Welcome To The Imperial” is a 1-minute viral video from Brooklyn born spoken word poet and actor, Lemon Andersen and Queens-bred filmmaker, Rik Cordero to the millions of New York City basketball fans. It features a mixture of Rik’s eye for iconic New York City sights and faces seamlessly combined with the richness of Lemon’s poetry. In essence, the Big Apple exerts a powerful influence over those who live here and those who play here. Welcome To The Imperial…
“…It represents two artists on their way to the throne. It’s Majestic. It’s us. Now when you hear “Welcome To The Imperial” you will hear our stamp.” – Lemon
“…What we’ve done only scratches the surface of what Lemon and I are capable of but ultimately we achieved our goal with Imperial: to visually capture the essence and magic and complexity of New York City.” – Rik
Mao’s Last Dancer, the new film by Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), is this year’s Slumdog Millionaire — with a little Billy Elliot mixed in. The film, based on the autobiography of the same title, tells the true story of Li Cunxin, who was plucked from his rural peasant village as a child to be trained as a ballet dancer in Mao Zedong’s communist China. He dutifully navigated the years of training and the accompanying slogans of propaganda without any care for ballet because it was an escape from his inevitable fate as a peasant back home. But his talent garnered the faith of one of his teachers, and later caught the eye of American Ben Stevenson, then artistic director of the Houston Ballet. Li was brought to Houston on a scholarship and soon learned that the propaganda drilled into him by Mao’s China was full of lies. He was then faced with the choice of returning to his homeland or fighting to stay in the US, knowing his actions could send dire repercussions to his family in remote China. The film is peppered with fully produced ballet performances featuring Birmingham Royal Ballet principal dancer Chi Cao in his first acting role. The film is a well-crafted delight. (more…)
Centurion is the newest film by Neil Marshall (The Descent) and it delivers on his legacy of action and gore. The film is based on the true story of Roman soldiers in 117 AD, who were fighting a losing battle to expand the Roman Empire into Britain. The legendary Ninth Legion was sent into Scotland for the final strike and was never heard from again. Marshall researched this ancient story and embellished the missing details to create the story of Centurion, a loyal soldier who rode out with the Ninth only to be one of few survivors fighting to return home. What starts off as a huge war epic quickly becomes a survival story of men running for their lives against all odds. The film is well written and well executed to give audiences their money’s worth, though it may be a bit too violent for the vast mainstream. (more…)
One of the most harrowing and compelling personal documentaries of our time, ‘Enemies of the People’ exposes for the first time the truth about the Killing Fields and the Khmer Rouge who were behind Cambodia’s genocide. More than simply an inquiry into Cambodia’s experience, however, ‘Enemies of the People’ is a profound meditation on the nature of good and evil, shedding light on the capacity of some people to do terrible things and for others to forgive them.
Winner of a dozen top documentary festival awards, including a Special Jury Prize at Sundance and the Grand Jury Award at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, this is a riveting film that takes audiences as close to witnessing evil as they are ever likely to get. It is also a personal journey into the heart of darkness by journalist/filmmaker Thet Sambath, whose family was wiped out in the Killing Fields, but whose patience and discipline elicits unprecedented on-camera confessions from perpetrators at all levels of the Khmer Rouge hierarchy. This is investigative journalism of the highest order.
Provocative, audacious and visionary, Gaspar Noe (Irreversible) pushes the boundaries of hallucinatory cinema with this exploration of sex, drugs, life and death. A brother and sister scratch out a living in Tokyo’s underworld–Oscar’s a small-time dealer, Linda (Paz de la Huerta, The Limits of Control) is an exotic dancer. One night, a police bust goes horribly wrong, and Oscar is shot. But as he lies dying,his spirit refuses to leave the world. Instead, it wanders through the city, its visions growing ever more distorted and nightmarish.
Directed by: Gaspar No
Opens Friday, September 24
NR, 137 Minutes, In English and Japanese with English subtitles.
France/Germany/Italy, 2010
It is happening all across America and now in Europe and Africa as well – rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from a multinational energy conglomerate wanting to lease their property. The Reason? In America, the company hopes to tap into a huge natural gas reservoir dubbed the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground—a hydraulic drilling process called fracking—and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower.
But what comes out of the ground with that natural gas? How does it affect our air and drinking water? GASLAND is a powerful personal documentary that confronts these questions with spirit, strength, and a sense of humor. When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame. He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money.
Filmed over nearly three years, ‘Waste Land’ follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of “catadores” – or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials.
Muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with garbage. However, his collaboration with these inspiring characters as they recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both dignity and despair as the catadores begin to re-imagine their lives. Walker (‘DEVIL’S PLAYGROUND’, ‘BLINDSIGHT’) has great access to the entire process and, in the end, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the alchemy of the human spirit.
Directed by: Lucy Walker
NR, 98 Minutes, In English and Portuguese with English subtitles
UK/Brazil, 2010
Official Website: www.wastelandmovie.com
In 1961, during the first year of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, more than four hundred Americans participated in a bold and dangerous experiment designed to awaken the conscience of a complacent nation. These self-proclaimed “Freedom Riders” challenged the mores of a racially segregated society by performing a disarmingly simple act.
Traveling together in small interracial groups, they sat where they pleased on buses and trains and demanded unrestricted access to terminal restaurants and waiting rooms, even in areas of the Deep South where such behavior was forbidden by law and custom. Their efforts were met with extreme violence and brought international attention to the fight against segregation, exploitation and racism known as the Civil Rights Movement. Freedom Riders chronicles the story behind this courageous group of civil rights activists.
Like a scene torn from The Color Purple or Capturing The Friedmans, this deeply personal and uncompromising documentary examines the complex levels of pedophilia and how it can manipulate and control an entire family for life. Family Affair is also a story about resilience, survival and understanding a child’s capacity to accommodate a parent’s past crimes in order to satisfy a basic longing for family. (more…)
The unexplainable phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder has left landscapes of empty beehives all across America, threatening not only the beekeeping industry but our food supply. As scientists and beekeepers search for the cause, COLONY captures the struggle within the beekeeping community to save the honeybee and themselves, through the eyes of veteran beekeeper Davis Mendes and Lance and Victor Seppi, two young brothers getting into beekeeping when most are getting out. As Mendes tries to save the nation’s collapsing hives, the Seppis try to keep their business alive amidst a collapsing economy.
Directed by: Ross McDonnell and Carter Gunn
84 Minutes
Ireland, 2009
