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In This Issue |
A current IC student explains how to use myIthaca to get answers to your college planning questions.
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Blog: On Screen in IthacaWatch 14 trailers from films featured at FLEFF! |
About “On Screen in Ithaca” |
Spring is here, and so is Ithaca's annual Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF)! Now in its second decade, FLEFF promises -- and always delivers -- a week-long smorgasbord of multimedia arts events, including digital art exhibitions, special festival minicourses, silent films with live music, installations, new media and community forums.
At the heart of the festival are films, of course: exciting, provocative, and often groundbreaking films from all over the world. Screened from morning until night all over campus and at cinemas downtown, these films, say the festival's directors, "reboot the environment and sustainability into a larger global conversation, embracing issues ranging from wars, health, diseases, music, digital arts, cinemas, popular cultures, fine arts, experimental media, literature, economics, archives, AIDS, women’s rights, and human rights."
See for yourself. Pull up a chair and watch as we show you trailers from 14 films featured at FLEFF!
Synopsis from Uncommon Productions:
In the Dominican Republic, a tropical island-nation, tourists flock to pristine beaches unaware that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians have toiled under armed-guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, much of which ends up in U.S. kitchens. They work grueling hours and frequently lack decent housing, clean water, electricity, education or healthcare. Narrated by Paul Newman, The Price of Sugar follows Father Christopher Hartley, a charismatic Spanish priest, as he organizes some of this hemisphere's poorest people to fight for their basic human rights. This film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate and at what human cost they are produced.
Synopsis from Noruz Films:
Man Push Cart tells the story of Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi) a former Pakistani rock singer who ekes out a living selling coffee and donuts to morning commuters from his push cart in Midtown Manhattan. Ahmad supplements his income by selling bootleg porn DVDs, carefully saving his money to afford a place where he might be able to live with his estranged young son. It is a harsh, often humiliating life, but Ahmad carries on with a stoic dignity and sensitivity, seemingly determined to find his way. Then the dull routine of his life is brightened by two developments: the arrival of a young Spanish woman (Leticia Dolera) working down the street in a newspaper kiosk; and an offer of assistance from a wealthy fellow Pakistani (Charles Daniel Sandoval), who remembers Ahmad's former life as a rock star.
Academy Award Winner:
Best Documentary Picture
Synopsis from TH!NKFilm:
From the director of ENRON: the Smartest Guys in the Room, Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side is a gripping investigation into the reckless abuse of power by the Bush Administration. By probing the homicide of an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, the film exposes a worldwide policy of detention and interrogation that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights.
"#1 film of the year! A great film."
~ A.O. Scott
The New York Times
Synopsis from IFC Entertainment:
During the final days of communism in Romania, two college roommates, Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) and
Gabita (Laura Vasiliu), are busy preparing for a night away. But rather than planning for a holiday,
they are making arrangements for Gabita's illegal abortion and unwittingly, both find themselves
burrowing deep down a rabbit hole of unexpected revelations.
"Jaw-dropping and all the more amazing for being true."
~ A.O. Scott
The New York Times
Synopsis from Magnolia Pictures:
Communist, anti-colonialist, right-wing extremist? What convictions guide the moral mind of Jacques Vergès? Barbet Schroeder takes us down history’s darkest paths in his attempt to illuminate the mystery behind this enigmatic figure. As a young lawyer during the Algerian war, Vergès espoused the anti-colonialist cause and defended Djamila Bouhired, 'la Pasionaria', who bore her country’s hopes for freedom on her shoulders and was sentenced to death for planting bombs in cafes. He obtained her release, married her and had two children with her.
Then suddenly, at the height of an illustrious career, Vergès disappeared without trace for eight years. He re-emerged from his mysterious absence, taking on the defense of terrorists of all kinds, from Magdalena Kopp and Anis Naccache to Carlos the Jackal. He represented historical monsters such as Nazi lieutenant Klaus Barbie. From the lawyer’s inflammatory and provocative cases to his controversial terrorist links, Barbet Schroeder follows the winding trail left by this 'devil’s advocate', as he forges his unique path in law and politics.
"Likable, funny and often poignant, Caramel is a cinematic treat."
