PROGRAM A at the ArcLight®

THE PRICE OF SUGAR

Director/Producer: Bill Haney
Producer: Eric Grunebaum
Digital 90 min. Dominican Republic/Spain
Uncommon Productions/Mitropoulos Films

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In the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches unaware that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians have toiled under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane. They work grueling hours and frequently lack decent housing, clean water, electricity, education or healthcare. The Price of Sugar follows Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic Spanish priest, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people and challenges powerful interests profiting from their work.

PROGRAM B at the ArcLight®

NANKING

Directors: Bill Guttentag, Dan Sturman
Producers: Ted Leonsis, Michael Jacobs
Digital 90 min. China/USA
THINKFilm

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A powerful reminder of the heartbreaking toll war takes on the innocent, Nanking tells the story of the Japanese invasion of Nanking, China, in the early days of World War II.  The city was subjected to months of bombardment, and when it fell, the Japanese unleashed murder and rape on a horrifying scale. In the midst of the rampage, a small group of unarmed Westerners banded together to establish a safety zone, rescuing over 200,000 Chinese.

PROGRAM C at the ArcLight®

WAR/DANCE

Directors: Sean Fine & Andrea Nix Fine
Producer: Albie Hecht
Digital 105 min. Uganda
THINKFilm

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Set in Northern Uganda, a country ravaged by more than two decades of civil war, War/Dance tells the story of three children whose families have been torn apart and who currently reside in a displaced persons camp in Patongo. When they are invited to compete in a music and dance festival, their historic journey to their nation's capital becomes an opportunity to regain part of their childhood and taste victory for the first time in their lives.

PROGRAM D at the ArcLight®

HEAR AND NOW

Director/Producer: Irene Taylor Brodsky
Supervising Producer: Sara Bernstein
Executive Producer: Sheila Nevins
Digital 84 min. USA
Vermilon Pictures/HBO Documentary Films

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Filmmaker Irene Taylor Brodsky tells the story of her deaf parents, Paul and Sally Taylor, and their decision at the age of 65 to undergo risky cochlear implant surgery--a procedure that could give them the ability to hear. An intimate memoir, the film follows their complicated journey from a comfortable world of silence to a new and profoundly challenging world of sound.

PROGRAM E at the ArcLight®

PROTAGONIST

Director/Producer: Jessica Yu
Producers: Elise Pearlstein, Susan West
Digital 90 min. USA
Diorama Films, LLC/IFC/Red Envelope

Protagonist explores extremism and the limits of certainty. This visually inventive documentary weaves the stories of four men—a German terrorist, a bank robber, an "ex-gay" evangelist and a martial arts student—consumed by personal odysseys.

PROGRAM F at the ArcLight®

STEPS TO ETERNITY

Director/Producer: Daniel Goldberg
35mm 27 min. Israel
Goldberg Lerner Productions

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Steps to Eternity follows Aaron, an elderly man in deteriorating health, as he walks from his apartment to the synagogue at daybreak. Holding on to his walker, it takes him about 20 minutes to walk approximately 100 yards. Steps to Eternity is a film about sheer determination, the faith and will of a man and, above all, his desire to live.

SALIM BABA

Director: Tim Sternberg
Producers: Francisco Bello, Scott Mosier,
Raja Dey
35mm 14 min. India
Ropa Veija Films/Paradox Smoke Productions

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Salim Muhammad lives in North Kolkata, India, with his wife and five children. Since the age of ten, he has made a living screening discarded film scraps for the kids in his surrounding neighborhood, using a hand-cranked projector that he inherited from his father. A pragmatic businessman as well as a cinephile, Salim runs his projector with his sons in the hopes that they will carry on his legacy of showing films to the local children.

SARI'S MOTHER

Director/Producer: James Longley
35mm 21 min. Iraq
Daylight Factory, LLC

Sari's Mother follows the struggle of an Iraqi mother to help her 10-year-old son, Sari, who is dying of AIDS. The Zegum family lives in the restive Mahmudiyah area of central Iraq. Sari's mother administers injections to her son, whose condition is gradually deteriorating. She seeks help in Baghdad's hospitals and ministries, but discovers that the Iraq healthcare system is in even worse condition under the US occupation than before the war.

ANGEL'S FIRE (FUEGO DE ANGEL)

Director: Marcelo Bukin
35mm 13 min. Spain/Peru
Rec Stop and Play, Global Humanitaria

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Eight-year-old Angel works in a brick factory all day long in his village near Lake Titicaca, Peru. Angel's Fire poignantly depicts forced child labor in a community where poverty and despair drive parents to abuse.

