Boulder Film Festival

Hi everyone,

This looks pretty cool. Check out the details at http://www.biff1.com/ and let me know if you want to go!

Here are some film synopses:

Soundtrack for a Revolution
Friday, 9:15pm, The Church
USA/France/UK, Feature Documentary, 2009, 83 min
On the Academy Awards short list 2010
From the Cannes and Tribeca Film Festivals

A young black man sits politely at the "whites only" counter in a diner as white men berate him, throw food at him and eventually beat him. But when he hits the floor, another man takes his place at the counter. Watching this ghastly footage, captured during the bitter days of segregation, it seems impossible to imagine anyone willing to endure such senseless brutality. But pair images like this with soul-stirring folk songs like "I'm Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table," "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" and "We Shall Overcome," and suddenly anything seems possible. Soundtrack for a Revolution tells the story of the American civil rights movement through the music that fortified protestors as they struggled for equality. Featuring music by The Roots, Wyclef Jean, Joss Stone, Richie Havens and Harry Belafonte.



Mugabe and the White African
Namibia/Zimbabwe, Feature Documentary, 2009, 94 min
On the Academy Awards shortlist
"The finest new documentary this year" Washington Post
"Excellent, moving anti-racist documentary. This is one of the most powerful documentaries I have ever seen."Daily Mail, London

Michael Campbell is one of the few hundred white farmers left in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe began his violent land seizure program in 2000. Since then, the country and its economy have descended into chaos by the reallocation of formerly white-owned farms to ZANU-PF friends and officials with no knowledge, experience or interest in farming. Mike, like hundreds of white farmers before him, has suffered years of intimidation and violence at his farm. In 2008, Mike took the audacious and unprecedented step of challenging Robert Mugabe before the SADC (South African Development Community) international court, charging him and his government with racial discrimination and violations of human rights.



DIVE!
U.S., Feature Documentary, 2009, 45 min

Grocery stores around the country are filling their dumpsters with food, billions of pounds of good, edible food. Why is all this food being thrown away and not given to people who need it? And what kind of society wastes this astronomical amount of food, while making it illegal to give it to the poor and the hungry? Jeremy Seifert's great film is a foray into the food waste generated in Los Angeles by large supermarket chains such as Whole Foods and Trader Joes—and how a growing movement of people is collecting and redistributing that food every night through the act of illegal dumpster diving.



The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Sunday, 10:00am, Boulder Theater
USA, Feature Documentary, 2009, 93 min
On the Academy Awards short list
"So many people risked their livelihoods to put the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers out there—we have not celebrated Daniel Ellsberg enough. Let’s begin." New York Magazine

Daniel Ellsberg is a pivotal figure in American history. It was Nixon's obsession with destroying Ellsberg that led to the Watergate burglary, Nixon’s resignation and the end of the Vietnam War. This thrillling documentary (the title comes from Henry Kissinger) is, in effect, the nail-biting prequel to All the President's Men. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg, a high-level Pentagon official, former Marine and Vietnam War hawk discovers top-secret reports detailing the lies the Pentagon had been telling the public about the war. In the breathtaking race to smuggle out the thousands of pages of top-secret documents and give them to newspapers before the government could get injunctions, this film becomes an exciting journalistic drama. Narrated by Ellsberg himself, with a background of Nixon's White-House-taped voice sputtering, "We've got to get this son of a bitch!"