2011 Preliminary Lineup

A Matter of Taste takes an intimate look inside the world of an immensely talented and driven young chef, Paul Liebrandt.  The film follows Paul over a decade and reveals his creative process in the kitchen, as well as the extreme hard work, long hours, and dedication it takes to be a culinary artist and have success in the cutthroat world of haute cuisine in New York City. Exploring the complicated relationships between food critics, chefs and restaurant owners, the film delves into the life of an uncompromising, thought provoking, young chef ahead of his time. USA / 2011/ 68 min.

An exuberant musical film about being who you are and loving whoever you want. Norway / 2011 / 12 min.

 

How did two boyhood friends from Midland, Texas wind up arrested on terrorism charges at the 2008 Republican National Convention? Better This World follows the journey of David McKay (22) and Bradley Crowder (23) from political neophytes to accused domestic terrorists with a particular focus on the relationship they develop with a radical activist mentor in the six months leading up to their arrests. A dramatic story of idealism, loyalty, crime and betrayal, Better This World goes to the heart of the War on Terror and its impact on civil liberties and political dissent in post-9/11 America. USA/ 2011/ 98 min.

 

Bottle is the story of an unlikely friendship between a clump of sand and a pile of snow—a far more engaging concept than it may sound and the type of story that can only be told through animation. (USA / 2010 / 5 min.

 

“Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see. Sometimes, you will.” So says Buck Brannaman, a true American cowboy and sage on horseback who travels the country for nine grueling months a year helping horses with people problems. Buck possesses near magical abilities as he dramatically transforms horses – and people – with his understanding, compassion and respect. USA / 2011 / 88 min.

Burma Soldier provides a rare glimpse of a brutal dictatorship seen through the eyes of a courageous former soldier, who quite literally, swapped sides. The documentary offers an exclusive and rare perspective, from inside the heart and mind of a former Burmese soldier who lays bare an understanding of a brutal regime, and the political and psychological power of the junta over this country. USA, Burma, Thailand / 2010 / 70 min.

 

This personal documentary tells the story of 35-year old filmmaker Marieke Schellart, struggling with her ticking biological clock. The right guy hasn't arrived yet and now she's starting to worry she might never have children. To give herself a bit more time she wants to extend her fertility by freezing her eggs, but in The Netherlands freezing eggs for social reasons isn't allowed. She openly discusses her plans and doubts with her friends and parents meeting support and resisting along the way. Netherlands / 2010 / 50 min.)

 

Artist/filmmaker Andrea Dorfman's drawings burst colorfully into life as she animates the story of her long-distance relationship with a man whose profession — plastic surgery — gives her plenty of fodder. Canada / 2011 / 12 min.)

 

Eleven-year-old Anne is a beautiful girl. The kind of girl you can’t take your eyes off. And the longer you look, the more you see her ‘tics’.  Anne suffers from Gilles de la Tourette’s syndrome. This makes her body do things she doesn’t want. Anne therefore tries to keep her tics in check, although that isn’t easy.  Flying Anne shows howAnne lives life with her tics. Tics that, in the end, she doesn’t want to lose either... Netherlands / 2010 / 21 min.

 

Food Stamped is an informative and humorous documentary film following a couple as they attempt to eat a healthy, well-balanced diet on a food stamp budget. Through their adventures they consult with members of U.S. Congress, food justice organizations, nutrition experts, and people living on food stamps to take a deep look at America’s broken food system. USA / 2011 / 62 min.

Every four seconds a Harlequin Mills & Boon romance novel is sold somewhere in the world. In

India, the books give Shumita hope that her straying husband will return. In Japan, housewife

Hiroko yearns to make fantasy reality with her handsome ballroom dancing teacher. And in

Warrington, mum-of-three Shirley rifles through the books for ideas on how to keep her marriage

spicy.  But it’s not only the female readers who dream of a perfect romance. New York model

Stephen has been on over 200 Mills & Boon covers, but can’t find his true love. While romance

novelist Gill Sanderson is in fact a pensioner called Roger, writing from a caravan in the North of

England. Guilty Pleasures explores our universal struggle to reconcile inner fantasy with the

tragicomic truths of real-life relationships. Five heroes, four continents, one dream of true love.  Because real life begins where Mills & Boon ends… England / 2010 / 52 min.

