On July 22nd, P.O.V. will broadcast 9 Star Hotel by Ido Haar, which takes a unique look at the lives of Palestinian workers. Here's a sneak peek.
9 Star Hotel documents the lives of a group of young Palestinian men working illegally as construction laborers in the Israeli city of Modi'in. Caught between Israeli security laws and a Palestinian Authority they see as having failed them, they work for Israeli contractors by day while hiding from police by night. Like youths everywhere, they pass their idle hours talking about love, marriage and future hopes. Israeli filmmaker Ido Haar has crafted a powerful vérité film that illuminates the plight of young men questioning their own culture while struggling to survive in the midst of bitter conflict.
Watch the trailer:
For more previews of 2008 P.O.V. films, check out our TV Schedule.
Maia Ermita is the director of the Media That Matters Film Festival, a project of Arts Engine. Now in its eighth year, the festival brings high-impact shorts and take-action tools to audiences around the country. This year I was lucky enough to serve on the jury of the festival, so I can say with assurance that these films are worth checking out. I invited Maia to tell us more about the festival, and this week's activities.
This year's collection includes some amazing films focusing on such issues as the essential role of youth in a democracy, the burden of war on a young boy's life, the changing face of nomadic life in Tibet and the importance of honeybees on the environment. After watching these films and meeting with the filmmakers, we are proud to provide this platform to celebrate these visions of hope through film.
The world premiere on Wednesday, May 28th will feature 12 new inspiring short films from around the world at the IFC Center in New York City at 7pm. The filmmakers from this latest collection will be participating in a Q&A soon after the premiere, so come out to meet these great new advocates for social change through film. Get your tickets quick!
In case you can't make it to our Wednesday premiere, due to popular demand, we'll be having a second screening on Friday, May 30th at Tribeca Cinemas at 7pm where you'll join many of our partners (including P.O.V.!) for a run of these same 12 films with many of the filmmakers for a follow-up Q&A session. Bring your friends to Tribeca Cinemas this Friday.
And if all of this isn't enough, join us for the official Media That Matters after-party on Saturday, May 31st as festival winner African Underground: Hip Hop in Senegal's filmmaker and featured artists spin tracks and lay down beats at the Rose Live Music center in historic Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
I hope some of you are able to attend our events — but in case you can't, the festival will officially launch online on May 29th.
Stay tuned for more screenings and events around the world with Media That Matters.
We're happy to announce that the winner of the P.O.V. Film Your Issue award is Brandan Odums's New Orleans for Sale, a film that decries suffering as a tourist draw in post-Katrina New Orleans.
Watch the video:
Odums is a 22-year old New Orleans college student who is part of a young filmmaking collective called 2-cent that makes projects to inspire change within young people. When they noticed the gawking tourists who had come to see the devastated 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina, they decided to make a video about the locals' reactions.
In addition to winning the P.O.V. award, New Orleans for Sale also garnered an FYI Jury Award 2008, the NAACP Award and the AFI SILVERDOCS Award.
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
In addition to the exciting tidbit that Michael Moore's next film will be a follow-up to Fahrenheit 9/11, the most enticing news from the Cannes Film Festival, which just concluded, is about an Israeli documentary called Waltz with Bashir. It's a fully animated film by a former Israeli soldier, Ari Folman, who's trying to reckon with the massacre of Palestinians (and his involvement) during the 1982 war in Lebanon. I've been a strong advocate of the brilliant animated work applied to documentaries by the likes of Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal, P.O.V. 2005). The animated documentary has pretty much become a standard, with the likes of Michael Moore (remember the brief history of America in Bowling for Columbine?) and Morgan Spurlock (Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?) using it to strong comic effect.
