The 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open on November 15 with the world première of Amal by Egyptian director Mohamed Siam. This coming-of-age documentary follows an Egyptian teenager during the revolution and its long resonating aftermath until today.
Panning through 6 years, we see how Amal searches for her identity in a country in transition. Amal is fierce and undaunted. But, as a young woman among men, she has to fight to survive and to find her own place in the streets and in all other areas of life. Amal has been selected for the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary and the focus program Shifting Perspectives: The Arab World.
Artistic director (interim) Barbara Visser: “In its choice of Amal as its opening film, IDFA has been able to combine almost everything it considers important: cinematic depiction of reality, an intimate story, and showcasing work by up-and-coming film talent from all over the world.” Siam (1982) is a fiction and documentary filmmaker from Egypt whose first work Whose Country? (2016) was amongst others selected for the New York Film Festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and won the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival. He has previously won the Robert Bosch Film Prize, Durban FilmMart Afridocs Prize and Thessaloniki Award. For Amal, he took on the roles of writer, director, cinematographer and producer.
This film was made with support from the IDFA Bertha Fund (IBF) and attracted finance at the IDFA Forum. This year, 57 projects have been selected from 23 countries, for IDFA Forum Selection 2017, including new projects by Victor Kossakovsky, Nino Kirtadze, Jian Fan and Maite Alberdi.Films
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30th IDFA to Open with World Premiere of Egyptian Documentary AMAL
The 30th International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) will open on November 15 with the world première of Amal by Egyptian director Mohamed Siam. This coming-of-age documentary follows an Egyptian teenager during the revolution and its long resonating aftermath until today.
Panning through 6 years, we see how Amal searches for her identity in a country in transition. Amal is fierce and undaunted. But, as a young woman among men, she has to fight to survive and to find her own place in the streets and in all other areas of life. Amal has been selected for the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentary and the focus program Shifting Perspectives: The Arab World.
Artistic director (interim) Barbara Visser: “In its choice of Amal as its opening film, IDFA has been able to combine almost everything it considers important: cinematic depiction of reality, an intimate story, and showcasing work by up-and-coming film talent from all over the world.” Siam (1982) is a fiction and documentary filmmaker from Egypt whose first work Whose Country? (2016) was amongst others selected for the New York Film Festival, the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and won the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival. He has previously won the Robert Bosch Film Prize, Durban FilmMart Afridocs Prize and Thessaloniki Award. For Amal, he took on the roles of writer, director, cinematographer and producer.
This film was made with support from the IDFA Bertha Fund (IBF) and attracted finance at the IDFA Forum. This year, 57 projects have been selected from 23 countries, for IDFA Forum Selection 2017, including new projects by Victor Kossakovsky, Nino Kirtadze, Jian Fan and Maite Alberdi.
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NAILA AND THE UPRISING, Story of the Role Women Played in First Intifada, Premieres at DOC NYC
Naila And The Uprising
Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Julia Bacha (Budrus, My Neighbourhood), Naila And The Uprising tells the remarkable story of Naila Ayesh, who played a key role in the First Intifada, the most vibrant, nonviolent mobilization in Palestinian history.
Naila And The Uprising will World Premiere at the eighth annual DOC NYC festival on Sunday, November 12 at the SVA Theatre, 209 East 23rd Street.
When the uprising broke out in the late 1980s, Naila was living in Gaza. Faced with a choice between love, family and freedom, she embraced all three, joining a clandestine network of Palestinian women in a movement that forced the world and Israel to recognize the Palestinian right to self-determination for the first time. The film focuses on the power of women’s leadership in building a united front in the struggle for self-determination, equality and freedom in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It inventively combines animation with archival footage to explore this hidden history.
Naila And The Uprising premieres in the month leading up to the 30th anniversary of the start of the First Intifada on December 9, 1987 and, following its DOC NYC screening, will launch internationally at IDFA in Amsterdam.
