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The Hort Celebrates Black History Month
Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai
A Film by Alan Dater and Lisa Merton
Tuesday, February 28
Taking Root tells the story of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya and its founder Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist and first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Professor Maathai discovered her life's work by reconnecting with the rural women with whom she had grown up. They told her they were walking long distances for firewood, clean water was scarce, the soil was disappearing from their fields, and their children were suffering from malnutrition.
'Well, why not plant trees?' Maathai suggested. These women found themselves working successively against deforestation, poverty, ignorance, embedded economic interests, and government corruption, until they became a national political force that helped to bring down Kenya's 24-year dictatorship.
Through TV footage and chilling first person accounts, Taking Root documents the dramatic confrontations of the 1980s and '90s and captures Maathai's infectious determination and unwavering courage. Cinema verité footage of the tree nurseries and the women and children who tend them brings to life the confidence and joy of people working to improve their own lives and ensure the future and vitality of their land.
Taking Root captures a world-view in which nothing is perceived as impossible and presents an awe-inspiring profile of Maathai's thirty-year journey of courage to protect the integrally connected issues of the environment, human rights, and democracy.
Alan Dater and Lisa Merton have been working together on the production of documentary films since 1989. Their productions include: Home to Tibet, a film about a Tibetan refugee's return to his homeland, shown on many PBS stations, and at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam; Bridge of Fire, the story of the collaboration of a Japanese potter and a Vermonter potter, winner of a Cine Golden Eagle and The Best Media Work at the Montreal Festival of Films on Art, also screened at the Museum of Modern Art and the Louvre; and Wolf Kahn: Landscape Painter, a portrait of the well known American painter, winner of a Cine Golden Eagle; and The World in Claire's Classroom a documentary on a veteran Vermont public school teacher’s extraordinary vision of teaching children how to appreciate diversity, and how to respect themselves and others.
Doors open at 6:00pm;
Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Free
RSVP to info@thehort.org
Back to the Soil
A Film by Kwon Woo-jung
Tuesday, January 10
Ten years ago Lee Geun Hyuk, along with his wife and infant daughter, left the city for South Korea's Chungcheong province to begin a new life in farming. Back to the Soil is an emotionally engaging portrait of the young couple's challenges in starting a new life as well as a revealing depiction of a rapidly changing agricultural system that threatens to destroy traditional farming methods. On a more personal level, the film shows how Lee's fight for his beliefs creates tensions between him and older, more apathetic farmers in the community, and how his newfound political militancy creates emotional strains between him and his wife.
Lee harbored no romantic illusions about becoming a farmer, having been born and raised in a farming family. He believed strongly in the importance of traditional agriculture and in the urgent need to organize a farmers' movement to protest new government policies that abandon small farmers in favor of a globalized agribusiness, a trend against which Lee is valiantly striving to sustain and revitalize traditional farming. Back to the Soil dramatizes a situation facing small farmers not only in Korea but also throughout the world.
Back to the Soil, Kwon Woo-jung’s first feature documentary, won the Human Rights Film Award of the Year in 2005. Kwon later directed a segment of Earth’s Women, the interweaving story of three women who face the challenges of being female farmers in rural Korea. Her long focus on families and their connection to the environment has given her both a successful career and a rewarding one.
To produce Back to the Soil, documentary filmmaker Kwon Woo-jung spent a year living with and filming the Lee family, chronicling with remarkable intimacy both their challenges and victories, agricultural and personal.
Doors open at 6:00pm;
Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Admission: free for members;
$5 for non-members
Register online or email info@thehort.org
Women in the Dirt
Directed by Carolann Stoney
Thursday, November 17
Landscape frames our days: trees or flowers, sidewalks and walls, city parks or private gardens. But who envisions this framework for our daily lives? Women in the Dirt is a documentary about groundbreaking landscape architects. Their work ranges from intimate, jewel-like gardens to vast urban projects. Artists and scientists, these women bring to their work awareness of sustainability, function and beauty. Women in the Dirt reveals how these self-described “masters of the obvious” create the sublime.
