JUNE 26, 2008

SORA AND CHARU GO TO THE FELIX AWARDS

Natalie Kim, Director

Sora and Charu go to the Felix Awards is a short mockumentary about two best friends who are in competition for the "Best Actress Award" for film schools in NYC.

- AND -

USER

Sally O'Grady, Director

User is an 8 minute, experimental documentary about a street based prostitute and an unlikely moment of warmth she experiences. 

About the filmmakers:

Natalie Kim is an actress and filmmaker. She has appeared on Law and Order and MTV as well as in numerous TV ads, industrials, and theatre roles. She is currently filming the role of Rose in the feature film, The Hanji Box, starring Amy Irving and Baek Yoon Shik.

Sally O'Grady is an independent filmmaker and associate producer for TV documentaries. She has worked for PBS, A&E and The Discovery Channel. She has completed 2 short films that have screened at Festivals from Australia to Germany. Her 2001 short, The Art Of Fighting, won best documentary at the National Student Film festival (Australia)in 2001. She is presently shooting a documentary about 3 generations of rebels, a hate crime and exterminating which takes place in Queens, NY.

APRIL 30, 2008

THE VISITORS

Melis Birder, Director

Moderator: Alison McMahan

About the film:

The Visitors is a 58 min documentary in post-production about passengers of a charter bus that leaves New York City every weekend to visit prisoners in various prisons in Upstate New York.  The film reflects on the struggles of a unique group of people, mostly women who live at the intersection of confinement and the free world. The director, a former prison visitor herself, - follows the coordinator of the bus, Denise Robinson, whose husband is coming home soon after 17 years of imprisonment.

About the filmmaker:

Melis Birder moved to New York from her native Turkey in 1994. She became interested in documentary filmmaking at the New School where she graduated with a MA degree in Media Studies. She started her career as an educator and ran video programs at various NYC public schools. She has also been commissioned to direct and produce documentaries for libraries and other community groups dealing extensively with social issues.  The award winning documentary she shot in Iraq in 2004, The Tenth Planet: A Single Life in Baghdad was screened in many festivals around the world.  Birder now lives between Istanbul and New York and undertakes different documentary projects in those countries.

APRIL, 2007

POTENTIAL PARTNERS

Mandy Morrison, Director

This is a documentary that explores the hearts and minds of single men and women of varying ages, experiences and attitudes on the subject of relationships, sex, fantasy and intimacy. The film features a host of psychology experts including Dr. Martin Bergmann, a renowned psychoanalyst who in 1989 appeared in the Woody Allen film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. It is a provocative exploration of the emotions and forces that shape the most personal, yet universal of endeavors: the quest for a partner.

MARCH 12, 2007

THE WALL

Mayra Cabrera, Director

 Written by CWNY

Screenwriters Group Coordinator, Maria Cabrera

AND

BLUE SKY

written and directed by Marcia Bujold 

Moderator: Alison McMahan

The Wall is an 8-minute film about a Vietnam war widow who makes a long overdue visit to the Vietnam War memorial in downtown NYC.

Blue Sky, a non-traditional love story, runs 8 1/2 minutes.

FEBRUARY

NY(SEE)

Lili White, Director

Moderator: Alison McMahan

About the film

NY (see) - [a pun substituting the word "see" for the letter "C"] captures today's zeitgeist and is White's first feature-length movie. Eschewing the documentary films' standard of expressing opinion, and made without a script, storyboard or an editing plan, NY (see) reflects what New York stands for: America's cradle of immigration; the site of the 9/11 Disaster; the platform of a genuine international city.

Sponsors of the Show and Grow program have included:

Splash Studios 

(April 2008- present)

 World Wide Audio Inc. & World Wide Post

2007 Selections

JUNE 5, 2007

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS

 AN OLD(ER) WOMAN

Tova Beck-Friedman, Director

 Moderator: Alison McMahan

About the film:

Three octogenarian women artists whose art informs their identity, share their vision and experiences to give us insight into creative energy and vitality that is not hampered by age.

About the filmmaker:

Tova Beck-Friedman is an artist working in the mediums of film, video, photography and sculpture.  Recipient of several grants and artistic residencies, her work has been shown internationally in festival, galleries, on television and on the internet.

MAY 7, 2007

PEACE GON' COME

Ashanti Ngozi, Director

- and -

THE FAT BALLERINA

Alicia Sully, Director

CWNY member Rebecca Lloyd, Composer

Peace Gon’ Come

A short documentary about Stanley Tookie Williams, co-founder of the Crips gang, was convicted of murdering four people, and served 26 years in prison. While serving 6 years in solitary confinement he realized the choice he made in life were wrong, and reached out to youths to not make the same mistakes. Many begged for his clemency, but he was executed anyway.

Fat Ballerina

A short musical fantasy about love, cake,

MARCH 6, 2006

BARE HANDS AND WOODERN LIMBS

Alison McMahan, Director

Moderator: Flavia Fontes

About the film:

A documentary film about former Khmer Rouge Commander Touj Souerly, and Chhem Sip, a Khmer-American who fled Cambodia after years of forced labor under the Khmer Rouge, and their unique collaboration to improve the lives of a village of landmine survivors. Partially funded by McMahan Center Abilities Activists.

About the filmmaker:

Alison McMahan, Ph.D., is a documentary filmmaker and president of Homunculus Productions LLC, a company that produces training films, industrials and documentaries. Recent films include the training film Living With Landmines (2005), and an industrial and a PSA for Pensamento Digital, an NGO in Brazil that provides computers and internet access to poor communities. Her latest documentary is Bare Hands and Wooden Limbs (2007), She is currently in production on a feature length documentary, The Eight Faces of Jane: The Life and Work of Jane Chambers.

From 2001-2003 she held a Mellon Fellowship in Visual Culture at Vassar College where she built a virtual reality environment with a biofeedback interface for CAVEs (computer automated virtual environments). From 1997 to 2001 she was an associate professor, teaching film history and theory and new media at the University of Amsterdam. She is the author of the award-winning book Alice Guy Blaché, Lost Cinematic Visionary (Continuum 2002) and The Films of Tim Burton: Animating Live Action in Hollywood (Continuum 2005).

Show and Grows are test screenings where audiences fill out a questionnaire and then participate in a conversation about the film. This helps the filmmaker improve the film.

If you are a filmmaker this is really an invaluable experience -- also great for everyone else involved, who learn a lot from the process.

The Show and Grow program debuted in 2006 at World Wide Audio. First co-directors by: Pamela Griffiths and Georgia Hilton. First film shown: Bare Hands and Wooden Limbs, Alison McMahan, Ph.D., director. Program moderators have included: Flavia Fontes, Melisse Seleck, and Louise Fleming.

Since 2007, this program has been directed and moderated by Alison McMahan, current CWNY Co-president, author and documentary filmmaker. Since 2008, Show and Grows have been sponsored by Splash Studios.