Julia Bacha said the film was a long-anticipated Just Vision production: “The First Intifada is an iconic moment in Palestinian history, when women took the helm of leadership positions at the grassroots and guided a civil resistance effort that was highly strategic, effective and creative and, in many ways, is an example of what civil resistance can achieve in the face of overwhelming repression. It’s a story that the media at the time missed—a trend that continues today as communities organize across the region for equality, freedom and justice—and we’re thrilled to finally bring it to light.”
As part of a newly announced deal with Fork Films and THIRTEEN/WNET, Naila And The Uprising will be included in the four-part Women, War & Peace II series, which is slated to have its exclusive US broadcast premiere on PBS in 2018, as well as broad international distribution. This is the second installment of the Women War & Peace series, which highlights how women in contemporary conflict zones risk their lives and lift their communities in pursuit of freedom and justice. The first installment of the series in 2011—which included groundbreaking films like Pray the Devil Back to Hell—exceeded the expectations of PBS and the series producers.
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Carolyn Jones’ Inspirational Documentary DEFINING HOPE Opens in Theaters in November | Trailer
The new documentary feature film Defining Hope from director Carolyn Jones follows eight patients with life-threatening illness, and the nurses who guide them to make critical choices along the way as they face death, embrace hope, and ultimately redefine what makes life worth living.
Defining Hope will have a national theatrical release starting with a theatrical premiere in New York on Wednesday night, November 1. That same day, the film will be released and screened in over 100 movie theaters in all 50 states nationwide.
The film will also have a week-long theatrical run in New York City. Any additional markets will be announced later.
Ahead of the theatrical release, Defining Hope will have its world premiere at the Heartland Film Festival in Indianapolis, Indiana on October 17 and 18 and will screen at the Carmel Film Festival in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California on Saturday, October 21.
Defining Hope is a documentary that weaves the stories of patients with life-threatening illness, and the nurses who guide them as they make choices about how they want to live, how much medical technology they can accept, what they hope for and how that hope evolves. It is about optimism and helps us define what ‘quality of life’ really means.
The film focuses on palliative care, end of life issues, and hospice care. It offers a hopeful message about bringing power back to the patient and helping people understand that they have choices when deciding on care when confronting life threatening illness.
Defining Hope explores what makes life worth living and what to do for ourselves and our loved ones as we get closer to the end of life. Through the stories of patients, families, nurses, and healthcare professionals, the conversation around quality end-of-life care is brought to the forefront.
Defining Hope follows these three patients, and others, as they face death, embrace hope, and ultimately redefine what makes life worth living:
Diane is a nurse caring for end-stage cancer patients who is confronted with her own complex diagnosis.
23-year-old Alena undergoes a risky brain surgery that has the potential to damage her short-term memory.
95-year-old Berthold lives with his elderly wife who struggles to honor his wish of dying peacefully at home.
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Compelling Documentary WHAT HAUNTS US by Paige Goldberg Tolmach to Premiere at 2017 DOC NYC
The documentary What Haunts Us by Paige Goldberg Tolmach, tells the story about the 1979 class of Porter Gaud School in Charleston, South Carolina that graduated 49 boys. Within the last 35 years, six of these boys committed suicide.
Filmmaker Tolmach graduated from this school and now digs deep with the film in discovering the dark secrets that have lingered and haunted this community that she so loves.
What Haunts Us will premiere at the 2017 DOC NYC Film Festival on Monday Nov 13th.
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ William Faulkner
This is the central idea in What Haunts Us, Paige Goldberg Tolmach documentary about the horrific nightmare that happened at her seemingly perfect high school…that NO ONE wants to talk about to this day. When Paige hears about the suicide of yet another former schoolmate, she begins to take a deeper look at the past and starts to ask questions that almost no one in Charleston wants to answer. As she digs deeper, she begins to hear the awful truth about a beloved teacher who methodically manipulated and molested many of his students for years. It becomes her obsession to understand how it could have happened in plain view and, as it turns out, with the knowledge of the school. Her obsession becomes a story about our obligation to speak up and protect those who can’t protect themselves. It’s a story about how silence is complicity and about finding the courage to unearth what lies below the surface in order to shine a light on the truth of our own past.
