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List of New England Films/Videos at the Independent Feature Film Market
Fri, 10/01/1999 - 00:00
Posted in
From completed films like "Mud Season" to works-in-progresses like "Blue Vinyl" -- here is the complete list of local films at the market. By D.P. Bettencourt
MUD SEASON synopsis: A lone woodsman commits an accidental murder. A young woman discovers the truth behind his crime. Both are forced to find trust in another for the first time, yet it's their grasp for freedom that brings them close. A romance blossoms as a manhunt ensues. Rob Lewbel SNOW DAYS synopsis: "Snow Days" is a comedy with "issues." When James was 4, Grammy told him the family curse: "We're doomed in love. The men leave, and the women go crazy." But on one magical snow day, James, now 18, meets Sarah. From the moment he touches her flat head, they are linked for life. Unfortunately, the "family curse" comes true. Four years later, our former young lovers are isolated Manhattanites. Sarah sleeps with her beeper. James goes to "open-mike therapy." As Sarah plans her wedding to someone else, James prays for snow and a second chance at first love Steven C. Beer, Esq. TAX DAY synopsis: On tax day, Irene convinces Paula to take a short walk to the post office. They are soon taken off track when they accept an offer from two young men to take an urban canoe ride through the canals downtown. As they make their way back to the post office, the women are repeatedly diverted by numerous encounters with odd characters, reminiscences of past adventures, and sidwalk spectacles, including performances by bands, breakdancers, and many others. Tax Day follows their day-long vacation around town, in an ode to the pleasures of leisure and to the potential richness of life. Laura Colella
THE BATTLE
OF CITY SPRINGS synopsis: The Battle of City Springs features a year in the life of City Springs, a chronically failing Baltimore elementary school serving a poor, African-American community. Currently in the educational equivalent of bankruptcy, City Springs may be shut down if it continues to fail. But this year there is some hope. City Springs is one of a dozen schools introducing a radical and controversial curriculum called Direct Instruction. Will principal Bernice Whelchel be enough to turn City Springs around? Or are the problems just too great to overcome in a year? Jon Palfreman BREAKING SYMMETRY synopsis: Set against the backdrop of science and politics at a major Boston-area technical institute, Breaking Symmetry is a science-fiction drama about what happens to a young female astrophysics professor and expert on cosmic dark matter after she discovers a videotape containing the secret to a revolutionary new energy technology. Keith Johnson COLD FUSION: FIRE
FROM WATER synopsis: One of the most controversial scientific discoveries of all time reemerges 10 years after the announcement of Pons and Fleischmann, with evidence from scientists around the world that points to a non-polluting energy source in low-energy nuclear fusion that will revolutionize the 21st Century. Dr. Eugene Mallove
BLUE
VINYL synopsis: "Blue Vinyl" is a toxic comedy for the turn of this century. With humor, hope and a piece of vinyl siding in hand (a remnant from her parents' house in Long Island), Judith Helfand picks up where her award-winning film "A Healthy Baby Girl" left off, to explore home, family, vinyl siding, industry-sponsored science and the ecology of denial. Judith Helfand COMPASSIONATE
USE: A TRIAL FOR LIFE... IN THE EYE OF A STORM CALLED AIDS synopsis: Amidst declining death rates, improved therapies, complacency and media absence, the role of AIDS activist has shifted to a newer infected/affected community. Will this changing of the guard be successful? Following the current mobilization of African-Americans and a pressure campaign against the U.S. government and pharmaceutical industry, "Compassionate Use" investigates the past and present of AIDS activism Adam Schatten DANCING
THROUGH DEATH: THE MONKEY, MAGIC & MADNESS OF CAMBODIA synopsis: Three generations of Cambodian monkey dancers describe how they survived the blood-thirsty Khmer Rouge and rebuilt their culture in the United States. The documentary was taped in Phnom Penh Angkor Wat temples, California and Massachusetts. Charles Schuerhoff DONALD'S
LAST DANCE synopsis: A girl named Tuba, a rat named Kitty and a band called The Donald Avocado. Deep within the guitar and drum-cluttered basements of suburban high school rock, five guys found fame, sex, love and friendship. Two years later... Adam Mutterperl FROM ASHES synopsis: "From Ashes" focuses on Chris, a convicted murderer and recovering drug addict who is trying to overcome his past by working at an AIDS hospice in India, and Namrata, an HIV+ baby who is abandoned there. Chris and Namrata's stories are coupled and developed throughout the film to highlight the contrast of a baby who has little hope, and a convict who has a second chance. Andrew M. Rice IDITAROD...
