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The
Museum of Natural History Presents:
The
Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival
Coming
to the Little Theater on Western Michigan University's East Campus
Friday and Saturday, March 30th and 31st, 2007 (See map at bottom)
Free
and open to the public. Reserve seating available (and recommended),
please send an email including your name, film(s) attending, # of
seats (3 max per showing), and contact telephone or email info to:
wmuasu@gmail.com For general information
email wmuasu@gmail.com
Friday,
March 30th:
6:00 pm: China Blue
Micha X. Peled. 2005. 88 min. (U.S./China) NY Premiere. Website
China
Blue takes us inside a blue jeans factory in Southern China, where
we follow the lives of Jasmine and her friends, young working girls
struggling to fulfill the impossible obligations forced upon them
by the factory's owner. The complexities of globalization are brought
to a human level through these moving portraits of the young workers
who make our clothes.
8:00
pm: Today's Man
Lizzie Gottlieb.
2006. 55 min. (U.S.) NY Premiere
Nicky Gottlieb is a young man struggling to leave
the comfort and safety of his parents' home and find his place in
the world. While he can calculate the square root of any number
in the blink of an eye, he has trouble reading the simplest of facial
expressions, making social interaction difficult. At the age of
21, he is diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning
form of autism. This loving portrait by his filmmaker sister is
both a personal exploration of one family's journey and a broader
effort to understand this mysterious disorder.
9:30
pm: Flock of Dodos
Randy Olson.
2006. 84 min. (U.S.)
Who
are the dodos in the current debate over evolution versus intelligent
design? With a Super Size Me-style good spirit, marine biologist
turned filmmaker Randy Olson travels the country in search of an
answer. He starts with his 82 year old mother who is neighbors with
the top lawyer for intelligent design in Olson's home state of Kansas,
which is the epicenter of the controversy. This film gets beyond
the tedium of the "debate" of who's right and who's wrong. Instead,
it explores how those who embrace each side are "communicating"
their ideas to the public.
Saturday, March 31st:
3:00 pm:
Sisters In Law
Kim Longinotto & Florence Ayisi. 2005. 104 min. (Cameroon)
Website
"Men are going to get the message now." The lawyers
and judges in one small courthouse in Kumba, Cameroon are helping
to transform women's and children's lives by protecting them from
domestic violence. From the maker of Divorce Iranian Style and Gaea
Girls comes this latest project celebrating dynamic women in non-traditional
roles. A testament to how a few strong women can help to make an
impact on individual lives as well as traditional world-views.
5:15
pm: A Map With Gaps
Alice Nelson.
2006. 26 min. (Scotland) NY Premiere. Website
Using a combination of archive audio recordings,
still photographs, drama reconstruction, and animation, this surreal
and comic tale is an account of a journey made by the director's
father through Soviet Russia in the early 1970s in a van he built
and named "Supervan." Truth can indeed be stranger than fiction,
and sometimes the gray area between the two is the most interesting
place to explore.
6:00
pm: Shooting Under Fire
Sacha Mirzoeff.
2005. 72 min. (Germany/Israel/Palestine)
Modern warfare is carried out both on the battlefield
and in the media. More and more, we rely on journalists and photographers
to provide us with unbiased access to events as they happen. Shooting
Under Fire introduces Reinhard Krause, head of the Reuters photo
bureau in the West Bank and Gaza, and his team of local Israeli
and Palestinian photographers, who cover both sides of the Israeli
conflict. This riveting film highlights the individuals who risk
their lives to bring us the pictures.
8:00
pm: El Inmigrante
David Eckenrode,
John Sheedy & John Eckenrode. 2005. 90 min. (U.S./Mexico) Website
El Inmigrante is a film about the American and
Mexican border crisis, illuminated by the story of Eusebio de Haro,
a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his
journeys north. This event becomes the point of departure for a
far more multi-layered border tale, one that's especially relevant
in the face of our nation's current immigration dispute. The cast
of this film is diverse, including Eusebio's family in Mexico, the
community of Brackettville, Texas, the horseback border patrol in
El Paso, and other migrants en route to the United States. Their
perspectives come together to create a moving political commentary
on the current state of border issues.
Click on the map for a larger version.
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