But in this, Waltz with Bashir, we see the possibility that a fully animated — from start to finish — documentary could be a success. The reviews have been quite positive. It recalls the recent Persepolis, or Richard Linklater's fantastic Waking Life, a trippy film about a boy in a dreamlike state, that was entirely created with rotoscopic technology in which a regular live-action film is shot in video. Animators then "draw" over the images to create an eerily life-like medium. (OK, so maybe when the same technique is used in Charles Schwab commercials it feels more annoying than eerie.)
Director Folman spent $2 million and four years making the film. First, he conducted interviews, then wrote a screenplay in which he stars as himself journeying back into his memories. The script was entirely shot in a studio (so, for example, when he talks with someone in a car, the person on the set holds a prop steering wheel). He then edited the footage into a full feature and broke that footage up into a storyboard of frames. Then, the animation team illustrated all of the frames. You can check out the trailer — I think it looks phenomenal.
Of course, a film like Waltz with Bashir poses all sorts of interesting questions, like is it a friggin' documentary in the first place if it's all reenacted — and animated, to boot?
I'd say yes, but let's wait to see the film. It's going to be released in Israel in June, and it was just picked up by the guys at Sony Pictures Classics, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard. They released the animated films Persepolis and Triplets of Belleville and I know how smart and savvy they can be with unconventional films, so I've got a lot of hope for this one. It's due for release some time this year.
You know who are — you can't get enough word play. You do crossword puzzles on the train, play games of Scrabble in cafes or in the park, or on Scrabulous. Maybe you've read Marc Romano's Crossworld or Stephen Fatzis' Word Freaks, recent books on the worlds of competitive crossword puzzling, and Scrabble, respectively.
But whether you're a hardcore word player, or have only a passing interest, you probably love — or at least appreciate — anagrams: the beauty, the wit, the puzzling satisfaction of how it all fits together. In that case, here's a great little film for you: P.O.V.'s latest entry in the Online Short Film Festival, Ars Magna, by Cory Kelley. The seven-mintue gem, presented in glorious full-screen flash (just click the little black full-screen icon at the bottom of the player), is a little loving tribute to one man's obsession with his ars magna, anagrams.
Looking for more word play? Check out the word-lover's website mentioned in the film, Wordsmith.org. And if this little short merely whets your appetite for more word-play docs, take a look at Wordplay, by Patrick Creadon, a funny, affectionate ode to the New York Times Crossword Puzzle, or Eric Chaikin and Julian Petrillo's Word Wars, about the "tiles and tribulations" of competitive Scrabble. Both are zippy and fun. You can test your anagramming skills while watching, unscrambling the words as the characters on screen do. Do you have any other favorite books, sites or docs on the subject? Let us know — post a comment below!
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
I'll put some of my cards on the table regarding Expelled, the conservative documentary that slams Darwinism and pushes for the Intelligent Design theory of how we all got to be such an evolved, intelligent (please note sarcasm) species. I wrote about it briefly last week, and have appreciated the ensuing dialogue. Now, it looks like the movie won't make it higher than the #12 spot on the documentary box office list, having made $7.3 million, and now clocking about $80/per screen averages on 400 screens. Wait, did I just say $80/per screen averages? Please, someone do more investigating into these theaters that are willing to keep a film going that is clearly not making them more money than what an old reel of Eraserhead or Lair of the White Worm would bring them. (If you don't, I may have to.)
Still, I found Expelled one of the most fascinating documentary filmgoing experiences I've ever had. Largely, because I totally don't buy any of the film's "arguments" and shuddered at its manipulations. The central premise of the film is that there is a vanguard of revolutionary scientists who are being denied the right to explore or express their theories of Intelligent Design, but wait — 1) we're talking about something like six individuals, which is hardly the pogrom the film makes it out to be; 2) they weren't really "expelled," according to various reports; and 3) these aren't really scientists. (It's like saying the Vatican should be censured if it doesn't allow atheists to become priests. Sorry, faith is a prerequisite to getting anywhere in the priesthood, just like having academic and scientific credibility is mandatory to being considered a "scientist.") For a sound debunking of the facts of the film, check out Expelled Exposed. For a defense of the film's beliefs, there's the film's website.