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VIDEO: Watch Trailer for Joyce Wong’s Indie Dark Comedy WEXFORD PLAZA, Opens in Theaters on October 27
Joyce Wong’s directorial debut Wexford Plaza, that premiered at the 2017 Slamdance Film Festival, will open in theaters on October 27. The subtle, yet powerful and modern coming of age story featuring breakout performances by newcomers Reid Asselstine and Darrel Gamotin, went on to win the award for Best Narrative at CAAMFest.
Wexford Plaza is a slice-of-life dark comedy about a lonely female security guard (Betty) who works at a dilapidated strip mall. Isolated and friendless, a glimmer of hope appears when a charming bartender shows Betty kindness, leading to an unexpected sexual encounter. Although Betty and her deadbeat paramour are well meaning in their intentions, their behavior ends up causing both of their lives to unravel. Wexford Plaza is about two losers who are earnestly trying to improve their condition, but ultimately become deluded by their dreams
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VIDEO: Watch Trailer for Indie Thriller SWEET VIRGINIA, Opens in Theaters on November 7
IFC Films has released the trailer for the indie thriller Sweet Virginia, directed by Jamie M. Dagg and starring Jon Bernthal, Christopher Abbott, Imogen Poots, Rosemarie DeWitt and Odessa Young. The film which World Premiere at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, will open theatrically in select cities on November 17th.
A burglary-homicide rattles the residents of a small Alaska town, in particular two women made widows by the crime and their mutual friend, Sam, the proprietor of the local motor lodge. Sam is an outsider himself, a former rodeo champ all too happy to leave the jolt and violence of the ring behind. So when his guests prove unruly or a stranger reaches out to him, reluctance is his natural response. Secrets are revealed, violence increases, and the people in town act more unhinged. His hesitancy — and his willingness to move past it — becomes the lynchpin for his survival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqZu5uxqLUE
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Grateful Dead Documentary LONG STRANGE TRIP is Back in Theaters
Amazon Studios is rereleasing Long Strange Trip, Amir Bar-Lev’s critically acclaimed documentary about the Grateful Dead, in theaters on October 13th in Los Angeles and November 3rd in New York. The film has been nominated for two Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Best Director and Best Music Documentary.
The film has been screened at over 20 film festivals around the globe beginning with its premiere at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and continues to be seen by fans worldwide through Amazon Prime.
Directed by Amir Bar-Lev (The Tillman Story) and executive produced by Martin Scorsese (No Direction Home: Bob Dylan), Long Strange Trip is the first full-length documentary to explore the fiercely independent vision, perpetual innovation, and uncompromising commitment to their audience that made the Bay Area band one of the most influential musical groups of their generation. Artfully assembling candid interviews with the band, road crew, family members and notable Deadheads, Bar-Lev reveals the untold history of The Dead and the freewheeling psychedelic subculture that sprouted up around it. The film also provides poignant insight into the psyche of late lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, whose disdain for authority clashed with his de facto leadership of the sprawling collective that kept the show on the road.
With a soundtrack that captures some of the band’s most dynamic live performances, as well as unguarded offstage moments and never-before-seen interviews, footage and photos, Long Strange Trip explores The Dead’s singular experiment in radically eclectic music making. Much more than the “behind the music” backstory of an exceptionally talented and beloved group of musicians, the film is at once an inspiring tale of unfettered artistic expression, a heartfelt American tragedy and an incisive history of the rise and fall of 20th-century counterculture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzJFPlLdISo
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BIG TIME, Portrait of Bjarke Ingels, Architect of 2 World Trade Center, to Premiere at DOC NYC | Trailer
Big Time is an intimate portrait of the Danish starchitect – Bjarke Ingels – the architect of the 2 World Trade Center, as he tries to balance his professional ambition and personal life. The film will have its NYC Premiere at the 2017 DOC NYC in Art + Design section on Wednesday, November 15, 2017.
