1999 Highlights

A Different Path
Filmmaker Oren Rudavsky

It's not easy, and it's not what most women do: choosing celibacy and service over family life and independence. Yet 92,000 American women are currently in religious communities. A Different Path explores two Catholic orders that reflect spiritual pursuits as diverse as our culture. This documentary takes us behind the convent doors and into the hearts of some remarkable modern-day nuns. (57 min.)

A Little Inside
Filmmaker Kara Harshbarger

Ed and Abby are Yankee fans. In fact they love everything about baseball: watching TV games together, talking trash to the umps, trading stats, but they especially love the fact that Abby plays Little League and Ed coaches her. It's just the two of them—widowed Dad and six-year-old daughter. Baseball is their passion, their language and their glue in this touching well-acted short. That is until Swan Lake causes a brief rain delay. (14 min.)

American Hollow
Producer/Director Rory Kennedy

American Hollow is the story of an Appalachian family caught between century-old traditions and the modern world. Rory Kennedy challenges the cinematic cliches of Deliverance and The Beverly Hillbillies by combining extraordinary vérite footage and interviews with the Bowling family, led by 68-year-old Iree Bowling.

Although a disturbing portrait of poverty, turmoil and hopelessness, this film is ultimately a joyous, life-affirming exploration of the lives, loves and dreams of a distinctly American family. To Kennedy, the Bowlings are part of an endangered American species, representing some of the nation's oldest values. (90 min.)

Bird by Bird with Annie
Director Freida Lee Mock

A portrait film about bestselling author and laugh-out-loud funny lady Ann Lamott (Traveling Mercies, Operating Instructions, Crooked Little Heart), this also is a moving tale of survival. In her novels and non-fiction, Lamott writes about subjects that begin with capital letters (Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus) but always with a gentle touch and self-effacing humor. She is a lovable paradox, a born-again Christian and liberal activist. Spend 40 minutes with her through this film and you will wish you were meeting her for lunch tomorrow. (40 min.)

Claire Makes It Big
Director Jeremy Workman

Our secret revenge fantasy is exposed! Inspired by Kathy Bates losing the lead role in Frankie & Johnnie to Michelle Phieffer, Claire Makes it Big depicts what many of us would like to see. Claire is a full-figured actress who keeps losing parts to thinner rivals. When a role written specifically for her is given to a sexy starlet, she retaliates with technology. (29 min.)

Daughter of the Bride
Director Terri Randall

A wry and sensitive look at how a widowed 66-year-old mother's remarriage affects the dynamics of her family. The film is a visual diary of the comical and awkward events a family experiences as their mother starts a new life. Filmmaker Terri Randall was nominated for an Academy Award—“Best Documentary Short”—for this small, sweet film with enormous heart. (30 min.)

Punitive Damage
Filmmakers Annie Goldson & Gaylene Preston

In 1991 Helen Todd received the phone call that every parent dreads. Half a world away in East Timor, her son Kamal had been killed. Kamal's tragic death at the hands of the Indonesian military set Helen on a course that would span five countries and culminate in a landmark legal case in the United States.

This story of the courage of a mother and son eerily foreshadows the current events of recent months. "Whether total genocide occurs in East Timor or not depends not only on the will of East Timorese people, but on the will of humanity, of us all.”—Kamal Bamadhaj, 1970-1991. (77 min.)

Drylongso
Director/Producer Cauleen Smith

"Drylongso" is an old African-American term that means "ordinary" or "just the same old thing." Cauleen Smith's remarkable debut film addresses both the tragic ordinariness of violence and the extraordinary beauty found right in front of us. Pica, a young woman from Oakland, California, is failing her photography class. Yet she spends her time snapping endless Polaroids of young, black men whom she believes are an endangered species. Full of irony and inspired by the rhythms and lyrics of hip-hop music, Drylongso breathes fresh air into the popular notions of black culture. (82 min.)

Everybody's Pregnant
Filmmaker Debra Solomon

When you want something so badly, it can seem like everybody else has it. This animated musical short takes a humorous look at the trials and tribulations of infertility. (6 min.)