 

Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman put it on one of his Top Ten lists. More than 15 years later, the McDonald’s coffee case continues to be cited as a prime example of how citizens use “frivolous” lawsuits to take unfair advantage of America’s legal system. But is that an accurate portrayal of the facts? First-time filmmaker and former public interest lawyer Susan Saladoff uses the infamous legal battle that began with a spilled cup of coffee to investigate what’s behind America’s zeal for tort reform. By following four people whose lives were devastated by the attacks on our courts, this thought-provoking documentary challenges the assumptions Americans hold about “jackpot justice.”  USA / 2011 / 88 min.

 

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? In an open sketch class a 75 year old nude figure model poses. Seeing her likeness portrayed through the eyes of the various artists, she is able to accept her body and behold its ageless beauty through her own. USA / 2011 / 5 min.

Loving v. Virginia was a watershed civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute unconstitutional in 1967. A racially charged criminal trial and a heartrending love story converge in this documentary about the Lovings, an interracial couple who fell in love and married at a tumultuous social and political time in American history, yet nevertheless brought about change where previously no one else could.  USA / 2011 / 77 min.

Sometime love lasts a lifetime as an old woman who waits for her late husband to return knows while her neighbor waits only for death to come and take her away. When their fates connect, they are both miraculously freed. Israel / 2009 / 10 min.

 

Miss Representation exposes how mainstream U.S. media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence.  Produced and directed by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the documentary film challenges the media's limited and often disparaging portrayals of women, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself. USA / 2011 / 90 min.

 

Once Upon a Crime comically deconstructs the fairytale of Snow White by pulling the princess out of the story book and putting her up on the witness stand where she must defend herself and be held accountable for the story she's been telling for 152 years. USA / 2009 / 10 min.

Chris Waddell is arguably one of the best athletes in the world. He has won 13 Paralympic medals and is one of the pioneering athletes challenging the limited perceptions of disabled sports. His attempt to climb Mount Kilamanjaro in a hand-crank wheelchair will be his crowning athletic achievement, an undeniably incredible, yet seemingly impossible, accomplishment.  USA / 2011 / 84 min.

In the early afternoon of June 8, 1968, following a funeral mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York, the Kennedy family and their guests boarded a train at Penn Station to take the body of Robert F. Kennedy back to Washington to bury him next to his brother, John. What had not been anticipated were the thousands of people who lined the route to pay their respects to the Senator and who were captured by the camera of Magnum photographer Paul Fusco, who was on the train. One Thousand Pictures tells the little-known story of that extraordinary journey—and

of 1960’s America—through the people who were there.  Scotland / 2010 / 38 min.

 

Over 90 and Loving It is a documentary about people in their 90s and 100s living extraordinary and passionate lives in every way. These are people who aren't aware of chronological age at all, but live as though the future and youth spring eternal, writing, marrying, getting a degree, putting on concerts, working full-time, as starters. USA / 2010 / 57 min.

 

Sexual exploitation of children is a problem that we tend to relegate to back-alley brothels in developing countries, the province of a particularly inhuman, and invariably foreign, criminal element. Such is the initial premise of Libby Spears’ sensitive investigation into the topic. But she quickly concludes that very little thrives on this planet without American capital, and the commercial child sex industry is certainly thriving. Spears intelligently traces the epidemic to its disparate, and decidedly domestic, roots, among them the way children are educated about sex, and the problem of raising awareness about a crime that inherently cannot be shown.  USA / 2009 / 79 min.

