Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) announced its slate, of over 65 features and short films, taking place September 26- 29, 2013 throughout Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. The festival will open with CUTIE AND THE BOXER directed by Zachary Heinzerling. CUTIE AND THE BOXER is described as a reflection on love, sacrifice, and the creative spirit, this candid New York tale explores the chaotic forty year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara.
2013 FEATURES
A WILL FOR THE WOODS
Amy Browne, Jeremy Kaplan, Tony Hale, Brian Wilson | United States | 2013
Psychiatrist and musician Clark advocates for natural burial – and plans his own – while battling lymphoma. Capturing the genesis of a revolutionary social and environmental movement, this film is a life-affirming portrait of people coming to terms with death by embracing its central place in nature.
THE ACT OF KILLING
Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, Anonymous | Denmark, Indonesia | 2012
In a country where killers are celebrated as heroes, the filmmakers challenge unrepentant death squad leaders to dramatise their role in genocide. The hallucinatory result is a cinematic fever dream, an unsettling journey deep into the imaginations of mass-murderers and the shockingly banal regime of corruption and impunity they inhabit.
BENDING STEEL
Dave Carroll | United States | 2013
BENDING STEEL is a moving documentary which follows Chris Schoeck, an endearing yet unassuming man as he trains to become a professional oldetime strongman. While preparing to perform incredible feats of strength publicly, Chris privately struggles to overcome crippling fears and inhibitions. For the first time in his life he is compelled to confront his own social awkwardness, unsupportive parents, and an overwhelming fear of failure. What unfolds is one man’s inspirational quest to find his place in the world.
BIG MEN
Rachel Boynton | United States | 2013
In Ghana, a small American energy company fights to hold onto its discovery of oil just as a new government comes into power.With unprecedented access and an unflinching eye, BIG MEN takes us deep into the African oil industry in Ghana and Nigeria, delivering an exposé on the ambition, greed and corruption that threaten to exacerbate Africa’s resource curse and leave more of its citizens behind.
CAUCUS
AJ Schnack | United States | 2013
CAUCUS tells the story of the 2011-2012 campaign in Iowa as eight Republicans fight to become their party’s standard-bearer and take on Barack Obama. But to win, each must first navigate state fairs, town hall meetings and agitated questions from the increasingly contentious GOP base. A revealing look at the difficulty of running for office, particularly the Presidency, and features private, human moments of very public figures.
CRASH REEL
Lucy Walker | United States | 2013
Snowboard legend Kevin Pearce crashed on a Park City half-pipe, and ended up fighting for his life. Now all Kevin wants to do is get on his snowboard again, even though medics and family fear it could kill him.
CUTIE AND THE BOXER – Opening Night Film!
Zachary Heinzerling | United States | 2012
A reflection on love, sacrifice, and the creative spirit, this candid New York tale explores the chaotic forty year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and artist Noriko Shinohara.
CUTIE AND THE BOXER screens as part of PROCESS.
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE
Hubert Sauper | France, Austria, Belgium | 2004
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE is a tale about humans between the North and South, about globalization, and about fish. Some time in the 1960’s, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria: the Nile Perch, a voracious predator, who extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, the new fish multiplied so fast, that its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo… This booming multinational industry of fish and weapons has created an ungodly globalized alliance on the shores of the world’s biggest tropical lake.
DARWIN’S NIGHTMARE screens as part of THEN AND NOW.
ELENA
Petra Costa | Brazil | 2013
Elena, a young Brazilian woman, travels to New York with the same dream as her mother, to become a movie actress. She leaves behind her childhood spent in hiding during the years of the military dictatorship. She also leaves Petra, her seven year old sister. Two decades later, Petra also becomes an actress and goes to New York in search of Elena. She only has a few clues about her: home movies, newspaper clippings, a diary and letters. Gradually, the features of the two sisters are confused; we no longer know one from the other. When Petra finally finds Elena in an unexpected place, she has to learn to let her go.
EXPEDITION TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Daniel Dencik | Denmark, Sweden | 2013
A grand, adventurous journey of discovery to the last uncharted areas of the globe. Yet no matter how far we go, and how hard we try to find the answer, the ultimate meeting is with ourselves and our own transience. On a three-mast schooner packed with artists, scientists and ambitions worthy of Noah or Columbus, we set off for the end of the world: the rapidly melting massifs of North-East Greenland. Curiosity, grand pathos and a liberating dose of humour come together in a superbly orchestrated film where one iconic image after the other seduces us far beyond the historical footnote that is humanity.