The Healing Years
Director Kathy Barbini

The topic of child sexual abuse has been well documented since we "discovered" it in the Seventies—but seldom with such a sense of empowering joy as we witness in this film. Three incredible women from wildly disparate backgrounds bear witness to the emotional dysfunction and horrible impact this crime has on society. But they also are a stunning example of the power of support and healing. Interviews, letters and journal entries allow us into their lives as they take the trauma and betrayal out of child sexual abuse and turn it into a message of hope and healing. This documentary banishes shame and celebrates women's power. (52 min.)

The Ladies Room
Writer/Director Eugenia Ives

A symphonic surprise in the ladies restroom (5:20 min.)

The Living Museum
Director Jessica Yu

"This place is all about the enchantment of mental illness without leaving out any of the pain." —David Waldorf, Living Museum artist. This film explores the Living Museum art community located at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center. This is the only facility in the United States devoted to the art of the mentally ill. In this 40,000-square-foot space, every inch is a canvas. Oscar-winning Yu raises questions about artistic genius being compensation for the wounded mind and whether art can work therapeutic miracles. But mostly she reveals that the maddened are human and as full of terror and wonder as the rest of us. (80 min.)

Love Story
Director Catrine Clay

This moving documentary tells of an unlikely love affair in wartime Nazi Germany. In 1940s Berlin, Lilly Wurst, Aryan hausfrau with a picture of the Fuhrer on the wall and a medal for German motherhood, falls in love with Felice Schraderheim, a vivacious member of the Jewish underground. Director Clay has assembled fantastic archival footage, love letters, poems and photos—but nothing equals the powerful sight of the 82-year-old Lilly talking about the one true love of her life. (60 min.)

My Mother Dreams the Satan's Disciples of New York
Director Barbara Schock

A lonely midwestern farm widow visits her daughter in Manhattan's East Village. She is terrified of the neighborhood, and her working daughter, becoming impatient, urges her to get out and see the sights. This comedy of misconceptions and unlikely friendships celebrates the imagination and wisdom of age. (33 min.)

Old Man River
Director Allan Holzman

Writer-performer Cynthia Gates-Fujikawa's deeply personal and arresting one-woman show about the life of her father, Nisei actor Jerry Hatsuo Fujikawa, captures the sensation of hearing long-ago stories told by your grandmother. As a girl, Gates-Fujikawa discovered almost by accident that her father had a family before hers, lost in the Manzanar relocation camp. This artfully told story blends a ripping mystery with family heritage and a wryly-illustrated examination of anti-Japanese images in the cinema. Film clips, family photos and scenes from Manzanar enhance this evocative film that's laced with irony. (71 min.)

Regret to Inform
Filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn

Filmmaker Barbara Sonneborn, a Vietnam War widow, takes us to a Vietnam we have never known. Regret to Inform portrays the lasting devastation of the war as seen through the eyes of an unforgettable group of American and Vietnamese women. Nudging a culture that has collectively buried this tragedy, this film illustrates with decisive clarity how real the war remains to those left behind. We are taken on a strangely beautiful journey by train, juxtaposed with familiar news footage, and we're left with haunting questions about our ability to forget. (72 min.)

Speaking in Strings
Filmmaker Paola di Florio

Speaking in Strings is a moving and often humorous story about one of the most interesting and gifted musicians in the world. It profiles the controversial world-renowned violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. An enormously funny, fearless and irreverent individual, Nadja has played on every major stage and with every major orchestra in the world. Her unorthodox, passionate delivery, her swagger and unconventional attire earned her the nickname "the bad girl of the violin..." Described as "possessed" and "brilliant," her unique interpretations of timeless classics have both enraged and enraptured critics and audiences around the world. (73 min.)

`Til Death Do Us Part
Filmmaker Cindy Kleine

He said. She said. What is the truth? Cindy Kleine aims a camera; asks a few simple questions; gets a few seemingly simple answers. In between is a supposedly shared lifetime. A simple film raising anything but simple questions. (20 min.)