Precious Knowledge interweaves the transformative stories of seniors in the Mexican American Studies program at Tucson High School. Their teachers and a rigorous social justice curriculum encourage the students to engage in an epic civil rights battle when state lawmakers attempt to eliminate the program.  USA / 2010 / 80 min.

 

In the late 1990s, Rose Mapendo lost her family and home to the violence that engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo. She emerged advocating forgiveness and reconciliation. This is a powerful first-person portrait of an indomitable woman dedicated to peace and the healing power of forgiveness. A moving, joyful and hopeful chronicle of refugee experience and acculturation in the U.S. today, Pushing the Elephant is also an insightful portrait of the changing face of immigration in our increasingly diverse society.  USA / 2010 / 63 min.

Raising Renee tells the story of accomplished artist Beverly McIver and her casually delivered promise the take care of her developmentally disabled sister Renee when their mother dies. The promise comes due just as Beverly’s career is blasting off. USA / 2011 / 81 min.

 

In the heart of Tel Aviv, there is an exceptional school where children from forty-eight different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. Many of the students arrive at Bialik-Rogozin School fleeing poverty, political adversity and even genocide. Here, no child is a stranger. Strangers No More follows several students’ struggle to acclimate to life in a new land while slowly opening up to share their stories of hardship and tragedy. With tremendous effort and dedication, the school provides the support these children need to recover from their past. USA / 2010 / 39 min.

 

In recent years, growing pressures from the outside world have posed unprecedented challenges for Tibetan nomads. Summer Pasture chronicles one summer with a young family amidst this period of great uncertainty. Locho, his wife Yama, and their infant daughter, spend the summer months in eastern Tibet's Zachukha grasslands, an area known as Wu-Zui or "5-Most," the highest, coldest, poorest, largest, and most remote county in Sichuan Province, China. With their pastoral traditions confronting rapid modernization, Locho and Yama must reconcile the challenges that threaten to drastically reshape their existence. USA, China, Tibet / 2010 / 98 min.

A nighttime love story about two outsiders, who meet in a closed swimming pool in the middle of the big city. Czech Republic / 2010 / 6 min.

Father and son take a walk in the surroundings of the village where the father lived as a child. Many things have changed, among others himself. Now he is too “urban” and his son too. Even so, they try to enjoy a countryside day.  Spain / 2010 / 10 min.

Hebron is the largest city in the occupied West Bank, home to 160,000 Palestinians. It is also home to one of the first Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the only one right in the heart of a Palestinian city. Featuring interviews with both Israelis and Palestinians living in Hebron, as well as activists on both sides, members of the Israeli parliament and prominent Ha’aretz journalists, This Is My Land… Hebron expertly lifts the lid on Hebron as it is today - a city fraught with violence and hate.  Israel / 2010 / 72 min.

 

An ode to city life, Touch explores themes of isolation and the universal need for love when two strangers make the most important connection of their lives while waiting for a train. USA / 2009 / 11 min.

 

Umoja – No Men Allowed tells the amusing and life-changing story of a group of impoverished tribal Samburu women in Northern Kenya who reclaim their lives, turning age-old patriarchy on its head when they set up a women’s only village.  Australia / 2010 / 32 min.

Celebrated every Thanksgiving as the Indians who saved the Pilgrims, then largely forgotten, the Wampanoag of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, spurred on by their intrepid Wampanoag linguist and MacArthur honoree Jessie Little Doe Baird, are saying loud and clear, in their Native tongue, “Âs Nutayuneân,” – “We still live here.” USA / 2010 / 60 min.

A fascinating, unflinching portrait of the late photographer Francesca Woodman, told through the young artist's work (including experimental videos and journal entries) and remarkably candid interviews with her artist parents Betty and George (a ceramic sculptor and painter/photographer), who have continued their own artistic practices while watching Francesca's professional reputation eclipse their own. USA / 2010 / 82 min.