~ Claudia Puig
USA Today
Synopsis from Roadside Attractions:
In Beirut, five women meet regularly in a beauty salon, a colorful and sensual microcosm of the city where several generations come into contact, talk and confide in each other. Layale loves Rabih, but Rabih is married. Nisrine is Muslim and her forthcoming marriage poses a problem; she is no longer a virgin. Rima is tormented by her attraction to women and especially to a lovely client with long hair. Jamale is refusing to grow old. Rose has sacrificed her life to take care of her elderly sister. In the salon, their intimate and liberated conversations revolve around men, sex and motherhood, between haircuts and sugar waxing with caramel.
"...War/Dance is as irresistible as the rhythms of African music on its soundtrack."
~ Kenneth Turan
The Los Angeles Times
Synopsis from TH!NKFilm:
Set in Northern Uganda, a country ravaged by more than two decades of civil war, War/Dance tells the story of Dominic, Rose, and Nancy, three children whose families have been torn apart, their homes destroyed, and who currently reside in a displaced persons camp in Patongo. When they are invited to compete in an annual music and dance festival, their historic journey to their nation’s capital is also an opportunity to regain a part of their childhood and to taste victory for the first time in their lives.
"Miraculous! Now we have an American film with the raw power of City of God or
Pixote, a film that does something unexpected, and inspired, and brave"
~ Roger Ebert
Chicago Sun-Times
Synopsis from Noruz Films:
Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.
NAACP Image Awards:
Best Independent or Foreign Film
Synopsis from Emerging Pictures:
Iconoclastic filmmaker John Sayles, in his 16th feature film, continues his extraordinary examination of the complexities and shifting identities of American sub-cultures in the new film Honeydripper. With his usual understated intelligence, Sayles uses the rhythms of the citizens of Harmony, Alabama to immerse the audience into the world of the Jim Crow south. It’s a fable about the birth of rock n’ roll-a quintessentially American subject, but with a fidelity to time and temperament that is unusual in an American director.
Synopsis from Miramax Films:
In City of Men, producer Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener) returns to the Brazilian favelas of his Academy Award-nominated film, City of God. Growing up in a culture dictated by violence and run by street gangs, teenagers Acerola (Douglas Silva) and Laranjinha (Darlan Cunha) have become close as brothers. With their eighteenth birthdays fast approaching, Laranjinha sets out to find the father he never met, while Acerola struggles to raise his own young son. But when they suddenly find themselves on opposite sides of a gang war, the lifelong friends are forced to confront a shocking secret from their shared past.
“One of the great female characters of recent years. I am stunned at the performance of Lei who creates a vivid, knowable, yet mysterious human being. Unforgettable.”
~ Steven Hunter
Washington Post
Synopsis from Palm Pictures:
In his ravishingly shot Summer Palace, acclaimed Sixth Generation writer-director Lou Ye (Suzhou River, Purple Butterfly) reveals a portrait of a place and generation -- China and liberated Chinese youth -- as never seen before in the West. Lyrical and brutal, elusive and explicit, elegiac and erotic, Summer Palace depicts a passionate love story and the struggle for personal liberty jeopardized by history and fate.
"An undeniably impressive visual spectacle that follows the sport of extreme skiing."
~ Stephen Holden
The New York Times
Synopsis from Sony Pictures Classics:
STEEP is a feature documentary about bold adventure, exquisite athleticism and the pursuit of a perfect moment on skis. It is the story of big mountain skiing, a sport that barely existed 35 years ago.
"A lovely, smart and beautifully understated film."
~ David Wiegand
The San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis from July August Productions:
Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian Police band arrived in Israel. They came to play at an initiation ceremony but, due to bureaucracy, bad luck, or for whatever reason, they were left stranded at the airport. They tried to manage on their own, only to find themselves in a desolate, almost forgotten, small Israeli town, somewhere in the heart of the desert. A lost band in a lost town. Not many people remember this. It wasn’t that important.
Synopsis from Sony Pictures Classics:
The Counterfeiters is the true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, counterfeiter extraordinaire and bohemian. After getting arrested in a German concentration camp in 1944, he agrees to help the Nazis in an organized counterfeit operation set up to help finance the war effort. It was the biggest counterfeit money scam of all times.
Fuse is a student produced publication about the Ithaca College experience. All content in the print and web versions of Fuse is developed by current Ithaca College students in a breadth of different areas of study.
