UNAFF Film Festival: Saturday’s Schedule

The UNAFF 2012 International Documentary Film Festival continues in Palo Alto. All of today’s films will be screened at two locations at Stanford University.  

The mission of UNAFF, the United Nations Association Film Festival, is to promote social change through education. TICKET INFORMATION

The following documentaries will be screened at Stanford University, Cantor Arts Center, 328 Lomita Dr.  

11:15 a.m. A Flicker in Eternity
(26 min)

Director: Ann Kaneko, Sharon Yamato
Producer: Joanne Oppenheim

Description:

This is a true story of Stanley Hayami, a young boy who chronicled his turbulent life and times in a diary that he kept while living behind barbed wire from 1942 to 1944. Deeply personal, poignant, and funny, this coming-of-age tale chronicles a life with remarkable promise. Each page echoes with the ebullient voice of a young man destined for a brilliant future. “Hayami is going to the top!” he declares in one diary entry. His life was to end when he joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team—killed protecting his fellow soldiers. Fortunately, his imagination lives on in the beautiful words and inventive drawings that put a page-turning human face on an extraordinarily shattering chapter in American history. It is a story that combines the brightness of youth, the ignominy of incarceration, and the tragedy of war.

11:45 a.m. Portrait of Wally
(90 min)

Director: Andrew Shea
Producer: Andrew Shea, David D’Arcy

Description:

Portrait of Wally, Egon Schiele’s tender picture of his mistress, Walburga (“Wally”) Neuzil, is the pride of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. But for thirteen years the painting was locked up in New York, caught in a legal battle between the Austrian museum and the Jewish family from whom the Nazis seized the painting in 1939. The film traces the history of this iconic image–from Schiele’s gesture of affection toward his young lover, to the theft of the painting from Lea Bondi, a Jewish art dealer fleeing Vienna for her life, to the post-war confusion and subterfuge that evoke The Third Man, to the surprise resurfacing of “Wally” on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In 1997, when the heirs of art dealer Lea Bondi asked MoMA to hold the painting in New York, MoMA and the Leopold Museum dug in their heels and refused. District Attorney Robert Morgenthau issued a subpoena and launched a criminal investigation. A thirteen-year battle in court followed, tracking the course of a Holocaust property crime and reopening the wounds of one of the century’s worst tragedies—all at a time when the prices of Egon Schiele’s works rose faster than those of any painter on the art market. Schiele collector Ronald Lauder found himself caught between several loyalties—he was chairman of MoMA and the founder of the Commission for Art Recovery, an organization committed to returning looted art to the Jews who lost it to the Nazis. Lauder sided with the Museum, and against the Jewish family. So did all the museums in New York—even the Jewish Museum. The “Wally” case brought the story of Nazi art loot into the open, eventually forcing museums in Europe and the US to return art to Jewish families.

1:15 pm Panel Discussion: "The Value of Missing Art"

2:15 p.m. The Mexican Suitcase
(90 min)

Director: Trisha Ziff
Producer: 212 Berlin Films

Description:

The Mexican Suitcase is a ninety-minute feature documentary that tells the extraordinary story of the recovery of 4,500 negatives taken by photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour during the Spanish Civil War, with an extraordinary score by composer, Michael Nyman. The film reveals the story of the journey of these lost negatives from France to Mexico.

The following documentaries will be screened at Stanford University, Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building, 435 Lausen Mall.

4:00 p.m.  Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful
(66 min)

Director/Producer: Yuriko Gamo Romer

Description:

Throwing thousands of years of tradition to the wind, Keiko Fukuda chose to follow her own destiny and become the highest-ranking woman in judo’s history. Mrs. Judo: Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful tells the inspirational story of Fukuda’s lifelong journey, spanning four continents, nine decades, and two distinct cultures, to overcome adversity and ultimately transform into a living legend. Fukuda was born in Tokyo in 1913, where two generations earlier her samurai grandfather was the first martial arts master to Jigoro Kano who went on to found judo in 1882. In 1934, Fukuda was invited by Kano to join his new women’s division, a progressive idea at a time when males dominated the sport. Judo’s black belt has ten degrees, but gender discrimination dictated that women hit a ceiling at fifth degree—until 1974. Facing her own struggle for independence as a young woman, Fukuda bucked tradition, choosing not to marry when she realized that as a wife she would have to give up her beloved judo. Her teacher, Master Kano, charged his students with the responsibility to spread judo around the world, and after Kano died in 1938, this became her life’s vocation. Today, at ninety-nine, Fukuda still teaches judo three times a week. After seventy-seven years of practicing judo, Fukuda now holds judo’s highest rank, tenth dan, and has earned the prestigious title “Shihan” (grand master). Fukuda Shihan is the last living disciple of Master Kano and the only living link to judo's origins.

