Opening: September 2
Venue: Film Forum/New York City
Film: American Casino
Dir./Prod: Leslie Cockburn
Prod.: Andrew Cockburn
http://www.americancasinothemovie.com/
"I don't think most people really understood that they were in a casino" says award-winning financial reporter Mark Pittman. "When you're in the Street's casino, you've got to play by their rules." This film finally explains how and why over $12 trillion of our money vanished into the American Casino.
For chips, the casino used real people, like the ones we meet in Baltimore. These are not the heedless spendthrifts of Wall Street legend, but a high school teacher, a therapist, a minister of the church. They were sold on the American Dream as a safe investment. Too late, they discovered the truth. Cruelly, as African-Americans, they and other minorities were the prime targets for the subprime loans that powered the casino. According to the Federal Reserve, African-Americans were four times more likely than whites to be sold subprime loans.
We meet the players. A banker explains that the complex securities he designed were "fourth dimensional" and sold to "idiots." A senior Wall Street ratings agency executive describes being ordered to "guess" the worth of billion dollar securities. A mortgage loan salesman explains how borrowers' incomes were inflated to justify a loan. A billionaire describes how he made a massive bet that people would lose their homes and has won $500 million, so far.
Finally, as the global financial system crumbles and outraged but impotent lawmakers fume at Wall Street titans, we see the casino's endgame: Riverside, California, a foreclosure wasteland given over to colonies of rats and methamphetamine labs, where disease-bearing mosquitoes breed in their millions on the stagnant swimming pools of yesterday's dreams.
Filmed over twelve months in 2008, American Casino takes you inside a game that our grandchildren never wanted to play.
Opening: September 9
Film: Crude
Dir./Prod: Joe Berlinger
Prods.: Michael Bonfiglio, J.R. DeLeon, Richard Stratton
Distributor: First Run Features
http://www.crudethemovie.com/
Three years in the making, this cinéma-vérité feature from acclaimed filmmaker Joe Berlinger (Brother's Keeper, Paradise Lost, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) is the epic story of one of the largest and most controversial environmental lawsuits on the planet. The inside story of the infamous "Amazon Chernobyl" case, Crude is a real-life high stakes legal drama, set against a backdrop of the environmental movement, global politics, celebrity activism, human rights advocacy, the media, multinational corporate power, and rapidly-disappearing indigenous cultures. Presenting a complex situation from multiple viewpoints, the film subverts the conventions of advocacy filmmaking, exploring a complicated situation from all angles while bringing an important story of environmental peril and human suffering into focus.
Opening: September 11
Venue: Cinema Village/NYC
Film: Gogol Bordello Non-Stop
Dir./Prod: Margarita Jimeno
Prod.: Darya Zhuk
Distributor: Lorber Films
http://www.lorberfilms.com/gogol-bordello-non-stop/
Gogol Bordello Non-Stop is a lo-fi, high-energy documentary about New York City's most notoriously entertaining band, led by frontman Eugene Hütz. Filmmaker and fan Margarita Jimeno follows the band on a five-year journey from underground legend to international phenomenon, taking in the reckless, raucous sights and sounds of a band whom Hütz describes as "dedicated to creating an insane party atmosphere to deliver messages of social and political commentary." A wildly entertaining celebration of the definitive fun-de-siècle band,
Opening: September 11
Film: No Impact Man
Dir./Prod: Laura Gabbert
Dir.: Justin Schein
Prod.: Eden Wurmfeld
Distributor: Oscilloscope Pictures
http://www.noimpactdoc.com/index_m.php
Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year. It means eating vegetarian, buying only local food and turning off the refrigerator. It also means no elevators, no television, no cars, busses or airplanes, no toxic cleaning products, no electricity, no material consumption and no garbage.
No problem--at least for Colin. But he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.
Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein's film provides an intriguing inside look into the experiment that became a national fascination and media sensation, while examining the familial strains and strengthened bonds that result from Colin and Michelle's struggle with their radical lifestyle change.
Opening: September 11
Venue: Landmark Magnolia Theater/Dallas, TX; Angelika Film Center, Houston, TX
Film: The Horse Boy
Dir.: Michel Orion Scott
Prod.: Rupert Isaacson
Distributor: Zeitgeist Films
http://www.horseboymovie.com/
How far would you travel to heal someone you love? An intensely personal yet an epic spiritual journey, The Horse Boy follows one Texas couple and their autistic son as they trek on horseback through Outer Mongolia in a desperate attempt to treat his condition with shamanic healing. When 2-year-old Rowan was diagnosed with autism, Rupert Isaacson, a writer and former horse trainer, and his wife, Kristin Neff, a psychology professor, sought the best possible medical care for their son--but traditional therapies had little effect. Then they discovered that Rowan has a profound affinity for animals--particularly horses--and the family set off on a quest for a possible cure.
