| ICA 2007 [Theme] Film Program
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The Film Program will take place in connection with the 2007 ICA conference, focusing on films related to its theme: Creating Communication: Content, Control, and Critique. This one-day event will showcase productions by local independent Bay Area filmmakers and film collectives. These films, examples of alternative and democratizing communication, illustrate the diversification of content creation and distribution within diverse and complex communication environments. The program also highlights the relevance of film as a communication tool and how people, including marginalized voices, participate in the creative process.
Location: Hilton Coordinated by Susana Kaiser and John Kim, Department of Media Studies, University of San Francisco | ||
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OTHER CINEMA (A selection, 60 minutes) The Other Cinema exhibition and publication project provides an alternative platform for the dissemination of extraordinary film (and video) works. The Other Cinema celebrates peculiar visions and offbeat sensibilities, drawn from the contemporary underground as well as the archives. Be it auteur, exploitation, or industrial, OC delivers a decidedly different audio-visual experience -- ingenious, comic, critical...dangerous.
Location: Hilton
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CINE ACCION presents: ROMÁNTICO, USA, 2005, Directed by Mark Becker, 80 minutes Romántico is a documentary about Mexican musician Carmelo Muñiz Sánchez, who returns home to his beloved daughters after years spent playing San Francisco's taquerías and hipster joints. But once Carmelo arrives in his hometown - over a thousand miles south of the border - he finds himself immediately confronted with the struggles that led to his first border crossing. Despite working the mariachi circuit (weddings, funerals, quinceañeras) and at bars that cater to prostitutes and their clients, Sánchez soon realizes he can't adequately support his family and plots a return to the U.S. At the age of 60, another border crossing begins to seem absurd, but Carmelo has not given up. CINE ACCION has served as a leading venue for Chicano-Latino Cinema and Media for 26 years. Originally formed by Latino filmmakers as a vehicle for mutual support as artists, it has expanded its focus over the years to include the education and promotion of Latino media arts. A quarter of a century after its birth, Cine Acción continues to provide a leading edge collective and exhibition platform for independent Chicano and Latino content in the age of digital convergence. Cine Acción sees its community as multifaceted, but primarily Latino filmmakers, community members and youth. In its origins as a membership organization for filmmakers, it sought to address the needs of Latino media artists for mutual artistic support and opportunities to screen their films. Now the organization sponsors public programming aimed at creating more understanding regarding the role of the media as an important vehicle for Latino self-representation, empowerment and advocacy.
Location: Hilton
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STRAIGHT OUTTA HUNTERS POINT, USA, 2001, Directed by Kevin Epps, Mastamind Productions, 75 minutes First-time San Francisco, filmmaker Kevin Epps takes an insider tour of Hunter's Point, one of San Francisco's public housing projects. This is a place where he grew up and still lives and only an insider like Epps could shoot such personal footage of Hunter's Points hustlers, gang members and residents in Straight Outta Hunter's Point (SOHP). The film, shot on digital video, begins with a historical account of this neighborhood that includes a brief history of the Hunter's Point Naval Ship Yard, a closed production and repair facility that continues to pollute and poison the air of the Hunter's Point residents. There is also the Pacific Gas & Electric Company's Power Point that spews toxic chemicals into the air and water today. Epps delves into the World War II history, when Hunters Point was the home of African American shipyard workers who migrated from Texas and Louisiana in search of better-paying jobs in a less hostile environment. After the war many of the economic and employment opportunities for blacks dwindled, and poverty, unemployment, and crime set in. By the 1950s, economic devastation had set into this community and has existed for the last 40 years as a third world location.
Location: Hilton
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MAQUILAPOLIS [City of Factories], USA, 2006, Directed by Vicky Funari and Sergio De La Torre, 68 minutes Carmen works the graveyard shift in one of Tijuana's maquiladoras, the multinationally-owned factories that came to Mexico for its cheap labor. After making television components all night, Carmen comes home to a shack she built out of recycled garage doors, in a neighborhood with no sewage lines or electricity. She suffers from kidney damage and lead poisoning from her years of exposure to toxic chemicals. She earns six dollars a day. But Carmen is not a victim. She is a dynamic young woman, busy making a life for herself and her children. As Carmen and a million other maquiladora workers produce televisions, electrical cables, toys, clothes, batteries and IV tubes, they weave the very fabric of life for consumer nations. They also confront labor violations, environmental devastation and urban chaos -- life on the frontier of the global economy. In MAQUILAPOLIS, Carmen and her colleague Lourdes reach beyond the daily struggle for survival to organize for change: Carmen takes a major television manufacturer to task for violating her labor rights. Lourdes pressures the government to clean up a toxic waste dump left behind by a departing factory. To create MAQUILAPOLIS, the filmmakers brought together factory workers in Tijuana and community organizations in Mexico and the U.S. to collaborate on a film that depicts globalization through the eyes of the women who live on its leading edge. The factory workers who appear in the film have been involved in every stage of production, from planning to shooting, from scripting to outreach.
Location: Hilton
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QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR MEDIA ARTS PROJECT - (A selection, 60 minutes) Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project (QWOCMAP) promotes the creation and exhibition of films and videos that increase the visibility of queer women of color, reflect our life stories, and address the vital social justice issues that concern their community.
Location: Hilton
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THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, USA, 2002, Directed by Sam Green and Bill Siegel, 92 minutes 2003 Academy Awards Nominee for best documentary "Hello. I'm going to read a declaration of war. Within the next 14 days we will attack a symbol of American justice." Former Underground Member Bernardine Dohrn. Thirty years ago, with these words, a group of young American radicals announced their intention to overthrow the U.S. government. Fueled by outrage over the Vietnam War and racism in America, they went underground during the 1970s, bombing targets across the country that they felt symbolized "the real violence" that the U.S. government and capitalist power were wreaking throughout the world. From pitched battles with police on Chicago's city streets, to bombing the U.S. Capitol building, to breaking acid-guru Timonthy Leary out of prison, this carefully organized clandestine network attempted to incite a national revolution, while successfully evading one of the largest FBI manhunts in history. This award-winning film interweaves extensive archival material with modern-day interviews to explore the incredible story of "The Weather Underground." As former members reflect candidly about the idealistic passion that drove them to "bring the war home," they paint a compelling portrait of troubled and revolutionary times, with unexpected and often striking connections to the current world situation.
Location: Hilton
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| (*) All film descriptions are citations from the websites mentioned as relevant links. | |||
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