2:00PM - Vineyard Playhouse
Kassim The Dream
Director: Kief Davidson
Documentary / USA, Uganda / 87 mins
AFM Silver Docs Award
This is the story of World Champion Boxer, Kassim "The Dream" Ouma - born in Uganda, kidnapped by the rebel army and trained to be a child soldier at the age of 6. When the rebels took over the government, Kassim became an army soldier who was forced to commit many horrific atrocities, making him both a victim and perpetrator. He soon discovered the army's boxing team and realized the sport was his ticket to freedom. After 12 years of warfare, Kassim defected from Africa and arrived in the United States. Homeless and culture shocked, he quickly rose through the boxing ranks and became Junior Middleweight Champion of the World.
Kassim, now age 27, seems to have obtained the American Dream with his jovial nature, fame and hip hop lifestyle. As Kassim trains for his next world title fight against Jermain Taylor in Little Rock Arkansas, keeping his demons out of the ring becomes increasingly difficult. His desires to reunite with family in Uganda intensify when Kassim's only hope for a safe return is a military pardon from the president and government responsible for his abduction.
2:00PM - Capawock Theatre
Reprise
Director: Joachim Trier
Drama / Norway / 107 mins
Over 12 international awards including the Discovery Award at Toronto International Film Festival, Best Film-Best Direction-Best Screenplay at Amanda Awards Norway.
The fast-moving story kicks off just as Phillip (ANDERS DANIELSON LIE) and Erik (ESPEN KLOUMAN-HOINER) stand at the mailbox, two cocky, grinning rebels full of 20 year-old verve and dreams, their whole lives hanging in the balance at this singular moment. Each is about to ship off his first novel to publishers, each is hoping to become a wildly influential cult author, each has visions of a new life of non-stop intensity, brilliance, romance and nightclubbing. Fast-forward six months. These reveries have crashed, hard, into reality. Phillip, whose novel garnered instant acclaim and turned him into a mini-celebrity, has had a terrifying breakdown and is just about to be released from a psychiatric hospital. Erik, who never sold his novel, is still pecking away, determined to follow in the footsteps of his undying hero, a reclusive but idolized writing genius, no matter what it takes.
REPRISE explores not just what happens to Phillip and Erik as they pick up the pieces but what might have happened to them, what they imagine could happen, what they fear will possibly happen and what they cant see actually happening.
2:00PM - Katharine Cornell Theatre
We Are Wizards
Director: Josh Koury
Documentary / USA / 79 mins
Join Josh Koury afterwards for a Q&A
Director Josh Koury Expected To Attend
Harry Potter fans of the world unite! In WE ARE WIZARDS, Josh Koury's wildly entertaining look at the world of Harry Potter mania, the intersection of art and commerce proves to be fairly hazardous location. Koury's film explores not only the emergence of a new strain of music known as Wizard Rock, but also details the legal troubles faced by fans and artist who have attempted to celebrate the Harry Potter legend in their own unique ways. Grab your wand and scarf and join in the revolution.
In 1997 the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone exploded onto the literary scene, captivating readers all over the world, and quickly spawning cinematic versions. WE ARE WIZARDS tracks the influential figures leading the creative subculture surrounding the popular series.
WARNING: This film contains strong language and may not be appropriate
for young children
4:00PM - Vineyard Playhouse
Full Battle Rattle
Directors: Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss
Documentary / USA / 85 mins
Special Jury Award SXSW Film Festival
Meet Directors Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss at the screening
Before deploying in Iraq, some U.S. soldiers stop off in the Mojave Desert for a three-week simulation of the conditions they'll face overseas, set in a makeshift complex of villages populated by Iraqi-Americans.
Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss' documentary Full Battle Rattle follows one whole training session from start to finish, capturing the Army's earnest efforts to make sure our troops understand the consequences of being culturally insensitive or lax on details. If a soldier accidentally kills a civilian, insurgent activity increases, and soon the trainees are holding simulated funerals for their fallen comrades. Full Battle Rattle works just fine as a two-fisted combat story, with unexpected bursts of violence peppering that old universal message that war is hell. But the added layer of pretense pushes the movie to another level. From the Iraqi villagers getting praised for their realistic kidnapping-and-beheading videos to the soldiers carrying "casualty cards" that tell them what wound to fake for the medics, Gerber and Moss lead the audience through the looking glass. And when the man who plays the deputy mayor complains that he never gets promoted to mayor, or when one of the "insurgents" (played by an American soldier back from two tours of duty in Baghdad) admits that he has a hard time sharing downtime with the Iraqis, it's clear that the emotions this exercise stirs up are far from pretend.