Big Time is spread over a period of six years while his architecture firm BIG works to complete their largest projects yet, the 2 World Trade Center and the New York skyscraper VIA 57W, which houses the newly opened multiplex Landmark at 57 West, where the film opens later this year for a week-long theatrical run.
Director Kaspar Astrup Schröder is a self-taught visual artist and designer. Though based in Copenhagen, he often works in Asia. Has exhibited visual work and released music in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Brussels, New York, Shenzhen and Tokyo. His previous films THE INVENTION OF DR. NAKAMATS (2009) and MY PLAYGROUND (2010) were selected for the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). RENT A FAMILY INC. (2012) was honored with a Golden Eye Award in the category Best International Documentary at Zürich International Film Festival.
Astrup Schröder: “I wanted to convey architecture in a different, cinematic way. Bjarke’s business in New York evolved so quickly, it was as if he had put himself in the driver ’s seat in a train, which could never stop, and now he had to lay the tracks while managing the steering wheel. He ran into some health-related issues, and the pressure became even bigger. That’s when I started to feel that the film could be more universal and that it could also paint the greater picture of of how the little things in life – close relations, love and health – might be more important than we presume.”
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20 Pound Nutrias Invade Louisiana in Documentary RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE | Trailer
Rodents Of Unusual Size takes us up-close into a large region south of New Orleans that survived hurricane Katrina and is now facing its latest threat—hordes of monstrous 20 pound rodents known as the nutria.
The documentary by award winning filmmaking team Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer (Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea and Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone) & co-director Quinn Costello. The film will screen as part of 2017 DOC NYC at the IFC Film Center on November 15th at 7:15pm.
Louisiana’s coastal wetlands are one of the largest disappearing landmasses in the world and the voracious appetite of this curious and unexpected invasive species from South America is greatly accelerating coastal erosion, which in turn makes the area even more vulnerable to hurricanes. As the coastline disappears, the hunters and trappers, fishermen and shrimpers, storytellers and musicians that makes Louisiana a country unto itself are leaving en masse. Nonetheless, a stalwart few remain and are fighting back.
Rodents Of Unusual Size tells the story of one such diehard, Thomas Gonzales, and his community of Delacroix Island, as they resist the invasion of the rodents. The state of Louisiana has started a program that pays a $5 bounty for every nutria tail collected, which has helped the effort, by encouraging former trappers to hunt the nutrias for their tails instead of the fur. Others have tried business ventures to harvest the nutria for their fur and meat, in hopes that by creating a demand for this sustainable resource, they could help protect the wetlands and fight back the rodents.
And yet despite the havoc this invasive species has wrought on Southern Louisiana, it has also been embraced by the culture. The Audubon Zoo in New Orleans has opened a nutria exhibit, the local Triple-A baseball team has a nutria as a mascot, a fashion collective designs clothing made out of nutria promoting it as “sustainable fur” and even some Cajuns have nutria as pets.
Through the offbeat and unexpected stories of the people confronting the nutria problem, the film confronts issues surrounding coastal erosion, the devastation following hurricanes, loss of culture and homeland, and the resilience of the human spirit.
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Comedian Hari Kondabolu Confronts Minority Media Representation in THE PROBLEM WITH APU | Trailer
Brooklyn-based comedian Hari Kondabolu is the host of the popular podcast “Politically Re-Active” alongside W. Kamau Bell. In the new documentary, The Problem With Apu he tackles minority media representation and specifically Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian immigrant proprietor of the Kwik-E-Mart, a convenience store in Springfield – in the animated television series The Simpsons.
In this highly-personal, insightful and timely exploration of minority media representation, Kondabolu speaks with prominent South Asian actors about the damaging legacy of Apu – who is voiced by a white actor with a heavily exaggerated, stereotypical Indian accent.
