55m; U.S.
Director: Ermena Vinluan
Synopsis: Chronicle of the first three Asian women to become members of the NYPD.
Contact: Ermena Vinluan teaandjustice@yahoo.com c: (212) 729-0148 http://www.teaandjustice.com/ touchbaseproductions@yahoo.com 212-729-0148 (Cell)
97m; U.S.
Director: Gabriel Miller
Synopsis: Documents the 2003 “Tell Us the Truth” music tour.
21m; U.S.
Director: Carolyn M. Scott
Cast: Peter Coyote, Kinnu Krishnaveni and Patsy Northcutt
Synopsis (IMDB): Portrait of Diane Wilson, local shrimper turned activist in Seadrift, Texas, along Highway 185 where giant petrochemical companies make Calhoun County the nation’s most polluting. Wilson has engaged in hunger strikes seeking changes in companies’ behavior, and she has embarrassed Dow/Union Carbide by entering their plant and hanging a banner from atop a tower. We meet a neighbor, see the vacant Seadrift main street (the fishing industry is virtually gone), and hear from talking heads about Texas’s environmental policies since George W. Bush was governor. We see Wilson’s mock commercial for “Texas Gold,” the local undrinkable water. Wilson remains cheerful and tough.
94m; Germany
Director: Florian Optiz
Synopsis: This film exposes the role of the IMF and World Bank by showing the effect of their policies on the lives of working people from around the world. They include an UK RMT railroad activist fighting to protect the UK railroad system, a Bolivian community activists fighting water privatization and a South African activist fighting to keep the lights on in Soweto which leads to a fight against the ANC government. This international film draws the connection of the policies of global capitalism of privatization and deregulation to the destruction of public services and the ruination of the environment and the people of the world.
Contact: Florian Opitz is a freelance documentary filmmaker, author and journalist. He was born in Saarbrücken, Germany in 1973. Since 1998 he has been working as a freelance filmmaker and journalist for several European TV stations, including for ARD, ARTE and ZDF. His work includes numerous political and historical documentaries, such as the made-for-TV features Tibet – Myth and Reality (Tibet – Mythos und Wirklichkeit, 2001) and Arabs – History of a Perceived Enemy (Die Araber – Geschichte eines Feindbildes, 2003).
flopitz@spring-productions.de http://www.thebigsellout.org
90m; U.S.
Director: Bill Haney
Synopsis (IMDB): On the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches, with little knowledge that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, most of which ends up in US kitchens. Cutting cane by machete, they work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare or adequate nutrition. The Price of Sugar follows a charismatic Spanish priest, Father Christopher Hartley, as he organizes some of this hemisphere’s poorest people, challenging the powerful interests profiting from their work. This film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what human cost they are produced and ultimately, where our responsibility lies.
65m; U.S.
Director: Judith Montell & Ronald Aronson
Synopsis (Wikipedia): Under-educated, Wellman fought in the army, worked in a car factory for Ford and was employed at a printing company; Wellman fought against Fascism in both the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Wellman returned home at the start of the Cold War, to help organize and lead the Communist Party in America. Then when the 60s came along, Wellman latched onto the civil rights movement. The documentary deals with wheelchair-using Wellman, during the last years of his life, at an Iraq war protest. Throughout his life, Wellman was an organizer and passionate speaker.
52m
Diector: Raoul Peck
58m; U.S.
Director: John Gianvito
Synopsis: Using Howard Zinn’s A People¹s History of the United States as a basis, filmmaker Gianvito crafts an elegant and elegiac chronicle of the progressive movement in America by visiting cemeteries, plaques, and monuments. Told without narration, Gianvito pays homage to those who fought for their beliefs and who have been forgotten by popular history.
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