The Horse Boy is part travel adventure, part insight into shamanic tradition and part intimate look at the autistic mind. In telling one family's extraordinary story, the film gives voice to the thousands who display amazing courage and creativity every day in the battle against the mysterious and heartbreaking epidemic.
Opening: September 11
Venue: Anthology Film Archives/New York City
Film: The Painter Sam Francis
Dir.: Jeffrey Perkins
http://www.thepaintersamfrancis.com/Site/Home.html
Forty years in the making, The Painter Sam Francis is Mr. Perkins's lyrical and intimate portrait of a friend, mentor and leading light of American abstract art.
The film retraces Francis' life and career from his childhood in California to his artistic maturation in post-World War II Paris, his time spent in Japan, and his return to the United States. Hinging on an interview that Perkins conducted with Francis in 1973, as well as extended scenes of the artist at work in the studio, the film provides deep insight into a man for whom creativity was a powerful life-sustaining force.
Interviews with friends, family, and fellow artists--including Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, Bruce Conner, Alfred Leslie and others--illuminate a mysterious and complex personality, and its reflection in a body of work that is simultaneously diverse and singular.
Opening: September 11
Film: Walt & El Grupo
Dir.: Theodore Thomas
Prod.: Kuniko Okubo
Distributor: Walt Disney Family Foundation Films
http://www.waltandelgrupo.com/
For ten weeks in 1941, Walt Disney, his wife Lilly, and sixteen colleagues from his studio visited nations in Latin America to gather story material for a series of films with South American themes. The feature documentary film Walt & El Grupo uses this framing device to explore inter-American relations, provide a rare glimpse into the artists who were part of the magic of Disney's "golden age", and give an unprecedented look at the 39 year-old Walt Disney during one of the most challenging times of his entire life.
Opening: September 16
Venue: Film Forum/New York City
Film: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Dirs./Prods.: Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith
http://www.mostdangerousman.org/
1971: America is embroiled in a dirty war based on lies. A president is abusing the power of his office, ignoring the will of the people, Congress and the courts. He promises peace while planning a war without end.
One man, at the center of power, armed with a safe full of secret documents, leaks the truth about the Vietnam War to The New York Times. He risks life in prison to end the war he helped plan. His act of conscience and desperation triggers a Constitutional crisis, Watergate, the only Presidential resignation in history--and finally helps end the war.
Henry Kissinger called Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America"
And three decades later, he's still at it.
This documentary tells a story we need now.
Opening: September 18
Film: FUEL
Dir./Prod.: Josh Tickell
Prod.: Rebecca Harrell
www.thefuelfilm.com
FUEL is a comprehensive and entertaining look at energy in America: a history of where we have been, our present predicament and a solution to our dependence on foreign oil.
Rousing and reactionary, FUEL is an amazing, in-depth, personal journey of oil use and abuse as it examines wide-ranging energy solutions other than oil, the faltering US auto and petroleum industries, and the latest stirrings of the American mindset toward alternative energy.
Opening: September 19
Venue: On the pier at Solar One; 23rd Street @ the East River/New York City
Film: Burning in the Sun
Dirs./Prods.: Cambria Matlow, Morgan Robinson
www.birdgirlproductions.com; http //rooftopfilms.bside.com/2009/films/burninginthesun_rooftopfilms2009
Twenty-six-year-old charmer Daniel Dembele is equal parts West African and European, and looking to make his mark on the world. A chance encounter while managing a café in Europe convinces him to return to his homeland in Mali and start a local business building solar panels--the first of its kind in the sun-drenched nation. Daniel's goal is to electrify the households of rural communities, 99 percent of which live without power. Burning in the Sun tells the story of Daniel's journey growing the shaky startup into a viable company, and of the business' impact on Daniel's first customers in the tiny village of Banko. Taking controversial stances on climate change, poverty and African self-sufficiency, the film explores what it means to grow up as a man, and what it takes to prosper as a nation.
Opening: September 21-"Global Premiere"
Film: The Age of Stupid
Dir.: Franny Armstrong
Prod.: Lizzie Gillett
http://www.ageofstupid.net/
The Age of Stupid is the new cinema documentary from Franny Armstrong, director of McLibel. This enormously ambitious drama-documentary-animation hybrid stars Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055, watching "archive" footage from 2008 and asking: Why didn't we stop climate change while we had the chance?
On September 21, the eve of the UN General Assembly's climate session, The Age of Stupid will be launched internationally at the biggest and greenest live film event the world has ever seen. A-list celebrities will walk the green carpet to a solar-powered cinema tent in downtown New York, linked by satellite to 700 cinemas in 50+ countries.*
As an INclusive, rather than EXclusive event, everyone is invited to go to their local theatre to watch the VIPs arrive in Manhattan by bike, rickshaw, electric car and sailing boat, before braving the paparazzi on the green carpet (made from recycled soda bottles). Following the screening of The Age of Stupid, there will be a further 40-minute event featuring Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson, Mary Robinson, the film's director Franny Armstrong, the star of the film Pete Postlethwaite and other leading thinkers, celebrities and political figures from around the world. There will be live music from Radiohead's Thom Yorke and satellite links to scientists working in the Indonesian Rainforest and at the melting glaciers in the Himalayas. A group of children will speak from the very room in Copenhagen in which all our futures will be decided at the UN climate summit in December.