PROGRAM F (CONT.) at the ArcLight®

GENE BOY CAME HOME

Director/Producer: Alanis Obomsawin
35mm 25 min. Canada
National Film Board of Canada

Eugene Benedict (Gene Boy) left the Odanak reserve in Canada at age 15 to find work in the United States. He joined the Marine Corps when he was 17 and a year later he was in Vietnam fighting on the frontline. The film tells the story of his time in Vietnam, the scars it left on his life, and the long path to healing that lead him back to Odanak.

PROGRAM G at the ArcLight®

KURT COBAIN ABOUT A SON

Director: AJ Schnack
Producer: Shirley Moyers, Noah Khoshbin,
Chris Green
Executive Producer: Ravi Anne
35mm 97 min. USA
Sidetrack Films/Bonfire Films of America

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Kurt Cobain About a Son is an intimate and moving portrait of the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain told entirely in his own voice--without celebrity sound bites, news clips, sensational tabloid angles or attempts to mimic a grunge aesthetic. Instead, filmmaker AJ Schnack has created something closer to an autobiography of Cobain--his successes and failures, thoughts and experiences, allowing the audience unprecedented intimacy with a legendary figure in popular culture.

PROGRAM H at the ArcLight®

LARRY FLYNT: THE RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE

Director/Producer: Joan Brooker-Marks
Producer: Walter Marks
35mm 80 min. USA
Midtownfilms, Inc.

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Both hero and villain, tireless civil rights advocate and purveyor of pornography, the always controversial Larry Flynt is the subject of Joan Brooker-Marks' documentary. Delving beyond Flynt's political career, the film offers an intimate glimpse into the publisher's personal life, including the assassination attempt that left him paralyzed, and his first wife's battle with AIDS. Ultimately, Brooker-Marks delivers the full, unvarnished story of one of America's most unlikely defenders of civil liberties.

Visit: LarryFlynt.com

PROGRAM I at the Landmark

WE ARE TOGETHER (THINA SIMUNYE)

Director/Producer: Paul Taylor
Producer: Teddy Leifer
Executive Producers: Leigh Blake, Sheila Nevins, Jess Search
Digital 86 min. South Africa/UK/USA
Rise Films/HBO Documentary Films/The Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation

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Filmed over three years, We Are Together tells the remarkable and moving tale of a group of children who use music to overcome hardship and loss. It is the story of an orphanage, unlike one you've ever seen before, and of the drive of these remarkable young singers and their teachers to make it to London for a series of concerts.

Visit: www.wearetogether.org

PROGRAM J at the Landmark

CHOPS

Director/Executive Producer: Bruce Broder
Producers: Joe Carmody, Chip Rives,
Warren Skeels
Executive Producer: Tim Cremin
Digital 88 min. USA
Winnercomm, Inc.

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Chops tells the story of a group of kids, born with extraordinary musical ability, who learn to make the most of their gifts in an acclaimed public school jazz program in Jacksonville, Florida. From their early, squeaky scales to their soaring improvisational solos, we have a front-row seat for their fascinating transformation.

PROGRAM K at the Landmark

TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE

Director/Producer: Alex Gibney
Producer: Susannah Shipman, Eva Orner
Digital 105 min. Afghanistan/USA
THINKFilm/Discovery Communications

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Taxi to the Darkside examines the death of an Afghan taxi driver at Bagram Air Base from injuries inflicted by US soldiers. In an unflinching look at the Bush administration's policy on torture, filmmaker Alex Gibney takes us from a village in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay and straight to the White House.

PROGRAM L at the Landmark

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON

Director: David Sington
Producer: Duncan Copp
Digital 100 min. USA/The Moon
THINKFilm/Discovery Films

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Between 1968 and 1972, 24 Americans journeyed to the Moon. They remain the only human beings to have visited another world. In this film, the Apollo astronauts tell their own story, and share their reflections on what these great voyages of exploration meant to them and to humanity. The interviews are interwoven with re-mastered NASA film footage, much of it never seen before.

PROGRAM M at the Landmark

A PROMISE TO THE DEAD: THE EXILE JOURNEY OF ARIEL DORFMAN

Director/Producer: Peter Raymont
Digital 91 min. Chile/Argentina/USA
White Pine Pictures

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A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman is an exploration of exile, memory, longing and democracy through the words and memories of playwright/author/activist, Ariel Dorfman (Death and the Maiden, How to Read Donald Duck, Other Septembers). The documentary was filmed in the USA, Argentina and Chile in late 2006 coinciding with the death of former Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet.

Visit: www.promisetothedead.com