4:00PM - Capawock Theatre
Persepolis
Directors: Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi
Animation, Biography, Drama / France, USA / 89 mins / Rated PG-13
Oscar Nomination for Best Animated Feature, Sutherland Trophy British Film Institute, Jury Prize Cannes Film Festival
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Statrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own. With Marji dangerously refusing to remain silent at this injustice, her parents send her abroad to Vienna to study for a better life. However, this change proves an equally difficult trial with the young woman finding herself in a different culture loaded with abrasive characters and profound disappointments that deeply trouble her. Even when she returns home, Marji finds that both she and homeland have changed too much and the young woman and her loving family must decide where she truly belongs.
4:30PM - Vineyard Playhouse
Think Globally, Shoot Locally - Vineyard Filmmakers Forum
Filmmakers: Len Morris, Taylor Toole, Liz Witham, Ken Wentworth and others
Trailer, works-in-progress, clips, shorts
To celebrate established and budding Vineyard media creators, the Martha's Vineyard International Film Festival and Liz Witham and Ken Wentworth of Film-Truth Productions (www.film-truth.com), invite Martha's Vineyard filmmakers to present their work-in-progress, trailers, short films, clips at the annual THINK GLOBALLY, SHOT LOCALLY Forum.
The Forum features a panel discussion and a networking event that provide an opportunity for Island filmmakers to share their expertise and knowledge with each other and the larger independent film community.
6:30-7:30pm Filmmaker Reception to follow in downstairs Lounge
7:00PM - Vineyard Playhouse
Chansons d'amour, Les (Love Songs)
Director: Christophe Honore
Drama, Musical / France / 100 mins
Best Director, Cabourg Romantic Film Festival; Nomination for Golden Palmâ
Cannes Film Festival; Best Music, Cesar Awards/France; Best Composer, Etoile
D'or
Ismael (Louis Garrel, the Gallic version of the adorable young Hugh Grant), lives with Julie (Ludivine Sagnier). Alice (Clotilde Hesme), who works with Ismael, shares their bed and Alice's affections. On a night of tragedy, Jeanne, unawares, hooks up with Gwendal (Yannick Renier), whose teen-aged brother Erwann (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) is the only one who can bring a shattered Ismael back to life, in the most romantic man-on-man love scene since Rupert Grave's Alec Scudder climbed through Maurice's bedroom window 20 years ago. With rain-slicked streets, coffee and cigarettes, references to a dozen French classics, a haunting score and the best balcony scene since "Romeo and Juliet," this low-budget charmer, which has become a cult favorite in France with the under-25 set, is an "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" for the 21st Century.
7:00PM - Capawock Theatre
Nerakhoon (aka The Betrayal)
Director: Ellen Kuras and Thavisouk Phrasavath
Documentary / USA, Laos / 96 mins
Nominated for Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival
Join Director Ellen Kuras afterwards for a Q&A
A Lao prophecy says, "A time will come when the universe will break, piece by piece, the world will change beyond what we know." By 1973, three million tons of bombs had been dropped on Laos in the fight to overcome the North Vietnamese, more than the total used during both world wars. With the rise of a Communist government in Laos, killings and arrests became common among those affiliated with the former government and the Americans. Families were torn apart-some finally emigrating to the U.S. In a truly remarkable collaboration spanning more than 20 years, famed director of photography Ellen Kuras debuts her first directorial effort with Laotian co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath, the main subject of the film. Phrasavath takes us through his youth, his escape from persecution and arrest in Laos, his family's reunion and their journey as immigrants to America, and the second war they had to fight on the streets of New York City.
Epic in scope and drawing upon the techniques of experimental film and the traditions of Laotian culture, Nerakhoon (The Betrayal) is an exquisitely crafted tale about a country, a family, and a young man who discovers the power and resilience of the human spirit.
7:00PM - Katharine Cornell Theatre
Blindsight
Director: Lucy Walker
Documentary, Adventure / UK / 104 mins / Rated PG
Audience Award, AFI Film Festival, Best Documentary Palm Springs Film Festival, Best Film Award, Berlin Film Festival.
