51 Birch Street
Writer: Doug Block, Amy Seplin
Director: Doug Block
US, 88 min

Do we ever really know our parents? And if we were suddenly given the chance to know all about them, would we take it? These are the primal human questions at the heart of the riveting personal documentary, 51 Birch Street.

Filmmaker Doug Block had every reason to believe his parents' 54-year marriage was a good one. So he isn't prepared when, just a few months after his mother’s unexpected death, his father Mike phones to announce that he's moving to Florida to live with his secretary from 40 years before, Kitty. Always close to his mother and equally distant from his father, he's stunned and suspicious.

When Mike and Kitty marry and sell the long-time family home, Doug returns to suburban Long Island for one last visit and discovers three boxes filled with his mother’s diaries going back 35 years. Realizing that he has only a few short weeks before his dad will be gone, he grabs his camera, determined to investigate the mystery of his parents’ marriage.

Through increasingly candid conversations with family members and stunning diary revelations, he comes to terms with two parents who are far more complex and troubled than he ever imagined.

Both funny and heartbreaking, 51 Birch Street is the first person account of filmmaker Block’s unpredictable journey through a whirlwind of dramatic life-changing events: the death of his mother, the uncovering of decades of family secrets, and the ensuing reconciliation with his 83-year-old father. What begins as Doug’s own intimate, autobiographical story, soon evolves into a broader meditation on the universal themes of love, marriage, fidelity and the mystery of family.

51 Birch Street spans 60 years and 3 generations, and weaves together hundreds of faded snapshots, 8mm home movies and two decades of verité footage. The result is a timeless tale of what can happen when our most fundamental assumptions about family are suddenly called into question.

Awesome:
I F#@* Shot That!
Director: Nathanial Hornblower aka Adam Yauch
Cast: The Beastie Boys
US, 90 min

Awesome: I F#@* Shot That! is a formally innovative feature film experience starring director Nathaniel Hörnblowér/Adam Yauch (band member Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA) and fellow Beastie Boys Mike D (Michael Diamond) and Ad Rock (Adam Horovitz), along with Mix Master Mike and other special guest appearances.The documentary began at one of their concerts at New York’s famed Madison Square Garden in October 2004, as Beastie Boys handed out 50 cameras to audience members at their sold-out performance.These 50 different passionate perspectives shot from the point-of-view of the audience take the viewer deep inside the world of a live Beastie Boys show, prismatically and kinetically capturing the experience of a live musical performance like no film has ever done.

Beyond Beats and Rhymes
Director: Byron Hurt
US, 62 min

At its root, hip-hop is a politically charged music born from the explosive frustration in the South Bronx, a community cast aside a power structure that left it impoverished. How did this urgent, political message of hip-hop transform into the gangbanging, drug-lording, misogynistic gangsta rap that dominates urban radio today? And how did gangsta rap become the predominant voice and model of black masculinity? Filmmaker Byron Hurt addresses these questions in his remarkably insightful and articulate documentary.

Hurt embarks on a journey into himself and his community, taking an in-depth look at machismo in rap music. Leaving no stone unturned, he speaks with cultural critics, aspiring rappers, black kids on spring break, white suburban youth, music-industry executives, and rap stars like Russell Simmons and Chuck D. Together.

Filmmaker in attendance.

Czech Dream
English subtitles
Writer/Director: Vít Klusák and
Filip Remunda
Czech Republic, 90 min

Czech Dream documents the largest consumer hoax the Czech Republic has ever seen. Filip Remunda and Vit Klusak, two of Eastern Europe‘s most promising young documentary filmmakers, set out to explore the psychological and manipulative powers of consumerism by creating an ad campaign for something that didn’t exist.

The campaign (designed by a renowned advertising agency) involved television and radio spots, 400 illuminated billboards, 200,000 flyers promoting Czech Dream brand products, an advertising song, a website, and advertisements in newspapers and magazines.

For two weeks, the streets of Prague were saturated with advertising for the fake hypermarket. The ads proclaimed: Don’t Go, Don’t Rush, Don’t Spend3⁄4drawing over 4,000 people to turn up on the ‘opening day‘. On the 31 May 2003, they arrived at a green field where, instead of a hypermarket, they found just the dream hypermarket’s façade (10m high and 100m wide).