But rather than dismiss the film for its lack of intellectual rigor in the same way that credible scientists, and most of my peers in the doc-media world, have done, I am in awe of its bold — and often competent — appropriation of all the most wonderful filmmaking tools now available. (My jaw dropped when the film credits were stylishly grafted onto Cold War archival footage, using the same technology so impressively deployed in the recent Operation Homecoming.)
I see in this as a new front in the Culture Wars that got so much play in the early 90s. It's moved from books to documentaries, and I think everyone in the doc world should take note.
On October 7, 2008, P.O.V. will air Joanna Rudnick's In the Family. When Joanna tested positive for the "breast cancer gene" at age 27, she knew the information could save her life. She also knew that she would have to make heart-wrenching decisions about whether or not to remove her breasts and ovaries, or risk developing cancer. In the Family is a moving document of one young woman's struggles, and her efforts to reach out to other women while facing her deepest fears.
On May 1st, Congress passed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) bill. On this momentous occasion, Joanna writes in to talk about why the GINA bill is so important, and to introduce us to In the Familiy.
Watch the trailer for the film:
In 2001, at the age of 27, I decided to take a genetic test to find out my odds of getting breast and ovarian cancer. As I pondered what a positive test result would mean to my future, one of my main concerns was the potential for losing my health insurance because of a pre-existing condition.
Even though a positive test result is only a predictor of risk and not a diagnosis of disease, I wasn't confident that the insurance companies would see it the same way. So I tested anonymously, paying out of pocket for the blood test.
It came back "positive for a deleterious mutation," and I worked hard to keep the information out of my medical records, often leading to confused and uninformed conversations with doctors about my future care. I began to think that maybe, just maybe, I shouldn't be living in fear solely because I inherited some bad DNA.
During the process of making In the Family, I hooked up with an incredible group called The Coalition for Genetic Fairness that was working tirelessly to try and pass legislation to protect individuals from genetic discrimination by insurers and employers. This legislation, The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), would offer more than just legal protections; it would conquer the culture of fear that had grown around genetic testing.
After a nearly 13-year battle to pass GINA in some form of another, the bill passed both houses of Congress a few weeks ago and President Bush has promised to sign it into law.
I cried as I watched two hours of the Senate hearings on C-SPAN, during which Senator Ted Kennedy referred to the bill as the most important civil rights legislation passed in the new century. I could see the hundreds of faces of all the women and their families I encountered on the road the last few years and know that they no longer had to live in fear that their genetic information would be used against them.
Instead, we can now focus our energies on early detection and prevention, and living full lives despite our predispositions.
In the Family airs on P.O.V. on Wednesday, October 1. You can sign up to be reminded of the film's broadcast on its preview page.
This spring, WGBH Lab and P.O.V. have partnered to fund 10 independent producers, helping each of them realize ideas for a three-minute short documentary about a 2008 election story. We evaluated almost 100 pitches that reflect a wide range of filmmakers' experiences with the coming election. Everyone at the Lab and P.O.V. was impressed with quality of pitches, and though we had intended to choose five winners, you can see that the number was doubled — congratulations to all 10 producers! We wish them the best of luck, and can't wait to see what they bring back.
The winning entries are listed below. For more information on each producer and their film, click the images; to follow the production process, visit the WGBH Lab Election 2008 site and check back often. The filmmakers are in production through June 6, and rough cuts will be online for review by the Lab community by June 9.
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
Finally caught up with Expelled, the documentary that makes the argument for Intelligent Design, that was released on April 18. The movie stars columnist-humorist Ben Stein, who interviews scientists and other folks in his inquiry to understand if Intelligent Design is a valid intellectual theory and whether those who believe in it have been persecuted. As of my writing this, Expelled had made $6.75 million at the box office, landing it at the number 12 spot in all-time box office for documentary films. That places it, perhaps a little awkwardly, on the list between Tupac: Resurrection and Roger & Me. And it's only going up.