Aziz Ansari, Kal Penn, Aasif Mandvi, Hasan Minjaj, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Aparna Nancherla, Russell Peters, Sakina Jaffrey and Maulik Pancholy share poignant stories about their own experiences with Apu and the broader questions about the comedy and representation he evokes.
With additional interviews with EGOT-winner Whoopi Goldberg, W. Kamau Bell, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, Mallika Rao, and many more, The Problem With Apu takes a humorous look at how even a beloved television series can have a blind spot.
The Problem With Apu directed by Michael Melamedoff will World Premiere at DOC NYC 2017 on Tuesday, November 14, 2017; and will make its television premiere on truTV Sunday, November 19 at 10PM ET/PT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGzvEqBvkP8
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SAVING BRINTON, Documentary on Discovery of Cinematic Treasures of Barnstorming Movie Man | Trailer
Saving Brinton follows eccentric collector Mike Zahs who discovers the showreels of the man who brought the moving picture to the Heartland. He begins a journey to restore the legacy of America’s greatest barnstorming movie man and save these irreplaceable cinematic treasures from turning to dust.
The documentary film, directed by Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburn, will make its NYC premiere at 2017 DOC NYC on November 13 and 14, 2017.
The screenings of Saving Brinton are presented at DOC NYC with an additional 10-minute package of silent films from the collection with live narration by film subject Michael Zahs. Included among the shorts are films by Edison and the Lumière brothers as well as a rediscovered “lost film” from 1904 by George Méliés that premiered in October 2017 at the prestigious Pordenone Silent Film Festival.
In a farmhouse basement on the Iowa countryside, eccentric collector Mike Zahs makes a remarkable discovery: the showreels of the man who brought the moving picture to America’s Heartland. Among the treasures: rare footage of President Teddy Roosevelt, the first moving images from Burma, a lost relic from magical effects godfather Georges Méliés. These are the films that introduced movies to the world. And they didn’t end up in Iowa by accident.
Amid the old nitrate reels are the artifacts of William Franklin Brinton. From thousands of trinkets, handwritten journals, receipts, posters and catalogs emerges the story of an inventive farmboy who became America’s greatest barnstorming movieman.
As Mike uncovers this hidden legacy, he begins a journey restore the Brinton name and return the films to big screen glory in the same small-town movie theater where Frank first turned on a projector over a century ago.
By uniting community through a pride in their living history Mike embodies a welcome antidote to the breakneck pace of our disposable society. “Saving Brinton” is a portrait of this unlikely Midwestern folk hero, at once a meditation on living simply and a celebration of dreaming big.
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SOUFRA, Inspirational Story of Refugee Entrepreneur, Mariam Shaar, to Premiere at DOC NYC
[caption id="attachment_25077" align="aligncenter" width="1200"]
Mariam Shaar in Soufra[/caption]
The award-winning documentary film Soufra follows the inspirational story of intrepid social entrepreneur, Mariam Shaar – a refugee who has spent her entire life in the 69-year-old Burl El Barajneh refugee camp south of Beirut, Lebanon.
Soufra, directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Morgan (Storied Streets, Waiting for Mamu), will have its North American Premiere at the DOC NYC Film Festival in New York on November 12th.
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Manal Hassan and Maha Hajjaj vegetable shopping in SOUFRA[/caption]
The film chronicles Mariam and a diverse team of fellow refugee women, from throughout the Middle East who share the camp as their home as they set out to change their fate by launching a catering company, “Soufra,” and then expanding its reach (thanks to an astonishing Kickstarter campaign), outside the camp with a food truck business. Together, they heal the wounds of war through the unifying power of food while taking their future into their own hands.
Soufra is produced by Primetime Emmy®-winning filmmaker Kathleen Glynn (Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, TV Nation), Rebelhouse President, Trevor Hall, Pilgrim Media Group President & CEO Craig Piligian, and executive produced by Academy Award®-winning actress Susan Sarandon.