Women are influencing the profession of landscape architecture more today than ever before. Women in the Dirt highlights the work of seven award-winning women who have made their mark in the field: Mia Lerher, Andrea Cochran, Cheryl Barton, Isabelle Greene, Katherine Spitz, Pamela Palmer, and Lauren Melendrez. Though each has a unique body of work, their concerns overlap in the realm of sustainability and enduring design.
Join us for a discussion after the film with Achva Stein. Stein is a Fellow of the American Society of Landscape Architects and a practicing professional who has taught and worked in the US, Europe, Israel, India and China. She is the founding Director of the Graduate program in Landscape Architecture at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York, where she is a member of the faculty in both Landscape Architecture and Urban Design.
Carolann Stoney is a landscape architect and a lifetime member of the Mediterranean Garden Society. While studying landscape architecture, Carolann became aware of the need for information about women in the profession. The short film she produced as a student won an award, and is the basis for this documentary. Carolann has a passion for sharing good design and sustainable gardening practices within all climate zones. Her own garden follows sustainable practices of low-water requirements, recycling of materials, minimal maintenance requirements, and extraordinary beauty.
Doors open at 6:00pm;Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Admission: Free for HSNY and ASLA members; $5 for non-members
Register online or RSVP to info@thehort.org
The Inheritors
Directed by Eugenio Polgovsky
Thursday, October 20
Part of National Hispanic Heritage Month at The Hort
One of the most highly praised and awarded Mexican documentary in many years, The Inheritors (Los Herederos), by Eugenio Polgovsky, immerses us in the daily lives of children who, with their families, survive only by their unrelenting labor.
The film takes us into the agricultural fields, where children barely bigger than the buckets they carry work long hours, often in hazardous conditions. They pick tomatoes, peppers, or beans, for which they are paid by weight. Infants in baskets are left alone in the hot sun or are breast-fed by their mothers while they pick crops.
The Inheritors also observes other labor routines, including the production of earthen bricks, sugar cane cutting, firewood gathering, plowing fields with oxen, and planting crops by hand. More artistic endeavors documented include the carving of wooden figures and the weaving of baskets to sell.
A contemplative journey through the lives of the working children in the Mexican countryside as, like their forefathers, they attempt to survive a perpetual cycle of inherited poverty.
Beautifully photographed and vividly captured, this is a world where everyone works, from the frailest elders to the smallest of toddlers. The Inheritors depicts a cycle of poverty passed on from one generation to the next.
Eugenio Polgovsky was born in Mexico City in 1977. In 1994 he won the world photography contest “Living together,” organized by UNESCO. He studied directing and cinematography at the Centro de Capacitación Cinematografíca in Mexico City, graduated cum laude. His work as a director comprises short films and documentaries. He has also worked as cinematographer in documentaries and fiction films. “Tropic of Cancer”, his first documentary, won several prizes around the world. In 2004 Polgovsky received Mexico’s National Youth Prize. His new documentary,”The Inheritors,” produced with support of the Hubert Bals Fund and Visions Sud Est and had its world premier Venice Film Festival. The Inheritors was his first film invited to participate at the Berlin Film Festival and has won numerous awards and honors.
Doors open at 6:00pm;Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Admission: Free
To register: email info@thehort.org
Urban Roots
Directed by Mark MacInnis
Wednesday, July 27
Co-Sponsored by Praxis Housing Initiatives, Inc.
The industrial powerhouse of a lost American era has died, and the skeleton left behind is present-day Detroit.
But now, against all odds in the empty lots, in the old factory yards, and in-between the sad, sagging blocks of company housing, seeds of change are taking root. A small group of dedicated citizens, allied with environmental and academic groups, have started an urban environmental movement with the potential to transform not just a city after its collapse, but also a country after the end of its industrial age. Urban Roots is the story of a group of dedicated Detroiters working tirelessly to fulfill their vision for locally-grown, sustainably farmed food in a city where people -- as in much of the county -- have found themselves cut off from real food and limited to the lifeless offerings of fast food chains, mini-marts, and grocery stores stocked with processed food from thousands of miles away. The people of Detroit have taken on the enormous task of changing this for themselves, and to under-stand their story is to understand how we can change it for us all.