Opening: September 23
Film: Capitalism: A Love Story
Dir./Prod.: Michael Moore
Distributor: Paramount Vantage/Overture
http://www.capitalismalovestory.com/
In the 20-year anniversary of his groundbreaking masterpiece Roger & Me, Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story comes home to the issue he's been examining throughout his career: the disastrous impact of corporate dominance on the everyday lives of Americans (and, by default, the rest of the world). But this time the culprit is much bigger than General Motors, and the crime scene is wider than Flint, Michigan. From Middle America to the halls of power in Washington, to the global financial epicenter in Manhattan, Michael Moore once again takes filmgoers into uncharted territory.
Opening: September 23
Venue: Cinema Village/New York City
Film: In Search of Beethoven
Dir.: Phil Grabsky
http://www.insearchofbeethoven.com/
In Search of Beethoven has brought together the world's leading performers and experts on Beethoven to reveal new insights into this legendary composer. As with director Phil Grabsky's previous film, In Search of Mozart, In Search of Beethoven takes a comprehensive look at the composer's life through his musical output, documenting each piece of music in concert with Beethoven's biography and letters. Grabsky traveled across Europe and North America to interview historians and musicians between rehearsals and performances, and filmed a remarkable 55 performances as well.
Above all, In Search of Beethoven addresses the romantic myth that Beethoven was a heroic, tormented figure battling to overcome his tragic fate, struck down by deafness, who searched for his "immortal beloved," but remained unmarried. It delves beyond the image of the tortured, cantankerous, unhinged personality, to reveal someone quite different and far more interesting.
Opening: September 25
Film: Lord, Save Us From Your Followers
Dir.: Dan Merchant
http://lordsaveusthemovie.com/
If you were to meet ten average Americans on the street, nine of them would say they believe in God. So why is the Gospel of Love dividing America?
Dan Merchant put on his bumper-sticker-clad jumpsuit and decided to find the reason. After talking with scores of men and women on streets all across the nation, and also interviewing many well-known activists in today's "Culture Wars," Merchant realized that the public discussion of faith doesn't have to be contentious.
From its opening Talking Heads sequence through its touching look at faith in action, Lord, Save Us From Your Followers is a fast-paced, highly engaging documentary that explores the collision of faith and culture in America while opening up this important conversation to all of us.
Opening: September 25
Film: The Providence Effect
Dir./Prod.: Rollin Binzer
Distributor: Slowhand Cinema Releasing
http://www.theprovidenceeffect.com/
Paul J. Adams III, an African-American man with activist roots in the 1960s civil rights movement, came from a family of teachers. After being black-listed himself as a teacher in Alabama because of his civil rights activities, he moved to Chicago, received a master's degree in psychology, and then landed a job as guidance counselor at Providence St. Mel, an all-black parochial school on Chicago's notorious drug-ridden, gang-ruled West Side.
A year after his arrival, Adams became principal, only to be told the following year that Chicago's archdiocese was going to close the school. After orchestrating a fundraising campaign that received national and local media attention, funds poured in and enabled Adams to buy the school from the Sisters of Providence and convert it to a nonprofit independent school. To ward off thieves and vandals, he literally moved into the empty nuns' quarters of the convent inside the school.
He then set about achieving a new goal: To turn Providence St. Mel into a first rank college preparatory school, and its African-American student body into a corps of driven, disciplined, high-achieving students.
That was over 30 years ago. Since then, 100 percent of Providence St. Mel graduates have been accepted to college--half of them, during the last seven years, to first tier and Ivy League colleges and universities.
The road from failing inner city school to a pre-K-through-12 educational system that produces graduates who attend Ivy League colleges and universities was not a smooth one. The Providence Effect traces the school's development from a struggling shoe-string budget dream into a school and a method of teaching that produces not only inspired students, but parents, teachers and administrators dedicated to settling for nothing less than the highest expectations.
Opening: September 30
Venue: Film Forum/New York City
Film: An American Journey
Dir.: Philippe Séclier
Distributor: Lorber Films
http //www.unvoyageamericain.com/pages/en_lefilm.html
In contemporary photography, everybody agrees there is a "before" and an "after" The Americans, Robert Frank's 1958 photographic manifesto.
Half a century later, French director Philippe Séclier decided to follow in Frank's footsteps to explore the spirit of the "Beat Generation" and the impact of his book, The Americans, not only on the art of photography, but also on American culture.
From Texas to Montana, Nebraska to Louisiana, New York to San Francisco, An American Journey is a 15,000 miles odyssey through contemporary America, moving between past and present, photography and cinema, and two Americas, separated by time.