So, folks, let's face it. This is the moment everyone in the doc community was dreading or pretending would never come. The moment when the great advance in the popularity of documentary film also opens the doors to a non-fiction film that, well, does not sit comfortably between a thug rapper and Michael Moore.
At this point, I'd rather not influence the discussion, so I'll just ask: Have any P.O.V. site visitors seen the film? Would anyone care to comment? Anyone?
Today, we continue looking ahead to our upcoming season. On Tuesday, July 15, P.O.V. will broadcast The Last Conquistador, by John Valadez and Cristina Ibarra.
Renowned sculptor John Houser has a dream: to build the world's tallest bronze equestrian statue for the city of El Paso, Texas. He envisions a stunning monument to the Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate that will pay tribute to the contributions Hispanic people made to building the American West. But as the project nears completion troubles arise. Native Americans are outraged — they remember Oñate as the man who brought genocide to their land and sold their children into slavery. As El Paso divides along lines of race and class in The Last Conquistador, the artist must face the moral implications of his work.
Watch the trailer:
For more previews of 2008 P.O.V. films, check out our TV Schedule.
I recently read an article by Dana Gioia titled "Connect the Prose and the Passion." In the article, Gioia explored the etymology of the word "passion," revealing that it comes from the Late Latin word passio, which means "suffering".
What does any of this have to do with documentaries? This month, I attended a screening of Revolution '67 (P.O.V. 2007) hosted by Civic Frame and Alpha Phi Alpha, Inc. at the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The screening was followed by a discussion with April Yvonne Garrett, president of Civic Frame, and filmmakers Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno. Given that Newark, NJ is just across the way from New York City, many audience members had had experiences there as teachers, residents, and visitors. One woman from California recounted her experience living through the Watts and Rodney King riots. "We didn't get a supermarket in Watts until 1989," she added. "The riot was in 1965."
Revolution '67 by Marylou and Jerome Bongiorno
The personal stories that people shared after the screening showed the pressing need for documentaries not only to be seen, but to be discussed. These types of films record a shared history and engage viewers on a personal level. But another thing that the discussion made me realize was the inherently subjective nature of documentaries when an audience member asked, "What is the role of the filmmaker?"
It is always interesting when conflict arises from a screening. Many times, people are just happy to be part of an event or too bound by social norms to complain. However, at the end of this particular screening, there was one gentleman in the audience who was upset over what he perceived to be the filmmakers' hands-off approach to making any real change in Newark. Essentially, he argued that they "made a good film" but still spoke from a pulpit, and not from the trenches. April graciously gave him time to speak, and the filmmakers accepted his critique while offering their own opinions. It may have been a heated, uncomfortable moment, but this exchange also addressed an important point. It heartened me to see that the films we air on P.O.V. are able to entice such provocative commentary and encourage communities to come together through constructive, even if sometimes painful, dialogue.
I know I've digressed a bit, but let us go back and revisit the idea that passion is linked, at least etymologically, to suffering. Perhaps it is the case that when people — whether they are filmmakers or audience members — are passionate about certain subjects, there may be an element of suffering involved; that learning is not always simple, that it can bring us to question our motives and ourselves, and ultimately, that though grappling with different perspectives is complex, it may help us gain a better understanding of difficult issues.
Eric Daniel Metzgar, along with Nell Carden Grey, directed The Chances of the World Changing, which aired on P.O.V. in 2007. The film, a beautiful meditation on an individual's efforts to change the world, follows Richard Ogust, who shared his Manhattan loft with 1,200 turtles and dedicated his life to rescuing the endangered animals. Viewer comments and emails poured in after the film aired — it was clear that The Chances of the World Changing had struck a chord. Eric was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award in 2007.