URBAN ROOTS, directed by Detroit-native Mark McInnis is a documentary that tells the powerful story of a small group of unique individuals involved in Detroit’s urban agricultural movement.
The film follows the inspiring stories of several agricultural programs, each one designed to address a specific issue. Not only are the organizations amazingly productive and emotionally driven, but the people tilling the soil and picking the harvest have fantastic stories to tell.
Film starts promptly at 7:00pm
Admission: Free
To register: email info@thehort.org
A Peter Mettler Double Feature:
Petropolis - Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands & Balifilm
Thursday, May 19
Petropolis - Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands
Shot primarily from a helicopter, filmmaker Peter Mettler's "Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands" offers an unparalleled view of the world's largest industrial, capital and energy project.
Canada's tar sands are an oil reserve the size of England. Extracting the crude oil called bitumen from underneath unspoiled wilderness requires a massive industrialized effort with far-reaching impacts on the land, air, water, and climate.
It's an extraordinary spectacle, whose scope can only be understood from far above. In a hypnotic flight of image and sound, one machine's perspective upon the choreography of others, suggests a dehumanized world where petroleum's power is supreme.
Balifilm
balifilm was originally commissioned as a stage performance, created from diary images and sounds collected in 1990 and 1992 by Peter Mettler on the island of Bali. The soundtrack is a live recording of eight Gamelan musicians playing the bronze and wooden instruments of Indonesia during the projection of the film. balifilm is a personal, lyrical observation and expression of the creative pulse of an extraordinary culture.About Peter Mettler:
From the very beginning of his career Peter Mettler has created films deemed impossible to make, yet readily appreciated once they exist. A key figure in the critical wave of 80's Canadian filmmakers, Mettler produces works which elude categorization. Melding intuitive processes with drama, essay, experiment or documentation, his films hold a unique and influential position in creative expression not only in film but also in new art forms where cinema and other disciplines merge.
He is active in the development of community networks which foster and share the growth of innovative creative forms and new means of production and distribution which will allow the independent artist to reach his or her particular audience while lightening the financial and ideological pressures of the commercial market.
Doors open at 6:30pm;
Film starts promptly at 7:00pm
Hort Members $5; Non-members $7 in advance, $12 at the door
Register online or email info@thehort.org
FOOD DESIGN
Directed by Martin Hablesreiter and Sonja Stummerer
Thursday, April 21
The sound of sausage: When a bite produces a distinct crunch, they taste particularly good. Fish sticks, on the other hand, don’t make such great noises, but they can be arranged nicely in the pan. And why tea biscuits must have precisely 52 notches is still not clear.
Designers create clothes, furniture, cars and all kinds of useful items. Food designers work on things to eat, giving them a certain style and function. They not only make sure that food and drink fill our stomachs, but also that the eating process is practical and appeals to all the senses—so that we’re hungry for more.
Is it merely a coincidence that bologna fits perfectly onto a slice of bread, and that when combined, they make up a popular snack? The TV documentary FOOD DESIGN shows how form, color, smell, consistency, the sounds made during eating, manufacturing technique, history and stories influence food design. Should foodstuffs be considered designer products in the same way as Armani suits, Alessi coffee cups and Ferraris? FOOD DESIGN makes a case for a design discipline that has received little attention, inviting its audience to take part in a sensual journey through the wonderful world of food.
Good design is easy to produce and simple to transport, gives consumers what they want, performs a number of functions and looks good. Food design takes something our ancestors have done for thousands of years to a professional level: transforming what we eat.
About the Filmmakers:
Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter founded the interdisciplinary architecture studio honey&bunny productions in Vienna in 2003. They have developed and constructed roof expansions, directed and edited FOOD DESIGN – the film, curated the exhibition "food design" for Vienna and Graz and taken part in numerous single and group shows. They have given a number of international lectures and taught at schools including Bukarest, Romania; Istanbul, Turkey; and Chennai, India.