Czech Dream is a funny and provocative look at the effects of rampant consumerism on a post-communist society. Czech Dream has also caused some controversy, provoking extreme reactions in the Czech people and media and even being discussed in Czech Parliament.

With the recent entry of the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries to the EU, and, with people’s changing attitudes to consumerism and globalisation, it is equally relevant to capitalist societies all over the world.

Echoes of War
English subtitles
Director: Joop van Wijk
The Netherlands, 70 min

Echoes of War is a feature length documentary with animated sequences about child survivors of wars and violent conflicts in Afghanistan, New York, Colombia and Sierra Leone. They take us into their lives and share their memories, nightmares, and dreams.

Though continents apart and without knowledge of each other these children have grief, courage and hope in common. A Colombian boy takes us down the road where his hand disappeared. In New York, two girls tell us about their father, who worked on too high a floor of the World Trade Centre. We meet a girl in Afghanistan who struggles to remember her father of whom even the pictures were burned. In Sierra Leone a family on their way to a well is attacked, leaving a girl behind who has no idea what the rebels were fighting for. A boy in the Colombian jungle dreams of becoming a doctor. A girl in a besieged city is determined to become president of her country and outlaw all weapons.

The children reveal their stories and dreams by their response to the animated tale of a little elephant who tries to find the courage to cope with the death of his father. While they identify with the plight of the little elephant we discover that they are the real heroes, far beyond the politics and rhetoric of statesmen, terrorists or soldiers.

Favela Rising
English subtitles
Director: Jeff Zimbalist, Matt Mochary
Brazil, 80 min

“Their music fueled a movement. His message fought a war.”

Favela Rising documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police. At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson’s grassroots Afro Reggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever

Filmmakers in attendance.

Five Days in September
Director: Barbara Willis Sweete
Canada, 72 min

Five Days in September – The Rebirth of an Orchestra is a provocative and intimate behind-the-scenes look at the first few days of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra’s inaugural season with its amazingly charismatic new Maestro, Peter Oundjian. During one intense week the Toronto Symphony Orchestra is host to musical superstars Yo-Yo Ma, Emmanuel Ax and Renée Fleming. Five Days in September offers candid footage of these great soloists as they interact with the Maestro, prepare in their dressing rooms, interact with their fans backstage, try to explain their addiction to classical music, and as they rehearse and perform with the orchestra. Five Days in September offers a rare insider’s view of the complex and intricate human machine that prepares for and attends to every need of their musical guests. From orchestra rehearsals to backstage antics – including an impromptu dance lesson and a dynamic game of table hockey – we get to know the key people who make the orchestra tick. But it’s the magic of the music under the command of the extraordinarily talented Maestro Oundjian that brings it all together. Oundjian’s incredible passion and his uncanny ability to coax inspired performances from his musicians are a delight to watch. Having trained initially as a classical violinist, Oundjian was first violinist with the renowned Tokyo string Quartet for fifteen years, before an injury forced him to stop playing. Musical highlights include Mahler’s First Symphony, the Dvorak Cello Concerto and Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto.

Iraq in Fragments
Director: James Longley
US, 94 min

Iraq In Fragments illuminates post-war Iraq in three acts, building a vivid picture of a country pulled in different directions by religion and ethnicity. Filmed in verité style, with no scripted narration, the film powerfully explores the lives of ordinary Iraqis: people whose thoughts, beliefs, aspirations, and concerns are at once personal and illustrative of larger issues in Iraq today.

Part One follows Mohammed Haithem, an 11-year-old auto mechanic in the mixed Sheik Omar neighborhood in the heart of old Baghdad. With his father missing, Mohammed idolizes his domineering boss, working feverishly for approval and affection. Shown in extreme close-up, Mohammed’s Baghdad is a city caught between an idealized past, a dangerous present, and an uncertain future.

Part Two is filmed inside the Shiite political/religious movement of Moqtada Sadr, traveling between Naseriyah and the holy city of Najaf. As tensions mount inside the country, we see the inner workings of Iraqi local politics as the Sadr movement pushes for regional elections and enforces their interpretation of Islamic law.