5:15 p.m. We Still Live Here
(56 min)

Director/Producer: Anne Makepeace

Description:

Celebrated every Thanksgiving as the Indians who saved the Pilgrims from starvation, and then largely forgotten, the Wampanoag Tribes of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard are now saying loud and clear, and in their Native tongue, “As Nutayuneân,” meaning We Still Live Here. Spurred on by their celebrated linguist, Jessie Little Doe Baird, recent winner of a MacArthur “genius” award, the Wampanoag are bringing their language home. The story begins in 1994 when Jessie Little Doe, an intrepid, thirty-something Wampanoag social worker, began having recurring dreams: familiar-looking people from another time addressing her in an incomprehensible language. Jessie was perplexed and a little annoyed– why couldn’t they speak English? Later, she realized they were speaking Wampanoag, a language no one had used for more than a century. These events sent her and members of the Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanaog communities on an odyssey that would uncover hundreds of documents written in their language, lead Jessie to a Masters in Linguistics at MIT, and result in something that had never been done before – bringing a language alive again in an American Indian community after many generations with no Native speakers.

7:15 p.m. Semper Fi: Always Faithful
(76 min)

Director: Tony Hardmon, Rachel Libert
Producer: Todd Wider, Jedd Wider

Description:

Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger was a devoted Marine for nearly twenty-five years. As a drill instructor, he was responsible for indoctrinating new recruits with the motto Semper Fidelis or “Always Faithful”. When Jerry’s nine-year-old daughter died of a rare leukemia, his world was upended and he struggled to make sense of what happened. In his search for answers, he discovered a Marine Corps cover-up of one of the largest water contamination incidents in US history. Semper Fi: Always Faithful follows Jerry’s mission to help thousands of soldiers and their families exposed to toxic chemicals at North Carolina’s Camp Lejeune. His fight reveals a grave injustice at Camp Lejeune and a looming environmental crisis at military sites across the country.

8:40 p.m. Call Me Kuchu
(87 min)

Director: Katherine Fairfax- Wright, Malika Zouhali- Worrall
Producer: Malika Zouhali- Worrall

Description:

In an unmarked office at the end of a dirt track, veteran activist David Kato labors to repeal Uganda’s homophobic laws and liberate his fellow lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women, or “kuchus.” A new “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” proposes death for HIV-positive gay men, and prison for anyone who fails to turn in a known homosexual. Inspired by American evangelicals who have christened Uganda ground zero in their war on the “homosexual agenda,” the bill awaits debate in Uganda’s Parliament. Meanwhile, local newspapers have begun outing kuchus with vicious fervor under headlines such as: “HOMO TERROR! We Name and Shame Top Gays in the City.” David is one of the few who dare to publicly protest state-sanctioned homophobia. He fights Uganda’s government and tabloids in the courts, on television, and at the UN. But one year into filming Call Me Kuchu and just three weeks after a landmark legal victory, on January 26th, 2011, the unthinkable happens: David is brutally murdered in his home. His death sends shockwaves around the world, and leaves Kampala’s kuchus traumatized and seeking answers for a way forward.

10:10 p.m. Scarlet Road
(70 min)

Director: Catherine Scott
Producer: Pat Fiske

Description:

Impassioned about freedom of sexual expression, Australian sex worker Rachel Wotton has become highly specialized in working with clients with disabilities. Rachel’s philosophy, that human touch and sexual intimacy can be some of the most therapeutic aspects to our existence, is making a dramatic impact on the lives of her clients, Mark and John. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis twenty-six years ago, John now drives around in a chin-controlled wheelchair, but after ongoing sessions with Rachel, he has regained body movement that he thought was lost forever. His self-esteem and overall improvement have amazed his doctors. Mark, a client with cerebral palsy, has gone through life trying to establish an intimate relationship. Confined to a wheelchair and speaking via an electronic communication board, dating has not been easy. Mark has come to love his body and has always dreamt of falling asleep with a woman and waking up beside her in the morning. While Rachel’s clients give a glimpse into their sexual self-discovery, Scarlet Road follows Rachel as she strives to increase awareness and access to sexual expression for people with disabilities.

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