Doors open at 6pm;
Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Hort & ASLA Members $5; Non-members $7 in advance, $12 at the door
Register online or email info@thehort.org
New York City Premiere:
Milking the Rhino
Featuring special appearance by director David E. Simpson
Thursday, March 17
Charting the collision of ancient lifestyles with Western delusions of wildlife conservation, Milking the Rhino tells the story of rural Africans in the midst of deep cultural change. The clichés of wildlife documentaries – a ferocious kill on the Serengeti, warnings about endangered species – all ignore a key feature of the African landscape: villagers.
Milking the Rhino tells a more nuanced tale of conservation in post-colonial Africa. The Maasai tribe of Kenya and Namibia’s Himba – two of the oldest cattle cultures on earth – are emerging from a century of “white man’s conservation,” which turned their lands into game reserves at the expense of local people. Having long borne the costs of wildlife conservation while reaping few of the benefits, the two tribes are now at the forefront of a revolution in grass-roots conservation, forging a new way to self-sufficiency. Milking the Rhino depicts real people at the cutting edge of community-based conservation, a new paradigm in which, as the host of an eco-lodge in Kenya says, “we never used to benefit from these animals, but now we milk them like cattle.”
We are honored to present the NYC premiere of "Milking the Rhino" and to host director David E. Simpson as our guest. Please join us after the premiere for a question & answer session with the director.
About the Filmmaker:
David E. Simpson has crafted award-winning films for twenty-five years. As a producer, director and editor he attempts to use his films to move viewers’ hearts and minds regarding crucial human issues. He co-produced and directed the award-winning When Billy Broke His Head, a documentary about disability culture. More recently he co-produced and edited Forgiving Dr. Mengele, about an Auschwitz survivor’s controversial campaign of forgiveness, and Refrigerator Mothers, the story of a generation of mothers who raised autistic children.
www.milkingtherhino.org
Doors open at 6pm; Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Members $5; Non-members $7 in advance, $12 at the door
REGISTER ONLINE or email gpisegna@hsny.org
FLOW
Directed by Irena Salina
Thursday, February 17
"Water is the very essence of life.
It sustains every living being on this planet and without it, there would be nothing…"
FLOW is Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st century - the world water crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world’s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.
Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question ‘Can anyone really own water?’ Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.
About the Filmmaker:
Born in France, Irena Salina started her career at 15 as a radio journalist in Paris, then worked in production in various capacities on numerous US films before writing and directing her first short, See You on Monday, sponsored by LifeTime Television for the Hamptons Film Festival. Her first film, Ghost Bird: The Life and Art of Judith Deim (2000) is an award-winning documentary that delves into the remarkable life of St. Louis-born artist Judith Deim. GhostBird was featured at many festivals, won Best Documentary at the 15th Fort Lauderdale Film Festival, the Presidents’ Award at Mexico’s prestigious Ajijic Film Festival, and is an evergreen audience favorite on the Sundance Channel.
In the Light of Reverence
Directed and produced by Christopher McLeod
Co-produced by Malinda Maynor
Thursday, January 20
Ten years in the making, In the Light of Reverence explores American culture’s relationship to nature in three places considered sacred by native peoples: the Colorado Plateau in the Southwest, Mount Shasta in California, and Devils Tower in Wyoming. Rich in minerals and timber and beloved by recreational users, these "holy lands" exert a spiritual gravity which pulls Native Americans into conflicts with mining companies, New Age practitioners, and rock climbers. Ironically, all sides see themselves as besieged. Their battles tell a new story of culture clashes in an ancient landscape. In the Light of Reverence juxtaposes reflections of Hopi, Wintu and Lakota elders on the spiritual meaning of place with views of non-Indians who have their own ideas about how best to use the land. The film captures the spiritual yearning and materialistic frenzy of our time.
About the Filmmakers:
Christopher (Toby) McLeod has produced three award-winning, hour-long documentaries, all broadcast on national television: The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area?, Downwind/ Downstream, and Poison in the Rockies. Toby has a Masters Degree in Journalism from U.C. Berkeley and a B.A. in American history from Yale. In 1985, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for filmmaking, and his U.C. Berkeley masters thesis film Four Corners won a student Academy Award in 1983.
Malinda Maynor is a Lumbee Indian from North Carolina, and has made several award-winning films-Real Indian and Songs of Faith-about her Lumbee heritage. She is a graduate of Stanford's Masters program in Documentary Film and Video and holds a B.A. in American history and literature from Harvard.
