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Opening Night Film: Molly and Mobarak
Tom Zubrycki. 2003. 85 min. Video. (Australia) U.S. Premiere.
Thursday, November 6 - 7:00 p.m. Program F1
At the heart of this story of war, refuge, and national identity is the tale of a young man in love. Mobarak, an Afghani refugee in Australia, is torn between ties to his homeland and a young Australian woman with whom he forms a sometimes painfully close bond. Against the backdrop of a community divided by xenophobia, Mobarak struggles to balance the liberating lifestyle he encounters in his new home with his homesickness and outsider status in a culture radically different from his own.
Closing Night Film: Valley of Tears
Hart Perry. 2003. 78 min. 16mm. (U.S.) N.Y. Premiere.
Sunday, November 9 - 7:30 p.m. Program F 20
In 1979, Mexican-American onion farmers in the town of Raymondsville, Texas, engaged in a strike for a living wage. The town has grappled with the repercussions of the onion strike ever since, as the Mexican-American community battles a small but entrenched Anglo-dominated power structure. Original footage of the 1979 strike underscores the deep roots of community activism in Raymondsville, capturing a struggle for basic rights that is only gradually being won.
No Film Left Behind: Orphan Cinema
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Preservationists began using the term "orphan" a decade ago to refer to motion pictures abandoned by their owners. Now archivists, filmmakers, scholars, curators, collectors, lab experts, and enthusiasts have embraced the concept, and recently an alliance was formed to save, screen, and study orphan films. This eclectic league expands the rubric to include all manner of neglected cinema: amateur, educational, ethnographic, and industrial films; silent, experimental, and independent work; outtakes, newsreels, home movies, and other ephemeral footage. What makes this movement distinctive is the way in which participants dissolve the boundaries between archive, art, and academy. Gregorio Rocha scoured the world's archives to assemble The Lost Reels of Pancho Villa (Friday, November 7 - 6:30 p.m. Program F2). Artist Bill Morrison reanimated a decaying nitrate print of a silent feature to craft his haunting new short, The Mesmerist (Friday, November 7 - 6:30 p.m. Program F2). Scholar Amy Staples combed through corporate and museum holdings to rediscover an unwritten history of expeditionary films made not for anthropologists but for popular audiences. She will present the film Wakamba (Sunday, November 9 - 1:00 p.m. Program F14), by Edgar Monsanto Queeny, from the American Museum of Natural History archive. Collectively, these creative interdisciplinary efforts to save orphan films are transforming our conceptions of cinema and its history.
Rite of Passage or Women's Rights?
Saturday, November 8 - 2:00 p.m. Program F6
Saturday, November 15 - 12:30 p.m. Program F21
The terms themselves are politically charged: female circumcision, genital cutting, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). Within some cultural contexts the practice in question is a rite of passage largely performed by certain Muslim and Christian groups and in some traditional African religions; within other contexts it represents a human rights abuse. The Day I Will Never Forget, by acclaimed filmmaker Kim Longinotto, explores this issue within a diverse community in Kenya where recent legislation outlaws the practice if the girl involved does not consent to it. Following the second screening, there will be a roundtable of women bringing together a range of voices from anthropology to activism who address some of the current thinking on the subject.
Where is Korea?
 | | North Korea: Beyond the DMZ |
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Two special programs of the Festival provide different windows on Korea, a divided nation since 1945. There will be a special advance screening of the film North Korea: Beyond the DMZ (Sunday, November 9 - 5:00 p.m. Program F16) by JT Takagi and Hye-Jung Park, in which a Korean-American woman, having discovered that she has close relatives in the north, decides to make the trip and assess the "enemy" for herself. What she finds is a surprisingly familiar culture that transcends political divisions. The film will be followed by a roundtable discussion with the directors, participants in the film, and guests who will discuss the film both in relation to Korean hopes for peace and reunification and the alarming prospect of renewed hostilities. In addition, there will be a rare opportunity to experience the Dongnae Yaryu: Korean Masked Dance Troupe (Sunday, November 16 - 12:00 p.m. Program F26), some of south Korea's finest performers of traditional masked dance drama and bearers of Korea's long tradition of peasant wit and social satire. A question-and-answer session will follow the performance.
Appalshop in China
Saturday, November 8 - 12:30 p.m. Program F10
Appalshop in China is part of a documentary filmmakers' exchange between Appalshop, the Appalachian media and arts collective in eastern Kentucky, and filmmakers from Sichuan and Yunnan Provinces in southwest China. A regional exchange across international borders, this experiment in remapping areas of shared concern, including approaches to filmmaking, environmental issues, women, labor, and the representation and preservation of local cultures, has filmmakers in both hemispheres examine their role in the face of globalization. The screening of Liu Xiaojin's Mask: A Field Report on Masked Performance will be followed by a discussion with the filmmaker and Appalshop filmmakers. Excerpts from the films they screened for their Chinese counterparts will be shown during the discussion.
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