20m; U.S.
Director: Michael Zhao
Synopsis: Poor countries like China and India are the victims of a nasty electronic waste dumping business. E-waste brokers make money by polluting the environment and harming public health in trash towns like Guiyu, Guangdong.
Contact: http://MichaelZhao.net zhaoyunfeng78@gmail.com
96m; U.S.
Director: Luis Argueta
Synopsis (IMDB): It is at once an epic story of survival, hope, and humble aspirations, of triumph, defeat, and rebirth. The face of immigration is revealed through the gripping personal stories of the individuals, the families, and the town that survived the most brutal, most expensive, and the largest immigration raid in the history of the United States.
56m; U.S.
Synopsis: In the Frontline documentary, Sick Around the World, T. R. Reid, a Washington Post correspondent, raises the controversial and timely issue of how America’s heath care system might be improved. The filmmakers chose to investigate healthcare in five advanced industrialized capitalist countries instead of nations where “socialized” medicine is the norm. By providing Americans with valuable but little known information about the successes and failures of health care in the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, and Switzerland, it offers a base of comparison for progressive health care reform in the U.S
62m; U.S.
Director: Shirah & Yoav Potash
Synopsis: This timely documentary provides important accurate information about the food stamp program in the U.S., and it does so with some humor. The movie’s premise is a challenge: Can a nutrition educator and her husband, let alone anyone else eat healthy and well for a week if they live on the budget accorded food-stamp recipients? In addition to recording the couple’s experiences as they try to meet the challenge, the film presents basic facts about the program, examines the nutritional value of school lunches, cites conflicts between industrial food producers and organic farmers, and highlights the various problems that applicants and those on food stamps face.
82m; U.S.
Director: Silvia Leindecker & Michael Fox
Synopsis: This documentary explores two major developments in recent U.S. history. The first is the impact that the September 2008 financial crisis had on ordinary working people throughout the country. The second is the response of working people to the crises affecting them, including their reaction to the government’s bailouts and Obama’s election. Particular attention is devoted to the emergence of progressive grass-roots movements such as the Vermont Workers’ Center, the Green Worker Cooperative in the Bronx, the Santa Fe Alliance in New Mexico, and the Iraq Veterans Against the War. The film’s overall theme is that the recent economic collapse indicates that it is “the people” themselves who must organize and act to bring about greater economic and social justice. Discussion will follow the film, with comments by Occupy Pittsburgh participants and others.
Latest:
2012 dates: August
Founded: 2012
Venue:
Synopsis:
Contact: Nancy Holle, 509-7453
100m; India
Director: Kiran Rao
Cast: Prateik, Monica Dogra and Kriti Malhotra
Synopsis (IMDB): The lives of 4 different people in the city of Mumbai get entwined by fate and luck; Shai – an investment banker with a penchant for photography, Arun – a lonely painter, Munna – the “dhobi” who aspires to become an actor and Yasmin – making a video in her camcorder for her brother, who hasn’t been to Mumbai before. The film follows how their lives are changed by the presence of one another. Will it be for better or for worse?
U.S.
Director: Douglas Wilson
Synopsis: Douglas Wilson is a graphic designer and letterpress printer by trade, and Linotype: The Film, a documentary on the amazing Linotype machine, is his first film. He launched head-long into the project with two friends. They have worked on it for more than a year and a half, researching and traveling from tiny towns in rural Iowa to the official print shop of the United States government. He traveled to the modern headquarters of Linotype in Germany and a Linotype museum outside of Basel, Switzerland, and created a film that documents in words and pictures Ottmar Mergenthaler’s weird contraption, whose importance is next to Gutenberg’s press in shaping the way typography—and therefore words, messages, and ideas—is presented to the public. Now that is power!
Director: Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin
Synopsis: Shift Change: Putting Democracy to Work is a documentary film in progress by veteran award-winning filmmakers Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin. It tells the little known stories of employee owned businesses that compete successfully in today’s economy while providing secure, dignified jobs in democratic workplaces.
With the long decline in US manufacturing and today’s economic crisis, millions have been thrown out of work, and many are losing their homes. The usual economic solutions are not working, so some citizens and public officials are ready to think outside of the box, to reinvent our failing economy in order to restore long term community stability and a more egalitarian way of life.
There is growing interest in firms that are owned and managed by their workers. Such firms tend to be more profitable and innovative, and more committed to the communities where they are based. Yet the public has little knowledge of their success, and the promise they offer for a better life.
When Shift Change is released this year, the film will encourage support for employee ownership, and provide on-the-ground experience from a variety of enterprises and locations. Screenings are being planned already for several cities, and we expect it to be presented on television, as well as in academic, public planning, business and community settings.
Contact: http://shiftchange.org/
20m; U.S
Director: Louis Fox
Synopsis (IMDB): For most of the world, consumption has been the unquestioned duty of every individual. Then garbage activist Annie Leonard brought her two-hour lecture to Free Range who helped her turn it into a 20-minute animated revolution. Shown in thousands of classrooms, endlessly blasted by Fox News, viewed more than 10 million times, The Store of Stuff finally opens the door to a serious cultural dialog about the costs of consumption.
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