UNAFF Film Festival: Saturday Schedule

The UNAFF 2012 International Documentary Film Festival continues in Palo Alto today. All films will be shown at the Aquarius Theatre, 430 Emerson St. The mission of UNAFF is to promote social change through education.  TICKET INFORMATION

 1 p.m. Weathering Change
(14 min)

Director/Producer: Nathan Golan

Description:

Weathering Change takes us to Ethiopia, Nepal and Peru to hear the stories of women as they struggle to care for their families, while enduring crop failures and water scarcity. The film shows how women and families are already adapting to the climate change challenges that threaten their health and their livelihoods. Weathering Change documents how family planning, girls’ education, sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation are part of the solution. As the world’s population hits seven billion in 2011, the film calls for expanding access to contraception and empowering women to help families and communities adapt to the effects of climate change.

1:30 pm: Bidder 70
(73 min.)

Directors/Producers: Beth Gage, George Gage

Description:

On December 19th, 2008, Tim DeChristopher, known as Bidder #70, derailed the Bush Administration’s last minute, widely disputed federal BLM Oil and Gas lease auction, effectively safeguarding thousands of acres of pristine Utah land surrounding Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and Dinosaur National Monument. Bidding $1.7 million, Tim won 22,000 acres of land with no intention to pay or drill. DeChristopher’s disruption of the auction bought enough time for the incoming Obama Administration and Interior Secretary Salazar to invalidate the auction, citing inadequate analysis of the environmental effects on surrounding areas and failure to assess contributions to global climate change. For his disruption of the illegitimate auction, DeChristopher was indicted and convicted on two federal charges and faces a possible ten years in prison and fines of $750,000. Tim’s profoundly effective act of civil disobedience has drawn national attention to America’s energy policy and criticism to the BLM’s management of public lands. Refusing to compromise his principles and rejecting numerous plea offers by the prosecution, Tim is willing to sacrifice his own future to bring this vitally important issue to our national attention. Bidder 70 is a personal story surrounded by a wider context of citizen action, our American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience, and grass roots movements demanding government and industry accountability.

3 pm: Reuniuon
(72 min)

Director: Jon Haukeland
Producer: C.R. Tredt

Description:

The film is an emotional search into the mechanism of oppression. Based upon a documentary film from 1999, called Before the Bombs Fell. In 1999 Serbian military forces and Albanian guerrillas were fighting in Kosovo. Serbs and Albanians lived separate lives. But when their country was on the brink of war, a group of students from Pristina and Belgrade decided to meet for the first time. Two weeks after the meeting NATO bombed and they all lost track of each other. Ten years later the participants meet again. The conflicts between them are now even stronger. Both groups have separate opinions of what really happened. When they watch the film of their last meeting in1999 they are confronted with their previous selves, but it also becomes obvious that the conflict is still, in many ways, the same. Only now have the tables turned. Through a long night of talking, they grow closer to each other when they decide to find a way out of the circle of oppression.

4:30: Going Up the Stairs
(52 min)

Director: Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami

Description:

Warm, revealing and often surprisingly funny portrait of an unlikely artist shows us that true talent will always refuse to be stifled, and you do not need an education to channel your emotions into art. Akram is an illiterate, fifty-year-old Iranian woman who became a painter unexpectedly when her young grandson asked her to work on a drawing. That simple moment tapped into an explosion of powerful, primitive and colorful paintings, which she hid from disapproving eyes. When invited to exhibit in Paris, she is at the mercy of her conservative husband: Will he let her go showcase her raw talent or give in to his sense of tradition and keep her home?

6:20 pm: Rainman Goes to RocKwiz
(30 min)

Director: Russell Kilbey
Producer: Russell Kilbey, Amy Scully, Ian Walker

Description:

Mark Boerebach lives in a black and white world, but he dreams in color.
A nearly blind recluse with Asperger's Syndrome, can he break out of his constrictive routine and show his amazing music chart recall on a live TV quiz show? Along the way we have some incredible insights into Mark's sad and remarkable life. Socially ostracized his whole life, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of the Australian music charts. Though plagued by anxieties, he is an endearing figure as he reveals his bizarre relationship to a now-defunct plastic bottle and his double life as an Astronaut/Media Baron in a place called Earth 2.

7:00 pm: Sing Your Song
(105 min)

Director: Susan Rostock
Producer: Michael Cohl

Description:

Sing Your Song is an up-close look at a great American, Harry Belafonte. A patriot to the last and a champion for worldwide human rights, Belafonte is one of the truly heroic cultural and political figures of the past sixty years. Told from Harry’s point of view, the film charts his life from a boy born in New York and raised in Jamaica, who returns to Harlem in his early teens where he discovers the American Negro Theater and the magic of performing. From there the film follows Belafonte’s rise from the jazz and folk clubs of Greenwich Village and Harlem to his emergence as a star. However, even as a superstar, the life of a black man in 1960s America was far from easy, and Belafonte was confronted with the same Jim Crow laws and prejudices that every other black man, woman and child in America was facing. Among other things, the film presents a brief look at the Civil Rights Movement through the eyes of an insider, someone who, despite his high profile, was not afraid to spend time in the trenches. From Harlem to Mississippi to Africa and South Central Los Angeles, Sing Your Song takes us on a journey through Harry Belafonte’s life, work and most of all, his conscience, as it inspires us all to action.

9:00 pm: Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up
(82 min

Director/Producer: Saul Landau

Description:

Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up? chronicles half a century of hostile US-Cuba relations. By telling the story of the case of the Cuban five, intelligence agents sent to penetrate Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami and now serving long prison sentences, the film highlights decades of assassinations and sabotage at first backed by Washington and then ignored by the very government that launched a “war against terrorism.” In the film, viewers see leading terrorists, now in their eighties, recounting their deeds, and Cuban state security officials explaining why they infiltrated agents into violent Miami exile groups. The film, featuring Danny Glover and eighty-four-year old Fidel Castro in key scenes, raises and tries to answer the question: What did Cuba do to deserve such hostile treatment? It traces key events from the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, through multiple assassination attempts on Fidel Castro’s life. This documentary reveals a story of violence that also echoed on the streets of Washington, D.C., New York and especially Miami, where Cuban American critics of the bombers and shooters also wound up dead.

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