A Tribute to Mark Lewis
The Natural History of the Chicken and
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
Thursday, December 16
Unlike many other producers of nature films, Mark Lewis makes films that do not attempt to document the animals in question or their behaviors, but rather the complex relationships between people, society and the animals they interact with. We have chosen two such films that both endear and edify us to the human/animal condition. Join us for a double feature screening of The Natural History of the Chicken and Cane Toads: An Unnatural History.
The Natural History of the Chicken
The humble chicken finally gets the big-screen tribute it so richly deserves in this documentary, which offers an inside look at America's $40 billion a year poultry industry, while also casting a gently humorous eye on domesticated chickens and the people who care for them. The remarkable fowl portrayed in The Natural History of the Chicken include Miracle Mike, a chicken who in the 1940s survived decapitation to become a popular sideshow attraction; Cotton, a rooster who lives a pampered life in the home of his mistress, and Valerie, a hen from Maine who survived a near-fatal case of frostbite. Elsewhere, director Mark Lewis passes along the facts on how chickens eat, breed, and interact with one another, while contrasting the extremes of commercial poultry production as he introduces the audience to both a free-range chicken rancher and a mechanized poultry processing facility.
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
The Cane Toads - Bufo marinus, natives of central America - were imported by the sack-load to Australia in 1935 in an attempt to rid the country of the Greyback beetle, which was rapidly destroying the sugarcane crop. The Cane Toads adapted beautifully to their new surroundings. Problem was, the beetle could fly and the Cane Toad couldn't. What the cane toad is unusually proficient at, however, is making more cane toads - thousands upon thousands more. Cane Toads: An Unnatural History tells the story of this amphibious assault - warts and all. Join us for the screening of this cult classic.
About the Filmmaker:For more than a decade, producer and director, Mark Lewis, has been renowned for developing the unusual genre of comical nature documentary, making films that focus on man’s quirky and quizzical relationship with animals - and provoke us to rethink how we view creatures great and small. Besides examining the behavior of beasts, Lewis frequently turns his lens inward to ultimately reveal surprising insights about one of the world’s strangest animals – human beings. Often illustrated through narrative vignettes by ordinary people with unusual fascinations or problems with a particular animal, Lewis imbues his films with a combination of hard fact, tongue-in-cheek irony, and his unique brand of gentle humor.
Doors open at 6pm; Film starts promptly at 6:30pm
Holiday Special: FREE admission
RSVP to gpisegna@hsny.org or (212) 757-0915 x115
FRESH
Directed by Ana Joanes
Thursday, November 18
FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.
FRESH portrays a movement that is happening in America and worldwide. The alternative food market is the fastest growing market in the United States, even though it still makes up a minuscule percentage of the food economy. And it's incredibly energetic. Where it will lead us, I don't know. Lin Yutang, a Chinese writer and inventor, said that "Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence."
About the Filmmaker:
Ana Joanes was born in Portugal and grew up in Switzerland. Following a travel-abroad program exploring the impact of globalization on the environment and culture, Ana came to the U.S. to study. After a BA in political science from Barnard college, Ana graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was awarded as a Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow. Before dedicating herself to filmmaking, Ana founded Reel Youth, Inc., a video production program for youth coming out of detention, and other under-served youth. Her first documentary, Generation Meds, explored our fears and misgivings about mental illness and medication. FRESH, Ana's second documentary, celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system.
Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
Directed by Jessica Oreck
Thursday, October 21
Special appearance by Jessica Oreck!Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo delves into the ineffable mystery of Japan's age-old love affair with insects. A labyrinthine meditation on nature, beauty, philosophy and Japanese culture that might just make you question if your 'instinctive' repulsion to bugs is merely a trick of western conditioning.
