96m; U.S.
Director: Ann Seidl
Synopsis: How librarians are seen in film.
Contact: http://www.hollywoodlibrarian.com Melissa McGuire; mdmcguire@charter.net
Category Archives: Documentary
Home Safe Calgary (2008)
99m; Canada
Director: Laura Sky
Synopsis: Children and families in Calgary who experience poverty and homelessness. In a boom economy, even parents with decent paying jobs struggle to put a roof over their families’ heads.
Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker (1981)
63m; U.S.
Director: Joanne Grant
Synopsis: FUNDI: THE STORY OF ELLA BAKER reveals the instrumental role that Ella Baker played in shaping the American civil rights movement, such as helping to launch the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The dynamic activist was affectionately known as the Fundi, a Swahili word for a person who passes skills from one generation to another.
Contact: First Run Icarus Film (http://www.frif.com/cat97/f-j/fundi45.html)
Garbage Dreams (2009)
79m
Director: Mai Iskander
Synopsis (Documentary.org): Garbage Dreams follows three teenage boys born into the trash trade and growing up in the world’s largest garbage village, on the outskirts of Cairo. It is the home to 60,000 Zaballeen–Arabic for “garbage people.” Far ahead of any modern “Green” initiatives, the Zaballeen survive by recycling 80 percent of the garbage they collect. When their community is suddenly faced with the globalization of its trade, each of the teenage boys is forced to make choices that will impact his future and the survival of his community.
Website: http://www.garbagedreams.com/
General Line (1929) (aka Old and New)
directed by Sergei Eisenstein
121m
The General Line was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as championed by old-line Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. Hoping to reach a wide audience, the director forsook his usual practice of emphasizing groups by concentrating on a single rural heroine. Eisenstein briefly abandoned this project to film October: Ten Days That Shook the World, in honour of the 10th anniversary of the Revolution. By the time he was able to return to this film, the Party’s attitudes had changed and Trotsky had fallen from grace. As a result, the film was hastily re-edited and sent out in 1929 under a new title,The Old and the New. In later years, archivists restored The General Line to an approximation of Eisenstein’s original concept. Much of the director’s montage-like imagery—such as using simple props to trace the progress from the agrarian customs of the 19th-century to the more mechanized procedures of the 20th—was common to both versions of the film. (Wikipedia)
The General Line is available for free download at the Internet Archive
The Ghosts Of Duffy’s Cut
52m; Ireland
Director: Stephen Rooke & Ruan Magan
Synopsis: The story of indentured Irish workers from Duffy, Ireland, who were brought to the United States in April 1832 to build one of the earliest stretches of railroad in Pennsylvania.
Contact: http://www.tilefilms.ie/ info@tilefilms.ie Rachel Towell, Producer: rachel@tilefilms.ie
The Gleaners & I (2000)
82m; France
Director: Agnès Varda
Cast: François Wertheimer, Agnès Varda and Bodan Litnanski
Synopsis (IMDB): An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country’s poor and its provident, as well as by the film’s own director, Agnes Varda. The aesthetic, political and moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip.
The Global Assembly Line (1986)
58m; U.S.
Director: Lorraine Gray
Synopsis: Traveling from Tennessee to Mexico’s northern border, from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, The Global Assembly Line takes viewers inside our new global economy. A vivid portrayal of the lives of working women and men in the “free trade zones” of developing countries and North America, as U.S. industries close their factories to search the globe for lower-wage workforces. We take a rare look at the people who are making the clothing we wear and the electronics goods we use–as well as the business decisions behind manufacturing–on the global assembly line.
Director/Producer/Creator/Executive Producer/National & International distributor of the documentary films by Lorraine W Gray: With Babies & Banners and The Global Assembly Line.
Burning the Future: Coal in America (2008)
89m; U.S.
Director: David Novack
Synopsis: This new film from American Coal Productions soberly illustrates the suffering of the residents of West Virginia who struggle to preserve their mountains, their culture, and their lives in the face of the omnipotent King Coal and examines the explosive conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia.
Contact: burningthefuture@yahoo.com For Worldwide Sales for broadcast, theatrical, DVD and digital rights, please contact: Doug Zwick Specialty Studios Entertainment doug@specialtystudios.com Tel/Fax: +1.818.990.8461
Bus Driver (2009)
11m
Director: Dominique Basi
Synopsis (CLiFF): Follows Karnel Basi, a public transit bus driver in South Vancouver, along his regular route through the downtown east side to the heart of the city and back again. Along the way he picks up a variety of passengers, struggles to stay on schedule and keep his bus safe. A good student film.
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