We were excited to hear that Eric's second documentary film, Life. Support. Music., has just begun the film festival circuit. The film is about Eric's friend, Jason Crigler, one of New York City's most sought-after guitarists. In August 2004, Jason suffered a brain hemorrhage during a concert. That night at the hospital, the doctors told Jason's family — if he makes it through the night, there won't be much left of him. Jason's wife, Monica, pregnant at the time, froze: "Everything completely stopped. I forgot all about the pregnancy. I think I left my body. I remember thinking, 'This cannot be true. I cannot go on without Jason.'"
Days passed, and Jason's family was forced to accept the new dark reality at hand. But they refused to accept the bleak future described by doubtful doctors. So in the face of wrenching despair and horrifying odds, the Criglers made a resolution — Jason would make a full recovery. And thus began the long, grueling, implausible and mystifying journey chronicled in Life. Support. Music.
Watch a trailer for the film:
So far, Life. Support. Music. has screened at Full Frame, Hot Docs, and other festivals, and recently won the Audience Choice Award at the Boston Independent Film Festival. To find out more information, visit the website for the film.
Eric is currently editing his third directorial effort — a feature documentary called Reporter: On the Ground with Nick Kristof. In the summer of 2007, he traveled with two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof through Rwanda and Congo. Eric also photographed this Stick Figure Productions film.
Eric has also recently completed a short documentary, Beholder, as part of Hot Docs' International Documentary Challenge. The film won the "Original Vision Award," as well as "Best Writing" and "Best Use of First Person."
We're looking forward to watching Life. Support. Music. To keep up with Eric's work, visit the website for his production company, Merigold Moving Pictures.
In 2005, P.O.V. aired Jessica Yu's filmIn the Realms of the Unreal. The film is the astounding tale of outsider artist Henry Darger, who, unbeknownst to anyone, had created a 15,000-page novel and hundreds of illustrations that have inspired artists and viewers since their discovery. Three years later, Darger continues to fascinate and astound, and last month, Dargerism: Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger opened at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.
Dargerism is curated by Brooke Davis Anderson, the director and curator of the Contemporary Center at the American Folk Art Museum. Three years ago, we worked with Brooke on one of our favorite website features — an interactive audio tour through several of Darger's works for the P.O.V. In the Realms of the Unrealwebsite. Now Brooke has been kind enough to answer some of our questions about the show at the Folk Art Museum, and Darger's continued hold on our imaginations.
P.O.V.: Tell us about the show you just curated at the American Folk Art Museum — Dargerism, Contemporary Artists and Henry Darger.
Brooke Davis Anderson: The Dargerism show illustrates how Henry Darger has been influential to eleven contemporary artists over the last 25 years. The show examines how one artist has played a role in contemporary discourse in the art world, but one of the underlying themes of the show is also the self-taught artist's movement from the periphery of the discourse to the center. In a way, I'm trying to be playful with this show: I'm suggesting that if so many artists are influenced by Darger, then he can no longer be considered to be on the margins of art history.
The eleven contemporary artists in the show are very diverse — they work in painting, sculpture, video, drawing, photography, etc., and Darger's influence on them are integrated into each artist's oeuvre. In fact, this is the first time the Folk Art Museum has highlighted academically trained artists, and it's also the first time we have exhibited video and contemporary photography.
In terms of Darger's influence, some artists are very taken by the roles girls and women play in the work of Darger. They respond to Darger's powerful Vivian girls by creating their own mythological figures. Justine Kurland, for example, portrays Tom Sawyer-like girls; Amy Cutler forces the girls she portrays into work situations, which harkens back to Darger in subtle ways.
Other artists, like Trenton Doyle Hancock and Yun-Fei Ji, were released to become storytellers when they discovered Darger's work. Both were in graduate school and feeling that their work was too narrative, but then they saw Darger's 15,000 page novel and the journeys of his characters! Yun-Fei Ji said "Darger took the monkey off my back..." while Doyle Hancock said that Darger's work gave him "the permission" to pursue narrative art.
