Women Who Fight Back in Film Series

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 01 June 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

African Diaspora International Film Festival (ADIFF) presents Women Who Fight Back Film Series on June 3 -  5, 2011 at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City.

"Black women everywhere are fighting to defend women's right to exist as full human beings. ADIFF has compiled some powerful films that tell stories of women who fight to keep their family, their culture and their integrity alive and strong."

The films are:

Friday, June 3

Faraw, Mother of Dunes
dir. Abbdoulaye Ascofaré (Mali)
A mother of two quarrelsome boys and a depressed teenage girl is also the wife of a political prisoner who returns from prison a broken man. She struggles hard to survive in a poor and desolate area, and is ready to face anything to keep the family alive -- except prostituting her beautiful daughter.

Josephine Baker: Black Diva in a White Man's World
dir. Annette von Wangenheim (Germany, USA)
A revealing documentary about one of the most famous and popular performing artists of the 20th century. The film focuses on Baker's life and work, especially in the mirror of European colonial clichés, and presents her as a resistance fighter, an ambulance driver during WWII, and an outspoken activist against racial discrimination.

Saturday, June 4

Family Motel
dir. Helene Klodawsky (Canada)
Ayan, a Somalian refugee living in Canada, is raising teenaged daughters while supporting a husband and two sons left behind in Somalia. Ayan is unable to afford the soaring rents on her two service jobs, and is evicted from her apartment for late payment. Canadian social services are unable to assist in placing her, so she and her daughters must move into a Family Motel.

Soraya, Love Is Not Forgotten
dir. Marta Rodríguez and Fernando Restrepo (Colombia) 
Soraya Palacios' story is that of many Afro-Colombian peasants displaced from their land in the armed conflict between the national army, Colombian guerillas, and the right-wing paramilitary. After her husband's assassination by paramilitaries, Soraya must abandon her home, while trying her best to provide for her six children. Like many other Afro-Colombian women displaced from Choco, she refuses to forget her culture and history.

Shown with

Susana Baca: Memoria Viva
Mark Dixon (Peru, Belgium)
Susana Baca is not only a champion in the performance and preservation of Afro-Peruvian heritage, but also an elegant singer whose shimmering voice sings of love, loss and life. Susana and her husband, Ricardo Pereira, have founded the Instituto Negrocontinuo  (Black Continuum) in Lima, a spirited facility for the exploration, expression, and creation of Black Peruvian culture. While Baca has dedicated herself to researching and performing virtually all forms of Afro-Peruvian folklore, it is the lando that has become her trademark. This slow to mid-tempo, highly evocative mix of Spanish, Indigenous and African rhythms has become what the son is to Cuba, or the samba to Brazil -- the lando is the sound of Black Peru.

Scheherazade, Tell Me a Story
dir. Yousry Nasrallah (Egypt) 
Hebba Younisis a contemporary, fiercely independent talk show host. She is married to Karim Hassan, an opportunistic newspaper editor for a government-owned daily. Hebba is asked to forfeit the success of her career for the professional ambitions of her husband. She must soften the critical tone of her reports on governmental affairs. As Hebba finally complies and shifts away from hard politics to devote her program to social issues - the so-called "women's stories" -- she discovers lives and struggles that may be even more damaging to reveal.

Sunday, June 5

Hearing Radmilla
dir. Angela Webb (USA)
This film is a portrait of Radmilla Cody, who was Miss Navajo Nation from 1997 to 1998. It follows her reign as the first biracial Miss Navajo, then explores her pursuit of a singing career, and finally addresses the cruel realities that led to serious legal consequences for her.

Umoja: the Village Where Men Are Forbidden
dir. Jean Crousillac and Jean-Marc Sainclair (France, Kenya)
The film tells the story of brave Samburu women who were raped by British soldiers based in Northern Kenya between 1970 and 2003. Dishonored, the women were beaten and renounced by their husbands. In 1990, a few of those women gathered and created Umoja, a village forbidden to men, which rapidly became a refuge for those in a similar plight. Since then, jealous men have frequently attacked Umoja, causing trouble, and harassing its founder and matriarch Rebecca Lolosoli. 

Compensation
dir. Zeinabu irene Davis (USA)
The first feature by award-winning filmmaker Davis (Cycles and A Powerful Thang) presents two unique African-American love stories between a deaf woman and a hearing man, Inspired by a poem written by Paul Laurence Dunbar. An important film on African-American deaf culture, this narrative shares their struggle to overcome racism, disability and discrimination. Davis innovatively incorporates silent film techniques (such as title cards and vintage photos) to make the piece accessible to hearing and deaf viewers alike, and to share the vast possibilities of language and communication.

