sound films and twenty two silent features), produced hundreds more, and was the first-and so far the only-woman to own and run her own studio plant (The Solax Studio in Fort Lee, NJ, 1910 -1914). However, her role in film history was completely forgotten until recently.

A HOUSE DIVIDED (Solax 1913) 1 reel (10 mins) Guy's best known film.  A comedy that shows a husband and wife each suspicious that the other is unfaithful, but clearly depicts an equal power balance in marriage.  Amazingly modern in its tone and subject, with sterling performances by Marion Swayne and Billy Quirck as the couple.

OFFICER HENDERSON (Solax 1913) 1 reel (10 mins) Henderson has to cross-dress in order to catch pick pockets that prey on women. Trouble starts when his wife thinks the dress belongs to the Other Woman. An exploration of how identity is gendered. Starring Billy Quirck and Marion Swayne.

CUPID AND THE COMET  (Solax 1911) 1 reel (10 mins) A young girl cross dresses in order to elope. Her father then has to put on her clothes in order to catch her.  The final tableaux shows a range of gender identity: the effeminate minister, the hirsute father in his daughter's clothes, the daughter in men's clothes, the boyfriend, and the minister's mother and sister, from whose point of view the scene is depicted. Starring Vinnie Burns.

About the filmmaker:

Alison McMahan, Ph.D., CWNY Co-President, will give a brief talk about Mme. Guy prior to the screening. Ms. McMahan is filmmaker and film scholar. She is the author of Alice Guy Blaché Lost Visionary of the Cinema, (Continuum 2002). From 1997 to 2001 she taught cinema studies and new media at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and from 2001 to 2003 at Vassar College, NY. She has published widely on early cinema topics and done research for documentaries on early cinema such as The Lost Garden: The Life and Work of Alice Guy Blaché, (1995, National Film Board of Canada, dir. Marquise Lepage), for the Emmy-award winning Into the Light - State of the Arts Series, New Jersey Network, 1995 Produced by David Davidson, Hudson West Productions, aired New Jersey Network, October 15, 1996. She is a consultant for the Alice Guy Blaché retrospective planned by the Whitney Museum for the winter of 2008-2009. She was interviewed as an early cinema expert and did research for the documentary on early woman filmmakers Reel Models: The Women of Early Film, which aired on American Movie Classics Channel.  

A JURY OF HER PEERS

Sally Heckel 

1980

30 minutes

On a desolate American farm in the early 1900's, a farmer is murdered in his sleep and his wife is the prime suspect.  Award winning director Sally Heckel's powerful adaptation of the 1917 Susan Glaspell short story, A Jury of Her Peers, brings to the screen a riveting tale of revenge, women's solidarity, and the arbitrary application of the law.  A 1980 Academy Award (Oscar) nominee for Best Dramatic Live Action Short, A Jury of Her Peers elicits praise for its evocative performances, insightful direction, and its gritty sense of time and place.  Note: A Jury of Her Peers is the short story version of Susan Glaspell's classic one-act play, Trifles.   A year after writing the play, Glaspell rewrote it as a story for magazine publication, retitling it A Jury of Her Peers.

Special thanks to Women Make Movies for making this screening of A Jury of Her Peers possible.

About the filmmaker:

Sally Heckel will participate in a Q&A after the film. Ms. Heckel is an independent filmmaker best known for her award-winning dramatic short, A Jury of Her Peers, adapted from the 1917 play and short story by Susan Glaspell about a farm woman accused of murdering her husband in 1905 midwest America. Heckel adapted, produced, directed and edited the film. Among its awards are an Academy Award Nomination for best dramatic live-action short and Best Dramatic Film from Santa Fe Film Festival. It had distribution in Europe, and has become a classic in the US where it is shown in schools and universities as well as law schools.

Heckel has also made documentaries and animated films. Her sand animation, The Bent Tree, a poetic visualization of a Yiddish folk song, has won several awards, including the Judge’s Award at Sinking Creek Film Celebration, and was shown in Festivals including Filmex in Los Angeles and the Ottawa International Animated Festival.  Heckel’s earlier films, It's Not a One-Person Thing, a documentary about a far-reaching organization of grass-roots cooperatives in the South that grew out of the Civil Rights Movement, Ordinary Days and Lou, both narratives about life in New York City, also won awards including the Judges’ Award at Sinking Creek Film Celebration, the Cine Golden Eagle, and a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. Currently Heckel has just completed Unspeakable, a feature-length non-fiction narrative about her father’s suicide, its effect on her and her family, and her coming to terms with it years later. Heckel has crafted a film in which images and sound work as counterpoints to one another, creating an inner experience of memory and discovery.  
Curators for this program: Alison McMahan and Maria Pusateri

FEBRUARY 27, 2007 

FEMALE SPIRIT RISING

 These three shorts are inspiring examples of how the female spirit asserts itself in the face of injustice and personal setbacks and comes out stronger on the other side.

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

THE ARM

Bita Haidarian 

2005

7 minutes

LA-based filmmaker Bita Haidarian won the Best Film award for The Arm at Australia's Harmony Film Festival, after making the short while studying at a film school there. It captured the hearts of the audience and judges with its childlike perspective on the equality of women and men. The film tells the story of an eight-year-old girl who's sick of having to wash the dishes while her brother gets to mow the lawn. Her plea to swap jobs is ignored by her father because mowing is “for boys”. So she takes matters into her own hands and ends up with a very humorous and telling result.