Every Monday, journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
Why can't they just leave Errol Morris alone? I know I'm coming a little late to the conversation, but the guy makes the most sensitive, humanizing films that try to bridge our understanding of human frailty, oddity, evil and injustice. One of his films even got a guy off of death row. And he has masterful control of the camera: his cinematography (one of his current co-directors of photography is Robert Richardson, who also shoots for the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese and Oliver Stone) is exquisite. But, still, they treat him like an arrogant, misguided 5th grader playing in the high school gym.
I recently went to see Standard Operating Procedure, and walked out of the theater in a daze. The movie is a masterful concoction of searing, insightful interviews with the American soldiers responsible for the mistreatment of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, along with well-produced, sophisticated re-enactments of some of the incidents. There are exploding helicopters (culled from a scene from the big-budget Charlie's Angels), computer-generated renderings of ghost-like interrogators, and re-enacted scenes of torture. I was struck by how Morris rips through all the black-and-white newsprint we've read about that notorious prison, and makes it all feel so visceral. I could almost breathe in the conditions both the soldiers and their detainees were in. It felt like a real horror show, like a ghostly torture chamber rendered by M. Night Shyamalan and, maybe even torture-porn provocateur Eli Roth. Which is to say, it made me feel sick. Which is also to say, that it is an amazing accomplishment.
Morris reveals the truth in ways no other filmmaker can. But he is still shunned by so many. When I stood outside the theater, a man asked me, "What did you think?" I knew it was a loaded question. I told him I was moved, and asked him what he thought. "Well, let's just say I'm more from the Maysles school of documentary filmmaking."
OK, whatever. He's got a right to his opinion. But what irks me is how estimable critics such as J. Hoberman of the Village Voice, Richard Schickel of Time and Variety's Todd McCarthy knock Morris for imbuing the subject matter with too much of his "fancy style." And then there are these recent reports from The New York Times that Morris paid his interview subjects, suggesting this makes them compromised sources.
If only people could sit and watch an Errol Morris film without staid preconceptions about what a documentary should be. Morris, like so many documentary filmmakers who are now following his footsteps, isn't so much making a nonfiction film as he is making a film. His work transcends fiction and nonfiction by weaving the two together. And if that's too confusing for the viewer, then he or she is missing out on something vital in our culture. In the age of double-speak where a president can create tax policies and war strategies based on fictions, or a television show such as The Hills can seduce a generation with its seamless merging of fiction and nonfiction into a tasteless but addictive froth, it's best to develop a medium that can use a similar language — but to do so intelligently and with good conscience. Call it homeopathic filmmaking. Morris is treating like with like, and he should be applauded rather than reviled for it.
Ready for some good television that will enlighten, challenge, and inspire you? P.O.V. returns to PBS on 10 PM Tuesday evenings this summer. Take a sneak peek at the films that are coming up in our 2008 season preview:
Irene Villaseñor is P.O.V.'s Youth Views manager. Youth Views is a project that works with youth, educators, and youth-serving organizations to use P.O.V. films as a tool for youth engagement. Irene writes in today to talk about how communities can organize around the 2008 P.O.V. filmElection Dayto reduce voter disenfranchisement, and her own experiences on Super Tuesday with the Asian Pacific American community.
On July 1, P.O.V. will broadcast Election Day, a film by Katy Chevigny that combines 11 stories that were shot around the country on November 2, 2004. The film focuses on how incredibly varied our voting experiences are across the country — we see stories of activists on the Pine Ridge Reservation as they mobilize Native voters, advocates in New York City that want to unleash the voting power of ex-convicts, and a Republican committee man in Chicago that wants to ensure that Republican voters aren't intimidated at polling stations, among other scenes from election day 2004.