Imagine cramming 128 million people onto an island the size of Montana - you would be pretty close to replicating the density of Japan. Not surprisingly, space is at a premium and ergonomic design is right up there next to godliness. Yet even in Tokyo, the pinnacle of this figurative “can of sardines,” people of all ages still make room for a tiny bit of wilderness. It is only fitting that they have become captivated by nature’s most efficient invention in space, design and function – insects. Sold live in vending machines and department stores, plastic replicas included as prizes in the equivalent of a McDonald’s Happy Meal and the subject of the No. 1 videogame, MushiKing, from the smallest backyard to the top of Mt. Fuji, insects inspire an enthusiasm in Japan seen nowhere else in this world. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo discovers why Japan developed this rich and enriching social relationship with insects.
About the Filmmaker:
Jessica Oreck [producer/writer/director] works as an animal keeper and docent at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. When not at the museum, Jessica spends her time inventing new ways to create a sense of wonder in the world. Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo is Jessica’s first feature film. She is currently in production on several animated science shows, building her own museum exhibition, and research for her next feature film.
A Q&A session with Jessica Oreck will follow the screening. There will be t-shirts, posters, DVDs, and soundtracks available.
Dirt!
Directed and produced by Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow
Narrated by Jamie Lee Curtis
Thursday, September 23
Join us for a screening of DIRT! with special guest Bill Logan.
Dirt feeds us and gives us shelter. Dirt holds and cleans our water. Dirt heals us and makes us beautiful. Dirt regulates the earth's climate. Dirt is the ultimate natural resource for all life on earth. Yet most humans ignore, abuse, and destroy our most precious living natural resource. Consider the results of such behavior: mass starvation, drought, floods, global warming, and wars.
Dirt! is an insightful and timely film that tells the story of the glorious and unappreciated material beneath our feet. One teaspoon of dirt contains a billion organisms working in remarkable balance to maintain and sustain a series of complex, thriving communities that impact our daily lives.
Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, Dirt! the movie takes a humorous and substantial look into the history and current state of the living organic matter that we come from and will later return to. An eclectic group of participants ranging from biologists to prisoners incarcerated on Rikers Island offer answers to problems and inspire us to clean up the mess that we’ve created. Dirt! will make you want to get dirty.
Bill Logan is an award-winning natural history writer and environmental columnist. He wrote the Cuttings column for the New York Times and helped launch Garden Design magazine. His book on gardening tools won the Best Book of the Year award from the Garden Writers Association of America. In 1992, Logan founded Urban Arborists to care for trees in New York City. Three years later, Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, was published. It was named Book of the Week by Entertainment Weekly and received a glowing front-page review in the Sunday Los Angeles Times Book Review section. Logan's most recent book, Oak: The Frame of Civilization, published in 2008 by W.W. Norton.
Sweetgrass
Directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing‐Taylor
Thursday, August 19
An unsentimental elegy to the American West, Sweetgrass follows the last modern‐day cowboys to lead their flocks of sheep up into Montana’s Absaroka‐Beartooth mountains for summer pasture. This astonishingly beautiful yet unsparing film reveals a world in which nature and culture, animals and humans, vulnerability and violence are all intimately meshed.
A paean to the Old West: Sweetgrass captures modern cowboys’ overland journey, wrangling thousands of sheep, as they move across Montana’s Absaroka-Beartooth Mountains, amid sweepingly dramatic vistas and endless skies. Ronnie Scheib in Variety describes the film as “a mad cross between Howard Hawks’s RED RIVER” and an anthropological account of vanishing nomadic traditions, with “a dash of Tex Avery’s DRAG-ALONG DROOPY.” Twenty-first century cowboys call their mothers on cell phones and complain about rainy weather, ornery sheep and exhausted horses. A strikingly beautiful film, Sweetgrass is at once funny, awe-inspiring and endearing. At first the passive, fuzzy sheep seem utterly adorable; over time we come to understand the exasperated cowboy who screams profanities at this sea of stubborn, bleating beasts over which he struggles to reign.
About the Filmmakers:Barbash and Castaing‐Taylor’s work seeks to conjugate the ambiguity and provocations of art with a documentary attachment to the immediate flux of lived experience. Working in Montana since 2001, they have deployed different stylistic registers in film, video, and photography to evoke at once the attractions and the ambivalence of the pastoral by juxtaposing monumental and mythological Western landscapes with multiple tracks of subjective synchronous sound. Forthcoming works in 2010 include Hell Roaring Creek, Coom Biddy, Into‐the‐jug (geworfen), Turned at the Pass, Breakfast, Daybreak on the Bed Ground, Bedding Down, and The High Trail.