Part Three follows Iraqi Kurds as they assert their bid for independence, rebelling against the past atrocities of Baghdad rule. We hear voices of independence and nationalism, sentiments secular and religious, revealing a community where politics and faith are personal, public, and forever closely intertwined.

Jabe Babe
A Heightened Life
Writer/Director: Janet Merewether
Australia, 52 min

Blisteringly inventive and visually out-there, the latest film from acclaimed Sydney film-maker Janet Merewether is nothing if not genre-shattering.

A tall girl with a tall story, 31-year- old Jabe Babe measures six-foot-two inches, works as a dominatrix, and has a life-threatening genetic condition called Marfan Syndrome. This hybrid documentary, which merges fiction and non-fiction forms, inhabits the heightened “Technicolor” world of the tall woman, the outsider, to provoke questions about society’s desire for sexual, visual, and genetic conformity.

Koko-Yakyu: High School Baseball
English subtitles
Director: Kenneth Eng
52 min

Before Ishiro (New York Mets) and Hideki (New York Yankees) Matsui became stars in the Major Leagues, they first proved their fighting spirit in the sweltering heat at legendary Koshien Stadium of Japan. Americans may think baseball is just a game, but in Japan, high school baseball has always had a deeper purpose:the forging of the soul. For the first time, an authorized English-language documentary will explore the meaning of koko-yakyu by taking you behind the scenes with players, coaches, fans, and others as they experience the passion and pageantry of high school baseball.

You want pure sports spectacle? You want “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat?” Forget about Olympic athletics, the American pros, and even Friday night football in Texas.Take a look at high school baseball in Japan. As shown in Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball, the first English-language film to examine the phenomenon, baseball has become a national rite of passage for the country’s youth. For thousands of Japanese teens, their families and teachers as well as millions of spectators, the annual tournament that begins with some 4,000 teams and finishes with 49 teams competing for the national championship at Koshien Stadium in Osaka manages to be both pure baseball—and purely Japanese.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Land Mine;
A Love Story
English subtitles
Director: Dennis O’Rourke
Australia, 75 min

In the ruined city of kabul, during the time of Taliban rule, a former Mujaheddin soldier noticed a pretty Tajik girl with one leg and began to court her. This was the beginning on an unlikely love story. Part essay and part observational film, this is an anti-war film set in a country that has become synonymous with warfare.

Dennis O’Rourke is one of this country’s most celebrated documentarians. His latest film is Land Mine; A Love Story which sounds like a contradiction in terms but when you see the film you’ll understand the title.

It’s inconceivable when we’re told at the beginning of the film that 10 million land mines were laid in Afghanistan over the years of the Russian invasion, the internal fighting of the mujahadeen, the struggle of the Taliban and then with the Americans, surely that’s more than one land mine per person in that country.

But this is not a film about statistics, it’s about the people whose lives have been affected by those very statistics.

Liberia, An Uncivil War
Director/Producer: Jonathan Stack, James Brabazon
UK, 102 min

In the spring of 2003, in the West African country of Liberia, the ongoing civil war fully exploded. The opposition movement Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) decided to overthrow President Charles Taylor, who had been accused of committing crimes against humanity in neighboring Sierra Leone, causing an international arrest warrant to be issued for him. Experienced war reporter James Brabazon positions himself directly among the rebel army, while highly-acclaimed American director Jonathan Stack documents the events in the streets of Monrovia and in the immediate vicinity of Charles Taylor. In rapidly moving footage pieced together from “both sides of the barricades” we follow the dramatic moments of the bloody conflict, where hundreds of innocent civilians fall victim each day, as they hopelessly wait for the arrival of peacekeeping forces. This film, which was awarded the Amnesty International DOEN prize at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, also features a number of songs by Bob Marley.

Making Place:
Joseph Wasserman on Urban Design
Director: Steven Borns
US, 90 min

Making Place: Joseph Wasserman on Urban Design is a 90-minute video documentary about the Triplex Cinema’s co-founder, the late Joseph Wasserman, candidly reviewing his 30-year career as architect and planner. Joe relates his evolution from student to architectural consultant to developer and entrepreneur as the video juxtaposes cinema verite scenes in New York City and the Berkshires with architectural plans, models, and interviews to illustrate the lessons learned from difficulties and successes, including an urban plan for Pittsfield and the development of the Triplex Cinema.