THE GENIUS OF MARIAN
Banker White, Anna Fitch | United States | 2013
THE GENIUS OF MARIAN is a visually rich, emotionally complex story that follows Pam White in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease as her son, the filmmaker, documents her struggles to retain a sense of self.
HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A.
Barbara Kopple | United States | 1977
HARLAN COUNTY, USA is an Oscar-winning documentary film covering the “Brookside Strike,” an effort of 180 coal miners and their wives against the Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, southeast Kentucky in 1973.
HARLAN COUNTY U.S.A. screens as part of THEN AND NOW.
HEARTS AND MINDS
Peter Davis | United States | 1974
Peter Davis’s Oscar-winning documentary unflinchingly confronts the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. Using a wealth of sources-from interviews to newsreels to documentary footage of the conflict at home and abroad-Davis constructs a powerfully affecting portrait of the disastrous effects of war.
HEARTS AND MINDS screens as part of THEN AND NOW.
THE KILL TEAM
Dan Krauss | United States | 2013
THE KILL TEAM looks at the devastating moral tensions that tear at soldiers’ psyches through the lens of one highly personal and emotional story. Specialist Adam Winfield was a 21-year-old infantryman in Afghanistan when he attempted to alert the military to heinous war crimes his platoon was committing. An intimate look at the personal stories so often lost inside the larger coverage of the longest war in US history.
LAST DREAM (SIDSTE DRØMME)
Estephan Wagner | Denmark | 2013
LAST DREAMS follows three women during their last month of life. We follow their relationship with doctors, nurses, priests and family members, and through them we get an intimate and honest picture of what it means to be close to death – stories of solitude, reconciliation and love during the process of saying goodbye.
THE LAST STATION (EL ESTACION ULTIMA)
Cristian Soto, Catalina Vergara | Chile, Germany | 2012
Under the competitive look of a camera, the life and moments some old people face in their last stage are portrayed in an atmosphere of solitude and abandonment. These homes, and their long lasting passage of time, are the last station in life before setting out on the inevitable journey to death.
MAIDENTRIP
Jillian Schlesinger | United States | 2013
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out-camera in hand-on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to be the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone. In the wake of a year-long battle with Dutch authorities and global media scrutiny, Laura finds herself far from land and family, exploring the world in search of freedom, adventure, and distant dreams of her early youth at sea.
MOON RIDER
Daniel Dencik | Denmark | 2013
Moon Rider is a coming-of-age story about the bike rider Rasmus Quaade. The film follows young Rasmus’ struggle to become a professional rider, a rough and winding road through hell and back.
MY ARCHITECT
Nathaniel Kahn | United States | 2003
World-famous architect Louis Kahn had two illegitimate children with two different women outside of his marriage. Son Nathaniel always hoped that someday his father would come and live with him and his mother, but Kahn never left his wife and died when Nathaniel was only 11. Nathaniel travels the world visitng his father’s buildings and haunts, meeting his father’s contemporaries, colleagues, students, wives, and children.
MY ARCHITECT screens as part of PROCESS.
NARCO CULTURA
Shaul Schwarz | United States | 2013
From war photographer Shaul Schwarz comes NARCO CULTURA, an explosive look at the drug cartels’ pop culture influence on both sides of the border as experienced by an LA narcocorrido singer dreaming of stardom and a Juarez crime scene investigator on the front line of Mexico’s Drug War.
NIGHT LABOR
David Redmon, Ashley Sabin | Canada, United States | 2013
Sherman lives in a remote and unknown place. By day, he digs for clams; by night, he works alone in a factory that we find hard to imagine is ever empty. A moment, as commonplace as it is lyrical and mysterious, unfolds through a combination of the powerful image and sound, minimal use of narration and a personality with exceptional traits. War approaches; but some people have already lost.
OUR NIXON
Penny Lane | United States | 2013
OUR NIXON is an all-archival documentary presenting home movies for the first time from White House aides, H.R Halderman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin. Along with other rare footage seized by the FBI during the Watergate investigation, the film creates an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon presidency as never seen before.