Our Daily Bread
Directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Thursday, July 15
Welcome to the world of industrial food production and high-tech farming, to the rhythm of conveyor belts and immense machines. Our Daily Bread looks without commenting into the places where food is produced in Europe: monumental spaces, surreal landscapes and bizarre sounds - a cold, industrial environment which leaves little space for individualism. People, animals, crops and machines play a supporting role in the logistics of this system which provides our society’s standard of living.
Our Daily Bread is a wide-screen tableau of a feast which isn’t always easy to digest - and in which we all take part. A pure, meticulous and high-end film experience that enables the audience to form their own ideas. Note: slaughterhouse scenes contain graphic material.
About the Filmmaker:
Producer, director and cameraman Nikolaus Geyrhalter was born in Vienna in 1972. At the age of twenty-two he founded his own production company (Nikolaus Geyrhalter Filmproduktion). Among his films are the award-winning Pripyat, Our Daily Bread and Elsewhere. His latest film is 7915 KM. In 2003 Nikolaus Geyrhalter received the Austrian State Award for Film Art.
Beautiful Losers
Directed by Aaron Rose
Thursday, May 20
In the 1990s, a loose-knit group of American artists and creators, many just out of their teens, came together to create something new and original for no other purpose than a common love of doing it. Influenced by the popular underground youth subcultures of the day, such as skateboarding, graffiti, street fashion and independent music, artists like Shepard Fairey, Mark Gonzales, Spike Jonze, Margaret Kilgallen, Mike Mills, Barry McGee, Phil Frost, Chris Johanson, Harmony Korine, and Ed Templeton began to create art that reflected the lifestyles they led. Many had no formal training and almost no conception of the inner workings of the art world. They learned their crafts through practice, trial and error, and good old-fashioned innovation. Over the years, the group has matured, and many have become more establishment-oriented; but no matter, their independent spirit has remained steadfast. The story of the Beautiful Losers is a retrospective celebration of this spirit.
About the Filmmaker: Aaron Rose is an artist, film director, curator and writer currently living in Los Angeles. He was co-curator of the Beautiful Losers touring art exhibit, and edited the collected art book released in 2004. Rose is also the director of the documentary film Beautiful Losers (2008) and recently completed the short documentary film Become A Microscope based on the life of 1960's artist/activist nun Sister Corita. His publishing imprint, Alleged Press releases hardcover books by contemporary artists. He is also co-editor (along with Ed Templeton & Brendan Fowler) of RVCA's ANP Quarterly magazine.
Garbage Dreams
Directed by Mai Iskander
Thursday, April 22
The Oscar-nominated documentary Garbage Dreams is a film that sees global issues at an absolutely grassroots level. It shows how international companies and the desire for modernization lead to the marginalization of the poor and the inconvenience of the general population. But it focuses on Adham, 17, Nabil, 18, and Osama, 16, three Zabbaleen youths, and Leila, a social worker and teacher of the community's new recycling school. The film is about the "Zabbaleen" - Arabic for "garbage people" - whose community collected and recycled trash in the city of Cairo for many generations.
Far ahead of any modern Green initiatives, the Zaballeen survive by recycling 80 percent of the garbage they collect. When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of its trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.
At left: Vice President Al Gore presents Reel Current Award to Director Mai Iskander
About the Filmmaker:
Shortly after graduating from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Mai Iskander started working as a camera assistant for the Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek (Amadeus; Ragtime). As a camera assistant, she worked on over a dozen features, such as Men in Black and As Good as it Gets, and over a hundred commercials and music videos. Since then, Mai shot numerous shorts, TV shows for A&E, PBS and LOGO, commercials and documentaries. She has had the opportunity to work with some great documentary filmmakers, such Academy Award nominees Edet Belzberg and Albert Maysles.