Set against the breathtaking backdrop of the Himalayas, BLINDSIGHT follows the gripping adventure of six Tibetan teenagers who set out to climb the 23,000-foot Lhakpa Ri on the north side of Mount Everest. The dangerous journey soon becomes a seemingly impossible challenge -- made all the more remarkable by the fact that the teenagers are blind.
Believed by many Tibetans to be possessed by demons, the children are shunned by their parents, scorned by their villages and rejected by society. Rescued by Sabriye Tenberken, a blind educator and adventurer who established the first and only school for the blind in Tibet, the students invite the famous blind mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer to visit their school after learning about his conquest of Everest. Erik arrives in Lhasa and inspires Sabriye and her students Kyila, Sonam Bhumtso, Tashi, Gyenshen, Dachung and Tenzin to let him lead them higher than they have ever been before. The resulting 3-week journey is beyond anything any of them could have predicted.
9:00PM - Vineyard Playhouse
The Orchestra of Piazza Vittorio
Director: Agostino Ferrente
Documentary / Italy / 93 mins
Special Introduction by Musician Kate Taylor
In 2001, producer/director Agostino Ferrente created the Apollo 11 Group to save Rome's historic Apollo Theater from being turned into a bingo parlor. Then, together with a group of Roman intellectuals, he came up with the idea of forming a resident orchestra in the Apollo- with professional musicians and beginners drawn from the residents of the Piazza Vittorio neighborhood and surrounding area populated by 60 ethnic groups. A real-life fairy tale, this charming cinematographic diary gains much strength from its story of world brotherhood and peace in the name of music.
9:00PM - Capawock Theatre
My Winnipeg
Director: Guy Maddin
Docu-Drama / Canada / 80 mins / Rated PG
Best Canadian Feature Film, Toronto International Film Festival
Introduced by Vineyard resident, Paul Karasik, a cartoonist whose work has
appeared in The New Yorker. He has recently won an Eisner Award for his book,Ê"I
Shall Destory All The Civilized Planets: the Comics of Fletcher Hanks
Have you ever wanted to relive your childhood and do things differently? Guy Maddin casts B-movie icon Ann Savage as his domineering mother in attempt to answer that question in My Winnipeg, a hilariously wacky and profoundly touching goodbye letter to his childhood hometown. The film is a documentary that blends local and personal history with surrealist images and metaphorical myths that cover everything from the fire at the local park, which leads to a frozen lake of distressed horse heads, to pivotal, sometimes traumatic, factually heightened scenes from Maddin's own childhood.
9:00PM - Katharine Cornell Theatre
Animation Shorts Program
Join animators Bill Plympton, Signe Baumane, & Patrick Smith
Irrelevant, Funny, Unexpected / 55 Minutes
Hot Dog
By: Bill Plympton
This is the third in Plympton's DOG series. In this episode our plucky hero joins the fire company to save the world from house fires and gain the affection he so richly deserves. Typically, the results never turn out the way he planned.
Mexican Standoff
By: Bill Plympton
Mexican Standoff is a music video for the Dutch band Parson Brown. The story is about a 3-sided love affair that goes absolutely wrong and the hearts that break along the way. The technique is pencil on paper, scanned and digitally composited.
Teat Beat For Sex
By: Signe Baumane
It is a take on sex from a woman's point of view. Shocking!
Birth
By: Signe Baumane
The film is about a young woman (17) Amina who is pregnant and is afraid to give birth, so she goes to an older women for consolation and advise. But their stories scare her even more.
A Letter to Colleen
By: Andy and Carolyn London
Andy has been haunted by the events of his 18th birthday for years. In a letter to Colleen, he tries to put his teenage demons to rest. Angst and awkward comedy flow freely in this animated outpouring of regret and amends.
Puppet
By: Patrick Smith
A young man fabricates a simple sock puppet, not knowing the abuse the entity will soon inflict. Through an escalating series of torture, the possessed puppet takes on the embodiment of fear, chaos, and willful self-destruction.
Doxology
By: Michael Langan
Before reaching spiritual enlightenment, one sweater-vested young man must face a dancing Oldsmobile, endure a boozy encounter with God on a frozen tundra, and brush his teeth, comb his hair, floss, Q-Tip, lather and shave simultaneously. "Doxology" combines groundbreaking stop-motion animation techniques and unusual storytelling with the time-honored quest for spiritual awakening.
Fantaisie in a Bubble
By: Arthur Metcalf
A whimsical jaunt through the world of bubblewrap.
Western Spaghetti
By: PES
Learn how to cook spaghetti with PES