PABLO’S WINTER (EL INVIERNO DE PABLO)
Chico Pereira | Spain, UK | 2012
Set in Almadén, Spain, the home of the most productive mercury mines in the world’s history, PABLO’S WINTER tells the story of Pablo, a retired seventy year old miner who is trying to stop smoking. With the mines closing 15 years ago, the film is a profound reflection on past and present, the traditional and the new. It is a moment of historical importance for the town and it’s older generations, as well as a moment of hope and opportunity for the young to reinvent themselves and create a new identity for the town.
PANDORA’S PROMISE – Closing Night Film!
Robert Stone | United States | 2013
The atomic bomb and meltdowns like Fukushima have made nuclear power synonymous with global disaster. But what if we’ve got nuclear power wrong? PANDORA’S PROMISE asks whether the one technology we fear most could save our planet from a climate catastrophe, while providing the energy needed to lift billions of people in the developing world out of poverty.
PUBLIC HEARING
James N. Kienitz Wilkins | United States | 2012
PUBLIC HEARING is the verbatim re-performance of a rural American town meeting from a transcript downloaded as publicly available information. Shot entirely in cinematic close-up on black-and-white 16mm film, a cast of actors and non-actors read between the lines in an ironic debate over the replacement of an existing Wal-Mart with a super Wal-Mart.
REMOTE AREA MEDICAL
Jeff Reichert, Farihah Zaman | United States | 2013
Over three days in April 2012, Remote Area Medical, the pioneers of “no-cost” health care clinics, treated nearly 2000 patients on the infield of Bristol, Tennessee’s massive NASCAR speedway.
RUNNING FROM CRAZY
Barbara Kopple | United States | 2013
RUNNING FROM CRAZY examines the personal journey of model and actress Mariel Hemingway, the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, as she strives for a greater understanding of her family history of suicide and mental illness. Through stunning archival footage of the three Hemingway sisters and intimate verite moments with Mariel herself, the film examines the remarkable though often heartbreaking Hemingway legacy.
SEE
Bo Bartlett, Betsy Eby, Glenn Holsten | United States | 2013
Artists Bo Bartlett and Betsy Eby set off to make a film about seeing, traveling the country stumbling upon art sites, characters and luminaries. But then the unexpected happens sending their adventure into unforeseen territory. A moving meditation, SEE delivers the beauty of America through the eyes of artists determined to see art in the everyday.
SEE screens as part of PROCESS.
SUITCASE OF LOVE AND SHAME
Jane Gillooly | United States | 2013
Tender, erotic and pathetic, this reconstructed narrative examines the obsession to chronicle the details of an adulterous affair. SUITCASE OF LOVE AND SHAME is a mesmerizing collage woven from 60 hours of reel-to-reel audiotape discovered in a suitcase purchased on eBay.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY
Cullen Hoback | United States | 2013
Terms and Conditions May Apply is a documentary that shows the outrageous and downright scary things that happen when you click I Agree.
Following this screening there will be a panel with: Ben Wizner ACLU, Shahid Buttar, Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Amie Stepanovich, Electronic Privacy Information Center
THESE BIRDS WALK
Omar Mullick, Bassam Tariq | United States, Pakistan | 2012
Filmed over nearly three years, THESE BIRDS WALK is portrait of contemporary Pakistan is created through the eyes of an ambulance driver and a runaway boy who call a humanitarian and his mission based organization home.
TO THE WOLF (STO LYKO)
Aran Hughes, Christina Koutsospyrou | Greece, France, United Kingdom | 2013
Set over four days of unrelenting wind and rain in a remote village high up in the Nafpaktia mountains in western Greece, the film follows the lives of two shepherd families struggling for survival at a time of deep national crisis. TO THE WOLF is both the reality and an unsettling allegory of modern-day Greece.
TOWN HALL
Sierra Pettengill, Jamila Wignot | United States | 2013
An inside look into the lives of two Tea Party activists from Pennsylvania as they fight to preserve their vision of America. More than a political treatise, Town Hall is a tone poem that paints a portrait of those who fear being left behind by a nation’s transition.
WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL
Ben Nabors | United States | 2013
WILLIAM AND THE WINDMILL is a feature-length documentary about William Kamkwamba, a young Malawian who rescued his family from famine by building a power-generating windmill from scrap parts. His achievement leads to new opportunities and complex choices.
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