LaLee's Kin: The Legacy Of Cotton
An Academy Award-nominated Film by Susan Froemke,
Deborah Dickson
and Albert Maysles, Director of Gimme
Shelter
& Grey Gardens
Tuesday, March 23
LaLee's Kin explores the legacy of generations of African-Americans who toiled in the cotton industry in the Mississippi Delta — a hardscrabble life of poverty and virtual illiteracy. LaLee Wallace, a former cotton picker retired on disability, is a great-grandmother struggling to support and encourage her family, while Reggie Barnes, a crusading superintendent, strives to save the failing West Tallahatchie school system from takeover by the state. LaLee's Kin adheres to the rigorous and sober-minded Maysles tradition of presenting things as they are without editorializing.
LaLee "Laura Lee" Wallace passed away in 2008. Albert Maysles said of her, "LaLee was a most caring, devoted mother and grandmother, taking extraordinary responsibility in tending to the needs of both immediate and extended family. As a maker of the film I felt totally obligated to give her the kind of care she gave her children extending as best I could my heart and talent behind the camera. Once the film was finished we brought the film to her trailer for her viewing. Upon seeing the film she commented, 'That's the truth.' And had just one complaint: 'couldn't you have made it longer?'"
About the Filmmaker:
Albert Maysles is an award-winning documentarian and a Guggenheim fellow. Along with his brother David, he brought us the cult classics Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1976). The Maysles have also worked extensively with celebrated artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude, whose monumental environmental projects were documented in Academy Award-nominated Christo's Valley Curtain (1974), Running Fence (1978), Islands (1986), Christo in Paris (1990), and Umbrellas (1995).
In addition to being nominated for an Academy Award in 2001, LaLee's Kin received the Sundance Film Festival 2001 Cinematography Award for Documentaries and the DuPont Columbia Gold Baton Award in 2004.
Act of God
A Film by Jennifer Baichwal
Thursday, February 25
Act of God is a feature documentary about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. The event represents the paradox of being singled out by randomness, and so precipitates questions about chance, fate and meaning in life. The film explores seven stories from around the world that raise and respond to these questions, while keeping the sky and what comes out of it as a central visual metaphor and thread. Paul Auster, who was struck as a teenager, philosophically anchors the film, along with Fred Frith, the improviser, who both imaginatively underpins it and personally demonstrates the ubiquity of electricity in our bodies and the universe.
About the Filmmaker:
A decade and a half ago, Jennifer Baichwal completed
a master's in philosophy and theology at McGill University, with a thesis titled Reinhold Niebuhr, Sin and Contextuality: A Re-evaluation of the Feminist Critique. Her debut film, Let it Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles, won a 1999 International Emmy for Best Arts Documentary; her next, The Holier It Gets, won Best Independent Canadian Film and Best Cultural Documentary awards at Hot Docs 2000, and Geminis for Best Editing and Best Writing. She also won a 2007 Best Documentary Genie for Manufactured Landscapes, which followed Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky as he photographed the impact of industry in China.
But it's in her latest work, Act of God, Baichwal's philosophical leanings come most boldly to the fore. Having spent two years immersing herself in the topic, interviewing victims and shooting lightning storms with her husband and cinematographer Nick de Pencier, Baichwal says the only conclusion she's come to is that "narrative is, perhaps, the most basic meaning that we give to things that happen to us that we can't really understand."
Visual Acoustics
A film by Eric Bricker
Narrated by Dustin Hoffman
Thursday, January 21
Visual Acoustics celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world's greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of nearly every major modern and progressive architect since the 1930s including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner, and Frank Gehry. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California's modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. This unique film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic, whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images. 
Visual Acoustics won the Mercedes-Benz Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival, the Grand Jury Prize at the Lone Star International Film Festival and Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Filmmaking from the Newport Beach Film Festival.About the Filmmaker:
Upon graduating from Indiana University where he received his B.A. in English Literature with a minor in Theatre, Eric moved to Los Angeles and turned his focus toward film and television production As his passion for filmmaking grew, so too did his art consultation firm, Artistic Designs Unlimited, which was formed in 1996. Developing an understanding of client's spatial needs and translating those specifics into original works of art enabled Eric to develop a greater visual vocabulary and sense of design.
Eric is currently at work on a narrative feature film exploring the contemporary art world while running Kaleidoscope Mediaworks. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and son.