Beah: A Black Woman Speaks
dir. Lisa Gay Hamilton (USA)
The directorial debut of actress Lisa Gay Hamilton, the film celebrates the life of legendary African American actress, poet and political activist Beah Richards, best known for her Oscar nominated role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. While Richards struggled to overcome racial stereotypes throughout her long career onstage and onscreen in Hollywood and New York, she also had an influential role in the fight for Civil Rights. Enlightening and moving, the film is a fitting tribute to Richard's life of integrity, leadership and service to the two cultures she loved so deeply: the Arts and the African American community.

You had your fun last weekend. Now it‛s time to be inspired.

For more information, go to www.NYADIFF.org.

Women Who Fight Back Film Series
June 3 -  5, 2011

Teachers College
Columbia University
525 W 120th Street - Room 263 Macy
New York City

Sizzling Screens: Rooftop Films

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 01 June 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

Rooftop Films is presenting its 15th Annual Summer Series every weekend from May 13 through August 20, 2011 on the roof of the New Design High School in the Lower East Side, with further screenings throughout the city.

In conjunction with IFC and New York Magazine, over 50 shows are planned, including:

• 23 feature-length films, with 2 World Premieres and 15 US or NY Premieres
• 183 short films from 26 countries, shown in themed programs such as
  

  Romance Shorts
  Thriller Shorts
  New York Non-Fiction

• Live music, filmmaker Q&As, and after parties with complimentary drinks
• Special events such as a live wrestling match at the screening of Robert Greene's Fake it So Real, featuring the semi-pro wrestlers from that film
• a sneak attack performance by the musical guerillas from the Swedish comedy Sound of Noise
• 26 bands
• 15 spectacular outdoor venues with stunning views across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx
• Fiction, documentary, comedy, drama, animation and more

Read more: Sizzling Screens: Rooftop Films

'Open Roads' Highlights New Italian Cinema

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 01 June 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Open Roads 2011: New Italian Cinema

This year’s edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s annual survey, is led by a trio of top-notch non-fiction features. The latest by Oscar-winning director Gabriele Salvatores (Mediterraneo), 1960, cannily assembles archival footage to tell a compelling story of a family searching for its son. 71-year-old master Marco Bellocchio (whose My Mother’s Smile, Good Morning Night and Vincere highlighted recent New York Film Festivals) returns with Sorelle Mai (pictured, right), a personal journey into his family’s life and hometown, Bobbio. Giovanna Taviani’s Return to the Aeolian Islands lovingly explores the isles which were the settings for classics like Antonioni’s L’Avventura and Kaos, the brilliant Pirandello adaptation by the Tavaiani brothers (one of whom is Giovanna’s father, and the other her uncle).   

Several of the fiction features take the pulse of contemporary Italian society, with mixed results. 20 Cigarettes, Aureliano Amadei’s pulse-pounding account of an anti-war filmmaker going to Iraq only to become another victim of its random violence, is as volatile and exciting as it is thought-provoking. Contrarily, Love or Slaps (pictured, left) is Sergio Castellitto’s frantically unfunny update of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner in which Castellitto and the always dependable Laura Morante play good liberal parents who are disappointed their daughter’s new boyfriend isn’t black. Working from his wife Margaret Mazzantini’s flaccid script, Castellitto never finds a consistent tone or point of view, finally just spinning his wheels. (The title’s literal translation is The Beauty of the Donkey, which makes no sense in English unless you’ve seen the movie.)

Director Roberta Torre reteams with her marvelous Angela star (and Bellocchio leading lady) Donatello Finocchiaro in the gentle satire Lost Kisses, in which Finocchiaro burns a hole in the screen as the opportunistic mother of a teenager (the wonderful Carla Marchese) who says that the Virgin Mary spoke to her after a new religious statue lost its head. Whatsoeverly, Giulio Manfredonia’s absurdist take on the intersection of politics, media and celebrity, dishes out as much silliness as it does satiric bulls-eyes. Think Trump or Palin in the land of Berlusconi.

The Woman of My Life, with Stefania Sandrelli as the mother of two sons in love with the same woman, is a trite updating of Gabriele Muccino’s superb The Last Kiss, which also featured Sandrelli. Despite an excellent cast and the magnetic presence of Valentina Lodovini (you definitely believe both brothers would fall for her), the movie becomes exhausting as it goes along. Happily, Giorgia Cecere’s debut, The First Assignment, is a modest, self-assured gem about a young teacher (the terrific Isabelle Ragonese) whose first job in an out of the way village doesn’t go as planned.

Open Roads: New Italian Cinema
Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, NY
http://www.filmlinc.com

June 1-8, 2011

For more by Kevin Filipski, visit The Flip Side blog at http://flipsidereviews.blogspot.com/