Filmmaker in attendance.

Rain in a Dry Land
English subtitles
Director: Anne Makepeace
US, 82 min

This is a verité feature documentary chronicling two years in the lives of two Somali Bantu families as they journey from Africa to America. It is a story of time travel, culture shock, a leap from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century as these subsistence farmers find themselves in a mysterious and confusing land.More importantly, it is an intimate, human story about two extraordinary families who somehow managed to keep their spirits intact through years of mayhem and deprivation, and whose astonishing, open-hearted resilience enables them to make a new life. Award-winning filmmaker Anne Makepeace, director of Robert Capa in Love and War, Baby It’s You, and Coming to Light, captures another riveting portrait, this time of two Muslim families in transition.

Filmmaker in attendance.

Road to Guantanamo
Directors: Michael Winterbottom,
Matt Whitecross
Cast: Ruhel Ahmed, Asif Iqral, Sharif Rasul
UK, 87 min
Winner of the 2006 Berlin Silver Bear Award.

The Road to Guantanamo is the terrifying first-hand account of three British citizens who were held for two years without charges in the American military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Known as the “Tipton Three,” in reference to their home town in Britain, the three were eventually returned to Britain and released, still having had no formal charges ever made against them at any time during their ordeal. The film has already engendered significant controversy due to its critical stance towards the American and British governments and also because of the cast’s detainment at British customs upon returning from the Berlin premiere. Part documentary, part dramatization, the film chronicles the sequence of events that led from the trio setting out from Tipton in the British Midlands for a wedding in Pakistan, to their crossing the Afghanistan border just as the U.S. began their invasion, to their eventual capture by the Northern Alliance and their imprisonment in Camp X-Ray and later at Camp Delta in Guantanamo.

‘Tis Autumn; The Search for Jackie Paris
Director: Raymond DeFelitta
US, 100 min

‘Tis Autumn–The Search for Jackie Paris is a documentary film that comprehensively examines the legendary jazz singer’s life and art.Using both new and archival performance footage, found footage, still photography, historical audio clips, and rare unreleased recordings, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raymond DeFelitta conducts on-camera interviews with the late Jackie Paris as well as many of the musicians, songwriters, and personalities who knew him best in an effort to discover what was at the heart of his enigmatic career, glorious art and mysterious personal life.

Filmmaker in attendance.

Wordplay
Director: Patrick Creadon
US, 90 min

Wordplay is a journey into the world of Will Shortz, the crossword puzzle editor at The New York Times. Known to millions as National Public Radio’s “Puzzle Master”, Shortz has spent his entire lifetime studying, creating, and editing puzzles, and has built a huge following along the way.Meet Shortz’s die-hard fans -- including President Bill Clinton, Senator Bob Dole, “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart, filmmaker Ken Burns, the Indigo Girls, and Yankee’s ace pitcher Mike Mussina -- and discover why over 50 million Americans do crosswords every week.

Catch all the action at what Shortz calls “the most exciting competition in tournament history!” Explore the madness and the mirth, the comedy and the drama that is our national obsession with these puzzles.Whether you’re a Monday-only solver (the easiest day of the week) or a Saturday “brain-busting” wizard, you’re sure to enjoy your very own “A-ha!” moment when you experience Wordplay.

Zahira’s Peace
English subtitles
Director: Nina Rosenblum
Spain/France, 65 min

Zahira: La Que Florece is the story of a young woman who was gravely injured in the Madrid train attach on March 11, 2004. Zahira experiences the tragedy of collateral damage in the midst of dramatic forces that impacted Spain and the world in response to the bombing of M-11.The film connects the events of 9/11 and the subsequent escalation of violence in Iraq, which culminates in Spain’s March 11 tragedy. The Spanish government’s initial deception regarding the perpetrators of the train bombing backfired, bringing about tremendous changes in Spanish politics.

Filmmaker in attendance.