91m; China
Director: Yimou Zhang
Cast: Li Gong, Wen Jiang and Rujun Ten
Synopsis (IMDB): In 1930s China a young woman is sent by her father to marry the leprous owner of a winery. In the nearby red sorghum fields she falls for one of his servants. When the master dies she finds herself inheriting the isolated business
65m; Mexico
Director: Emilio Gómez Muriel
Cast: Silvio Hernández, David Valle González and Rafael Hinojosa
Synopsis (Wikipedia): Redes was made with a mainly non-professional cast and has been seen as anticipating Italian neorealism. It concerns the struggle of poor fishermen to overcome exploitation.
2007 35 mins. Joe Hodges
A second glass plant existed right across the street from LOF on MacCorkle Ave. SE in the Kanawha City section of Charleston. This plant became the largest producer of glass bottles in the world by the 1930s. In 1917, just one year after the LOF plant was founded, the Owens-Illinois Company began manufacturing fruit jars, jars for industrial products, and after Prohibition ended, beer bottles. This film tells the story of WV native son Michael Joseph Owens, the inventor of the bottle-making machine that revolutionized the glass industry worldwide. Photos of workers are shown, and videotape-showing reunions are included. The plant closed in 1963. Many workers at this plant would walk across the street and work at the LOF plant when things were slow.
Access: Joseph D. Hodges, 5426 Lancaster Ave. SE, Charleston, WV 25304, 925-1819, joe1819@suddenlink.net or David Radford, 2950 Pine St., Belle, WV, 595-1090. The WV State Archives has copies of both films LOF and OI films, made available to reseachers. Copies of both LOF and OI glass factory films should be available from WVLC and KCPL in summer 2009.
55m; U.S.
Director: Kelley Thompson
Synopsis: Blizzard, who passed away in late December 2008 at the age of 92, was the son of “The General of the Battle of Blair Mountain,” Bill Blizzard. Recently, The National Register of Historic Places placed Blair Mountain on its official list.
Contact: Steve Fesenmaier, Film Programmer for the West Virginia Films Series at the South Charleston Museum 907 Churchill Circle Charleston, WV 25314 304-345-5850 Also, board member, WVLHA mystery12@suddenlink.net Work – 558-3978 ext. 2015 fesenms@wvlc.lib.wv.us
52m; U.S.
Director: Jackson Potter & Al Ramirez
Synopsis: Privatization in public schools
90m; U.S.
Director: Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rockefeller
Synopsis: It shows individuals and communities driven by the deepest source of inspiration – their spiritual and religious convictions – being called to re-examine what it means to be human and how we live on this planet.
Contact: http://renewalproject.net/join/email_us
118m; U.S.
Director: Howard Deutch
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Gene Hackman and Brooke Langton
Synopsis (IMDB): A comedy based on the 1987 professional football players’ strike. Gene Hackman plays the coach of the team, Jack Warden is the owner, Brett Cullen is the All-Pro quarterback that goes on strike and Keanu Reeves is the “scab” who replaces the star QB.
8m; Canada
Director: Kim Hutchinson
Synopsis: Retraining for the Global Economy is a comedy that documents the economic woes of Windsor, Ontario, and dares to ask the question: Where do we go from here?
Contact: khutch@huffmanroadproductions.com 519 738 3216 (Home)
100m; U.S.
Director: Curtiss Clayton
Cast: Bill Pullman, Aaron Stanford and Agnes Bruckner
Synopsis (IMDB): “Rigoletto” retold at Christmas time in Manhattan’s corporate world. Rick, an executive at Image, is a jerk to a woman applying for a job. That evening, he’s out for drinks with his much younger boss, Duke, and the same women is their waitress. Rick’s continued rudeness leads to her getting fired. She puts a curse on him. A potential rift with Duke quickly surfaces; Rick is approached by the hail-fellow Buck, who runs His Own Company, offering to rid Rick of Duke. At dinner later that night, Rick and Duke’s paths cross again; this time Rick is with his stunning and beloved daughter, Eve, a student who has a secret relationship with Duke. All paths lead to the office holiday party.
72m; U.S.
Director: Lexy Lovell, Michael Uys
Synopsis: Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. From ‘middle class gentility to scrabble-ass poor,’ the undiscriminating Great Depression forced 4,000,000 Americans away from their homes and onto the tracks in search of food and lodging. Of this number, a disturbing 250,000 of the transients were children. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film’s subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes’ trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks…
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