THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30
XXY
SHOWN AT 5:00PM – FREE SHOW!
For just about everybody, adolescence means having to confront a number of choices and life decisions, but rarely any as monumental as the one facing 15 year-old Alex (Ines Efron), who was born an intersex child. As Alex begins to explore her sexuality, her mother invites friends from Buenos Aires to come for a visit at their house on the gorgeous Uruguayan shore, along with their 16-year-old son Álvaro (Martin Piroyanski). Alex is immediately attracted to the young man, which adds yet another level of complexity to her personal search for identity, and forces both families to face their worst fears.
This free show is part of our Thursday FilmMovement series, which in November becomes “Free Third Thursdays.”
“Raw-edged and moving…thoroughly nuanced… a tough, engaging, extremely touching work of cinema.” -Richard James Havis, The Hollywood Reporter
TROUBLE THE WATER
SHOWN AT 7:15PM
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, “Trouble The Water” tells the story of an aspiring rap artist and her streetwise husband, trapped in New Orleans by deadly flood waters, who survive the storm and then seize a chance for a new beginning. It is a harrowing but ultimately redemptive tale of self-described street hustlers who become heroes that takes viewers inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. From the producers of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling For Columbine.”
“Essential, unique viewing: a stunning experience of the hurricane and its aftermath, rooted in immediate personal response and emotions that encapsulate the full national catastrophe.” -Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31
THE RAPE OF EUROPA
SHOWN AT 12:30PM
Nearly as insidious as the Hitler’s wholesale slaughter of Jews and others he thought inferior was his systematic pillaging of Europe’s art treasures and the attempted cultural annihilation of “sub-human” peoples. In the exhaustive documentary written and directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham and Bonni Cohen, the trio goes far in chronicling this seldom explored prong of the Nazis’ assault, from Hitler’s formation of the party in the 1920’s right through to its rise to power in 1933 to its defeat at the end of World War II twelve years later. Art lovers will thrill to the heroic efforts of not only the staffs of the Louvre and the Hermitage, but the U.S. Army’s contingent of “Monuments Men,” commissioned to protect these treasures from a vindictive retreating German force. While the three do not fully make a case for the Reich’s hunger for art being a major impetus for its warmongering, they do depict the tragedy of this hidden war-within-a-war with the kind of passion that would even make the most cold-hearted collector of velvet Elvis paintings weep.
“There is a heart-rending feeling to this documentary, in part due to its sense of irretrievable loss.”
-Philip Marchand, The Toronto Star
STEALING AMERICA: VOTE BY VOTE
SHOWN AT 2:45PM
For more than thirty years, exit polls accurately predicted election results. Over the last ten years that reliability has disappeared. What’s going on? The last two presidential elections both came down to a relatively small number of votes, and in both elections the integrity of the voting process has been called into question. With the upcoming election looking to be similarly close, the time has come to ask the questions: What happened in 2000 and 2004? What, if anything, has changed since? And what can be done to ensure a fair and honest tabulation of votes in 2008? This film brings together behind-the-scenes perspectives from the U.S presidential election of 2004 – plus startling stories from key races in 1998, 2000, 2002 and 2006. The film sheds light on a decade of vote counts that don’t match votes cast – uncounted ballots, vote switching, under-votes, an many other examples of election totals that warrant serious investigation. This film unveils patterns of anomalies at every level of the electoral process. Controversial partnerships perpetuate a secretive environment, as relevant facts and figures remain hidden from view. As a result, most Americans have no real sense of the threat to fair elections. As seemingly unrelated pieces of the puzzle come together, a chilling picture emerges: of widespread, artfully crafted “glitches” that, in the final tallies, have the capacity to alter election results.
“This tersely sobering documentary…mounts its case with hardheaded numerical logic.” -Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
WHAT WOULD JESUS BUY?
SHOWN AT 5:00PM
From producer Morgan Spurlock (“Super Size Me”) and director Rob VanAlkemade comes a serious docu-comedy about the commercialization of Christmas. Bill Talen (aka Reverend Billy) was a lost idealist who hitchhiked to New York City only to find that Times Square was becoming a mall. Spurred on by the loss of his neighborhood and inspired by the sidewalk preachers around him, Bill bought a collar to match his white caterer’s jacket, bleached his hair and became the Reverend Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping. Through retail interventions, corporate exorcisms, and some good old-fashioned preaching, Reverend Billy reminds us that we have lost the true meaning of Christmas. “What Would Jesus Buy?” is a journey into the heart of America – from exorcising the demons at the Wal-Mart headquarters to taking over the center stage at the Mall of America and then ultimately heading to the Promised Land…Disneyland. Will we be led like Sheeple to the Christmas slaughter, or will we find a new way to give a gift this Christmas? “What Would Jesus Buy?” may just be the divine intervention we’ve all been searching for.
Part of our “Somewhere That’s Green” series of sustainability films.
SHOWN FOLLOWING THE SHORT:
THE STORY OF STUFF
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. “The Story Of Stuff” is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. “The Story Of Stuff” exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
FROZEN RIVER
SHOWN AT 7:15PM
This acclaimed drama is the story of Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), an upstate New York trailer mom who is lured into the world of illegal immigrant smuggling when she meets a Mohawk girl who lives on a reservation that straddles the U.S.-Canadian border. Broke after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, Ray reluctantly teams up with Lila, a smuggler, and the two begin making runs across the frozen St. Lawrence River carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrant in the trunk of Ray’s Dodge Spirit.
“This is a debut feature, though you’d never know it from the filmmaker’s commandingly confident style, or from the heartbreaking beauty – heartbreaking, then heartmending – of Melissa Leo’s performance.” -Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
CTHULHU
SHOWN AT 9:30PM
If the movies “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Wicker Man” spawned violently in the night, the result would be Cthulhu, first-time director Dan Gildark’s effective, low-budget end-of-the-world dark thriller. Far more effective than M. Night Shyamalan’s apoca-schtick, “The Happening,” Gildark’s tense and claustrophobic slow-burn little film mines old-school horror titan H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” to tell this tale of a somber and terrifying homecoming. When Russell (Jason Cottle), a Seattle history professor, returns to Riversmouth for the funeral of his mother, he soon realizes that something is not quite right there, and that a mysterious sea-worshipping cult is probably behind it.
Part of our Friday Night Frights series.
“As the creepy gives way to the criminal, and ultimately to the genuinely supernatural, Cthulhu maintains its grounding in the sort of real-world interests that holds one’s attention without shocking demonstrations like dismemberment or decapitation.” -Tim Cogshell, Boxoffice Magazine
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