This wide-angle view reveals the barriers to civic participation that some communities must overcome in order to have their votes count. The film can be a powerful eye-opener, especially for citizens who blame voters for the electoral scandals in Florida in 2000 and in Ohio in 2004.
Working with this film inspired me to reflect on how my own community, Asian Pacific Americans, struggles with voter disenfranchisement. Since May is Asian Pacific Heritage month, this is one of the best times to delve deeper into our legacies and assess how much progress has been made.
We still have a way to go.
Since 1988, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) has been monitoring our community's participation in local and national elections. In a 2006 report to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (which was created to eliminate literacy tests, poll taxes and other barriers to voting), AALDEF identified that Asian Americans continue to experience racial discrimination, harassment, and institutional barriers at polls.
AALDEF's latest report, Asian American Access to Democracy in the 2006 Elections, cites incidents of anti-Asian voter disenfranchisement in 25 cities across the nation. These statistics called me forth to get involved. On Super Tuesday, I volunteered to survey Asian American voters about their experience, ensure that translators and translated materials were available, refer people to AALDEF's complaint hotline, and speak to the press about the situation.
During my shift, I discussed with the other volunteers how Election Day could be an incredible resource for people who wanted to mobilize communities for the 2008 elections and examine what deters individuals and communities from political life.
If you want to borrow Election Day for a community or classroom screening, sign up on P.O.V.'s Community Events Planner. For information on a range of election-year issues, check out P.O.V.'s Why Vote? website. And if you would like to get involved with AALDEF's Asian American Democracy Project, visit their website for more information.
I want to know who will stand up to Rhode Island & remove that "awful" word "Plantation", on every l... More » susie shaw r.i. resident
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October 10, 2008
I want to know who will stand up to Rhode Island & remove that "awful" word "Plantation", on every l... More » susie shaw r.i. resident
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October 10, 2008
Hi Paul,
The quote which begins Up the Yangtze is:
By three methods may we learn wisdom:
First, by... More » Andrew Catauro
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October 10, 2008
Hi! can anyone remember that quote of Confucius in this film ? Thanks,Paul. More » Paul
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October 10, 2008
I was on a Yangtze cruise in May 2007. I was curious about the conditions of those who served us ve... More » Nancy C
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October 10, 2008
Come to a screening of Soldiers of Conscience, and learn more about conscientious objectors. Visit the KNPB local screenings page for more information.
Hope everyone rested up over the weekend in time for all of the events happening at 
In addition to the exciting tidbit that Michael Moore's next film will be a follow-up to Fahrenheit 9/11, the most enticing news from the Cannes Film Festival, which just concluded, is about an Israeli documentary called Waltz with Bashir. It's a fully animated film by a former Israeli soldier, Ari Folman, who's trying to reckon with the massacre of Palestinians (and his involvement) during the 1982 war in Lebanon. I've been a strong advocate of the brilliant animated work applied to documentaries by the likes of Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Jessica Yu (
But in this, Waltz with Bashir, we see the possibility that a fully animated — from start to finish — documentary could be a success. The reviews have been quite positive. It recalls the recent Persepolis, or Richard Linklater's fantastic Waking Life, a trippy film about a boy in a dreamlike state, that was entirely created with rotoscopic technology in which a regular live-action film is shot in video. Animators then "draw" over the images to create an eerily life-like medium. (OK, so maybe when the same technique is used in Charles Schwab commercials it feels more annoying than eerie.)
But whether you're a hardcore word player, or have only a passing interest, you probably love — or at least appreciate — anagrams: the beauty, the wit, the puzzling satisfaction of how it all fits together. In that case, here's a great little film for you: P.O.V.'s latest entry in the Online Short Film Festival, 
On October 7, 2008, P.O.V. will air Joanna Rudnick's 
This spring, 
I recently read an article by 
Eric Daniel Metzgar, along with Nell Carden Grey, directed 
I recently went to see 
Irene Villaseñor is P.O.V.'s Youth Views manager. 