COVERED GIRLS

Amy Wendel and Janet McIntyre

2002

22 minutes

Covered Girls is a surprisingly frank,bittersweet look at the social, religious and sexual mores of Muslim-American teenage girls in post 9/11 New York. From a Brooklyn mosque to a girls’ basketball game to a Harlem recording studio, one door after another opens to reveal a colorful and startling group of young women. The film won Best Documentary Short at the 2003 Nashville Film Festival.

DEAR TALULA

Lori Benson

2006

33 minutes

Short-listed for this year’s Academy Award nominations, this autobiographical short tells the personal story of Lori Benson, a 38-year-old quintessential downtown New Yorker who, just 14 months after the birth of her daughter Talula, is told she has breast cancer.  Lori experiences her life shift in an instant.  With grace and dignity, Lori invites us to become part of her inner circle, revealing her most intimate thoughts, vulnerabilities and discoveries as she confronts her own mortality.  

About the filmmakers:

Bita Haidarian (The Arm) is an Iranian American filmmaker that grew up in Texas to Baha'i refugee parents.  Her first two student films The Arm and Virgin 72 went on to win multiple awards film festivals around the world. Fresh out of film school, Bita is currently working on Finding Bibi her first feature length documentary.  Bita takes her youthful irreverence and young vantage point of a woman of both east and west sets out on an around the world journey to tell a story all about the east and the west finding common ground through the stories of women. Finding Bibi, smashes worldwide stereotypes about women in the Middle East and is simultaneously a clarion call for the emancipation of women around the world.

Amy Wendel (Covered Girls)

After graduating from New York University Tisch University’s Graduate Film Program, Amy formed Kapok Pictures, LLC with her husband Daniel Meisel. Amy has written and/or directed six short films, three of which (Bodies, Weightless, and Covered Girls) secured national television broadcast in the U.S. and all six of the films were Official Selections at prestigious national and international film festivals.  Her latest film, a sly short comedy and political satire titled Foreign Policy, premiered as Official Selections of the 2005 Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival and 2005 Los Angeles International Short Film Festival.

Janet McIntyre  (Covered Girls)is a graduate of New York University’s Graduate Film Program.  Her documentary Luigi was selected for the Dance On Camera Festival at Lincoln Center in NY.  Other short films of hers have screened at the Seattle Film Festival, the Portland Film Festival, and New York’s First Run Festival.  Janet has directed industrials for Nike, Adidas, and she has choreographed commercials for Hewlett-Packard.  Prior to coming to NYU, she performed with a comedy-improv group in San Francisco and owned her own graphic design business.

Lori Benson (Dear Talula) has worked in feature and documentary film production for over 10 years living between Los Angeles and New York. At 36, Lori became pregnant and decided to stop working after she gave birth. 14 months after her daughter Talula was born, Lori was diagnosed with breast cancer. For the past 3 years, she has been recording her experiences and making Dear Talula. It is her first film as a director and hopefully the last as a subject. "When I was first diagnosed, I received calls of support from other women who had been through it. Women who wanted to offer words of strength and courage, words to help me understand, I was not alone and that I would be alright. Making the film has been my way of offering support and encouragement to other women in my shoes. I have come full circle and it’s an incredible feeling."

Program curated by Maria Pusateri

JANUARY 23, 2007

ANIMATION, AVANT-GARDE

and EXPERIMENTAL FILMS

Films by:

Alys Hawkins

Katerina Athanasopoulou

Judy Lee

Lili White

Margaret  Dolinsky

Two Boots Pioneer Theater

155 E. 3rd Street

www.twoboots.com

ANIMATION

Alys Hawkins

HEREIN

Austria

2004

1:20 minutes

CRYING & WANKING

U.K.

2002

6 minutes

HYSTERIA

U.K.

2001

2 minutes

BUN IN THE OVEN

U.K.

1999

3 minutes

Katerina Athanasopoulou

SWEET SALT

U.K.

2005

6 minutes, 45 seconds

EXPERIMENTAL: MACHINIMA

Judy Lee (DECORGAL)

ADVENTURES IN DATING,

EPISODE 1: FRUSTRATION

U.S.

9:20 minutes

AVANT-GARDE

Directed by Lili White

THE GROUND FROM UNDERNEATH

U.S.

4:20 minutes

GOODBYE SKY, GOODBYE EARTH

4:40 minutes

TREASURE

3:30 minutes 

music by Thomas Parker Williams

SNAKE SCALES or 

THERE ARE NO STRAIGHT LINES

13 minutes

music by Sun Ra

EXPERIMENTAL:

INTERACTIVE MOVIES FOR C.A.V.E.s

(computer automated virtual environments)

C.A.V.E. ART 

Directed by Margaret  Dolinsky

This program is designed to showcase how animated, experimental and avant-garde films can explode our assumptions about cinematic narration, aesthetics, and even the treatment of space. Today, animators are often at the cutting edge of the avant-garde, both in terms of how they see and in their use of technology, both old and new. The films in this program highlight novel uses of point of view and explorations of space using traditional animation techniques (Alys Hawkins), poetic narrative forms and innovative combinations of 2D and 3D animation (Katerina Athanasopoulou), experimental films that stretch our sense of space and time by Lili White, machinima (animation made with a computer game engine, in this case Sims 2) by Judy Lee, and interactive virtual environments for C.A.V.E.s (room-sized 3D virtual environments) by Margaret Dolinsky. Dolinsky and White will be present to introduce their films and for the discussion after the screening.

- Alison McMahan