30m; U.S.
Director: Peter Miller
Cast: Pete Seeger, Billy Bragg
Synopsis: Idealism, socialism, and the power of music in people’s lives.
Category Archives: Arts/Culture
The Murals and Art of Bernard Zakheim (2009)
27m; U.S.
Director: Margot Smith
Synopsis: Bernard Zakheim (1896 – 1985) was born in Poland and came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1918. He was well known for his many murals and frescos financed in part by the Works Progress Administration under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. Nathan and Masha Zakheim, Bernard’s son and daughter, tell of their father’s work in Poland, the story of the Coit Tower murals, of his Holocaust paintings and his later work celebrating life. Murals shown here include The Library at Coit Tower, The Jewish Wedding at the San Francisco Community Center, and The History of Medicine in California at Toland Hall, University of California, San Francisco.
Contact: offcentervideo@aol.com http://www.offcentervideo.com
Even the Rain (También la Lluvia) [2010]
103m; Spain/Mexico/France
Director: Icíar Bollaín
Cast: Gael García Bernal, Luis Tosar and Karra Elejalde
Synopsis: A Spanish film crew comes to Cochabamba, Bolivia in 1999 to make a film about Christopher Columbus. The intent is to do a revisionist account portraying Columbus not as a hero, but as a conqueror. The film crew is not well financed and looking to cut costs, which includes to indigenous Bolivians being hired to star in the movie. At the same time, a mounting wave of protests is occurring, with one of the film extras serving as a major leader, over the privatization of Cochabamba’s water supply. The film crew becomes entangled in the protests in an ever more complex and deep ways. A superb film about the intersections and limits of art and politics.
Ralph Fasanella: Song of the City (1979)
30m; U.S.
Director: Jack Ofield
Synopsis: Biography of a working class electrical plant worker/painter/CIO organizer.
Renewal (2008)
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
Last Train Home (2009)
82m; China/Canada
Director: Lixin Fan
Synopsis: Every spring, China’s cities are plunged into chaos, as all at once, a tidal wave of humanity attempts to return home by train. It is the Chinese New Year. The wave is made up of millions of migrant factory workers. The homes they seek are the rural villages and families they left behind to seek work in the booming coastal cities. It is an epic spectacle that tells us much about China, a country discarding traditional ways as it hurtles towards modernity and global economic dominance. Last Train Home, an emotionally engaging and visually beautiful debut film from Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan, draws us into the fractured lives of a single migrant family caught up in this desperate annual migration.
Contact: http://www.eyesteelfilm.com/?page_id=60 info@eyesteelfilm.com 4475 St. Laurent, suite #202 Montreal, Quebec CANADA H2W 1z8 Phone directory: phone: +1 (514) 937-4893
Le Franc (1994)
44m; France
Director: Djibril Diop Mambéty
Cast: Dieye Ma Dieye, Aminata Fall and Demba Bâ
Synopsis (IMDB): A penniless, fast-thinking musician buys a lottery ticket which he glues to his back door, in hopes of eventually retrieving his instrument from his exasperating landlady. The ticket wins, and our hero begins a harrowing odyssey throughout his shanty town, carrying the door on his shoulder all the time
Le Million (1931)
83m; France
Director: Rene Clair
Synopsis: An impoverished painter and his rival engage in a race across Paris to recover a jacket concealing a winning lottery ticket.
Los Tabaqueros (2006)
8m; U.S.-Cuba
Director: Francisco Gonzalez, Russell Griffin
Synopsis: A passion for work, a pursuit of art, and the leaves of the tobacco plant combine to create pleasure and pride for these Cuban-American cigar makers.
Contact: Found on the 2007 Palm Springs Film Festival: http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=19323&FID=31
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