A FAR DISTANT PLACE synopsis: In a journey of challenge and courage, three mushers run the Iditarod sled dog race across the breadth of Alaska to a far distant place. For over 1,000 miles, Mike Williams, a Yup'ik Eskimo and "The Sobriety Musher," Lynda Plettner, a 48-year-old grandmother, and Mike Nosko, a determined overachiever, brave arctic temperatures and difficult terrain, exhaustion and their inner struggles to find purpose and self-knowledge in "The Last Great Race on Earth." Alice Dungan Bouvrie LATTER
DAY DOGS synopsis: In the early 1970s, a group of people became white-water river guides in the western United States. They were communal, naked, environmentally mindful and economically oblivious. I made "Riverdogs," a film about their life on the river in 1978. By weaving this picture of their youth with images of their lives today, "Latter-Day Dogs" will explore the freewheeling and intimate struggles that have ushered them toward middle-age. Robb Moss LIVE FREE OR DIE synopsis: A year in the life of Dr. Wayne Goldner, a small town OB-GYN as he fights a series of intense local battles that are the latest chapter in the "abortion wars." At work he takes on a Catholic hospital merger that threatens abortion services. At home he campaigns to be reinstated as a teacher of sex education in the local school after being banned as "an abortionist." Marion Lipschutz & Rose Rosenblatt LUCAS LOST &
FOUND synopsis: "Lucas Lost & Found" tells the story of the filmmaker's cousin, Lucas, who disappeared without a trace at age 5 from his native Greece. And like the ancient myths, on his sixteenth birthday, he was reunited with his Greek family -- now a stranger who no longer spoke their language. This non-fiction film chronicles the resounding effects on the family of Lucas lost and Lucas found. Alexandra Anthony MAI'S
AMERICA synopsis: A spunky daughter of Ho Chi Minh's revolution leaves cosmopolitan Hanoi on a high school exchange program. Anticipating Hollywood, Mai crash lands in rural Mississippi, where her relationship with dysfunctional white Pentecostal and black Baptist host-families, self-proclaimed rednecks, transvestites, and South Vietnamese immigrants change her long-held ideas about herself, about freedom, about America, and even about Vietnam. Marlo Poras ONCE REMOVED synopsis: "Once Removed" is a one-hour documentary video about a young woman's trip to meet her mother's relatives in China after a 50-year separation. The videomaker learns about her intellectual family's role in China's convulsive political movements, and meditates on the complications of remembering and forgetting history. Megan Gelstein SWEET DREAMS: THE
DOUGHNUT MOVIE synopsis: Empty or jelly-filled, frosted or plain. Doughnuts: cops love 'em. Artists paint them. For decades they've comforted U.S. soldiers abroad. And for thousands of immigrants who open shops to sell them, doughnuts provide an entry into America. Funny, nostalgic and bittersweet, "Sweet Dreams: The Doughnut Movie" traces the addictive little pastries from World War I to contemporary wars over urban gentrification. Tracy Heather Strain THE WIND synopsis: Harbinger of doom, a mystical wind blows through Anytown, U.S.A., wreaking havoc on the lives of six college kids. Beginning with the murder of one of their own, the crisis devolves to a primal battle of morality versus savagery. With terrors derived from Old Testament parables, campfire folklore and New York Post cover stories, "The Wind" chills and thrills. Michael Mongillo
MOURNING NEWS synopsis: It's dawn on December 32, 1999, the last day of the millenium. In a small suburban town a paperboy collects his newspaper stack, mounts his bike and gets ready to deliver the century's final morning edition. This special year-end issue is filled with predictions of an ominous future. Andrew Gernhard PENNYWEIGHT synopsis: How far will Blaine Kinney go to raise money for his film? Eccentric millionaire Fentworth Pennyweight agrees to fund his entire production with one small stipulation -- Blaine must wear a ridiculously large and effeminate pair of earrings for one full year. Efram Potelle & Kyle Rankin TANGIBLE FATHERS synopsis: Tangible Fathers chronicles a Catholic priest's struggle with his homosexuality. The filmmaker travels back to the defining moments of "Matthew's" life, his sense of childhood isolation, his first sexual experiences with other boys studying for the priesthood and his addiction to anonymous public sex as an adult. This memoir-styled film creates a portrait of repression and loneliness burning with only a dim candle holding out for love and companionship. Bob Poirier
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