“Short Films, Big Ideas. Focus Forward is an unprecedented new series of 30 three-minute stories about innovative people who are reshaping the world through act or invention, directed by the world’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers.”
Watch the first batch of films that premiered at Sundance 2012 here
DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)
“Hell and Back Again,” Danfung Dennis and Mike Lerner
“If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front,” Marshall Curry and Sam Cullman
“Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory,” Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky
“Pina,” Wim Wenders and Gian-Piero Ringel
“Undefeated,” TJ Martin, Dan Lindsay and Richard Middlemas
DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)
“The Barber of Birmingham: Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement,” Robin Fryday and Gail Dolgin
“God Is the Bigger Elvis,” Rebecca Cammisa and Julie Anderson
“Incident in New Baghdad,” James Spione
“Saving Face,” Daniel Junge and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom,” Lucy Walker and Kira Carstensen
From The New York Times Op Docs Series
“The filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady look at young men who salvage scrap metal from Detroit’s derelict buildings, set against the backdrop of globalization.”
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s feature length film “Detropia” is premiering this week at Sundance 2012
Official Selection Slamdance 2012
Buffalo Girls tells the story of two 8-year-old-girls, Stam and Pet, both professional Muay Thai prizefighters. Set in small villages throughout rural Thailand, the film chronicles these young girls’ emotional and sometimes heartbreaking journey as they fight in small underground arenas to win prize-money to help provide for their families. After many months of training and a long schedule of fights, Stam and Pet fight each other for the 20 Kilo championship belt of Thailand and a cash prize that will change the winner’s life forever.
Director: Todd Kellstein
Produced By: Lanette Phillips, Jonathon Ker
Co-Producer: Michael Pierce
Editor: Zimo Huang
Original Score: Scott Hackwith
Official Selection Sundance 2012
“As you can imagine, regular practice of synchronized swimming is a great way to maintain health and strength — and a great way to meet active and fun women! We have many members who have had arthritis, joint replacements, and other health challenges — and they stay active with the Aquadettes.” — Leisure World
Margo Bouer is seventy five and has been an Aquadette for over fifteen years.
A film by Drea Cooper & Zackary Canepari
Slamdance 2012 Documentary Feature Competition Announced:
“Buffalo Girls” (Thailand/United States) Eight-year-old girls in rural Thailand get into the underground child-boxing market to support their families. Directed by Todd Kellstein.
“Danland“ “Porno Dan,” an amateur porn producer, seeks intimacy in spite of himself and his industry. Directed by Alexandra Berger, who wrote with Ann Husaini.
“The First Season ” Rudd Simmons directs this look at a family fighting to create a thriving dairy farm.
“Getting Up“ L.A. graffiti artist Tony “Tempt” Quan, paralyzed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), finds a technology that reads his eye movements and allows him to create art again. Directed by Caskey Ebeling, written by Tempt.
“Want My Name Back” Master Gee and Wonder Mike, members of the original Sugar Hill Gang and creators of the hip-hop classic “Rapper’s Delight,” work to reclaim their place in music history. Directed by Roger Paradiso.
“Kelly” Director James Stenson spotlights a transgender prostitute searching for love and acceptance in Hollywood.
“No Ashes, No Phoenix” (Germany) Director-writer Jens Pfeifer gets into the locker room with young basketball players in Hagen, Germany.
“We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists” Writer-director Brian Knappenberger takes an inside look at Anonymous, the collective of “hacktivists” who take civil disobedience to the Internet.
(Photo: Lucy Walker’s “The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom”)
U.S. Documentary Short Films:
“Aquadettes” (Directors: Drea Cooper, Zackary Canepari) — The Aquadettes are a group of elderly synchronized swimmers from Leisure World, a retirement community nestled in Orange County, California. One of them, Margo Bauer, is fighting multiple sclerosis and using medical marijuana to ease her pain and to keep on swimming.
“The Debutante Hunters” (Director: Maria White) — In the Lowcountry of South Carolina a group of true Southern belles reveal their more rugged side, providing a glimpse into what drives them to hunt in the wild.
“Family Nightmare” (Director: Dustin Guy Defa) — A dizzy trip through the mid-1990s with a dysfunctional American family. Reliving a distracted child’s birthday party, an emotionless wedding, a Halloween in a garage and a Christmas marked with alcohol, drugs and perversion, the film is a crumpled letter from a filmmaker to his family: a shattered kaleidoscope of the destructive patterns that have trapped and wounded its members.
“The Meaning of Robots” (Director: Matt Lenski) — The benevolent Mike Sullivan, age 65, has been shooting an epic stop-motion robot sex film in his apartment for the last 10 years. Obsessed with constructing the miniature robot porn stars, his apartment now overflows with thousands of them.
“The Movement: One Man Joins an Uprising” (Directors: Greg I. Hamilton, Kurt Miller) — In 2004 Rick Finkelstein was paralyzed in a ski accident on Aspen Mountain. With a severed spine and severe internal trauma, he wasn’t expected to live. Six years, nine surgeries, and a lifetime of rehab later, cameras captured his dramatic return to Aspen and skiing.
“Odysseus’ Gambit” (Director: Àlex Lora Cercós) — A gambit is a chess opening in which a player sacrifices a pawn with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. The protagonist is a Cambodian American guy looking for his place in the game.
“Pluto Declaration” (Director: Travis Wilkerson) — Restore the classical definition of planet! Bring back planet Pluto! The solar system is 12!
“The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom” (Director: Lucy Walker) — Survivors in the areas hardest hit by Japan’s recent tsunami find the courage to revive and rebuild as cherry blossom season begins. A visual haiku about the ephemeral nature of life and the healing power of Japan’s most beloved flower.
International Documentary Short Films:
“Into the Middle of Nowhere,” United Kingdom (Director: Anna Frances Ewert) — The documentary is about the uniqueness of childhood and the exploration of the human mind. In an outdoor nursery based in the woods, children create their own individually constructed worlds and can test out the boundaries of reality.
“Stick Climbing,” Austria, Switzerland (Director: Daniel Zimmerman) — A contemplative walk leads to a bizarre climbing tour going from everyday village life to a seemingly impossible ascent.
“The mountains are calling! Each year hundreds of thousands tourists come to the white winter paradise of the mountains. A portrait of the Alps in a changing environment.-
The search for paradise on earth is as old as mankind. In order to get a glimpse of this paradise, we travel the continents, search in the most remote corners oft of the world, dive under water and climb the highest mountains. This is how an entire industry has developed in order to allow us to reach our utopia of untouched nature in the easiest fashion.
Even in the raw field of the Alps, mass tourism has spread and has left its mark on the landscape. However, paradise is in trouble. Due to climate change and its effects on the lack of snow, it has become necessary to deploy massive technology to produce the perfect landscape independently from nature. Excavators rip up the earth, a computer operated switch room lies deep in the mountain, towers are erected, pipes and cables are laid in the ground, snow machines continuesly spray artificial snow onto slopes.
The Alp landscape has become a bizarre hybrid of technology and nature. The ski regions have to constantly upgrade the technology. If they don’t, the constant stream of tourists will abruptly come to a halt. The stronger this habitat changes, the more its beauty becomes domesticated, the faster it will disappear before our eyes.
Over the period of a year, PEAK observes this production process in the Alps and uncovers what is usually hidden from the winter tourists beneath a thick blanket of artificial snow. The film shows the landscapes’ modifications and the inextinguishable traces that these invasions leave behind. PEAK questions the relationship between nature and technology. How artificial is a landscape allowed to be? Or – to put in other terms – How artificial must it look in order to fulfill and justify our archaic desire for paradise on earth?”
