The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. Castigated as a pariah in his community, Farmer John bravely transforms his farm amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and arson. He succeeds in creating a bastion of free expression and a revolutionary form of agriculture in rural America.
Featuring Guest Speaker, Ralph Martin of the Organic Agriculture Center of Canada (OACC)
A JIHAD FOR LOVE will be preceded by the short film A GIRL NAMED KAI (Kai Ling Xue / Canada / 2004 / 8 min): Using Super-8 and 16mm footage, filmmaker Kai Ling Xue opens her personal diary to us to reveal a journey about relationships, self-discovery, passion, secrets and dreams.. Thanks to Video Out for distributing this great short!
Imagine a home that heats itself, that provides its own water, hat grows its own food. Imagine that it needs no expensive technology, that it recycles its own waste, that it has its own power source. And now imagine that it can be built anywhere, by anyone, out of the things society throws away. Thirty years ago, architect Michael Reynolds imagined just such a home - then set out to build it. A visionary in the classic American mode, Reynolds has been fighting ever since to bring his concept to the public.
In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.
TENTATIVE SCREENING- TO BE CONFIRMED.
THE FILM
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price is the documentary film sensation that's changing the largest company on earth. The film features the deeply personal stories and everyday lives of families and communities struggling to survive in a Wal-Mart world. It's an emotional journey that will challenge the way you think, feel... and shop.
The accessibility of clean drinkable water supplies is a problem in many countries. In Argentina, California and South Africa, attempts to privatize this common good gave very mixed and even explosive results. Dead in the Water is an investigation on these efforts of privatization and on the alternative solutions brought by citizens.
After the screening, MIE members will discuss water privatization in Africa and in Montreal, and its consequences on the local population.
The event is organized in partnership with Cinema Politica and the Société environnementale de Côte-des-Neiges.
Made in L.A. follows the remarkable story of three Latina immigrants working in Los Angeles garment sweatshops as they embark on a three-year odyssey to win basic labor protections from trendy clothing retailer Forever 21. In intimate observational style, Made in L.A. reveals the impact of the struggle on each woman’s life as they are gradually transformed by the experience. Compelling, humorous, deeply human, Made in L.A. is a story about immigration, the power of unity, and the courage it takes to find your voice.
Something's happening on the edge of town.
There's a desperate housewife in the parking lot, a musical chorus line mowing the lawn - and a loaded gun in the upstairs closet.
Welcome to Radiant City, an entertaining and startling new film on 21st century suburbanites.
Gary Burns, Canada's king of surreal comedy, joins journalist Jim Brown on an outing to the burbs. Venturing into territory both familiar and foreign, they turn the documentary genre inside out, crafting a vivid account of life in The Late Suburban Age.
In time for Remembrance Day...
War Made Easy reaches into the Orwellian memory hole to expose a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.
Please note: this screening is closed to the public and an in-class Cinema Politica screening.
The Times of Harvey Milk, directed by Rob Epstein, documents the political career of Harvey Milk, who was San Francisco's first openly gay supervisor. The film, at times humorous, at times nostalgic, and at times tragic, documents the rise of Milk from a neighborhood activist to becoming a symbol of gay political achievement, through to his assassination at San Francisco's city hall.
They will fight for their country, they will die for their country, but not in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. And although they act on conscience, they pay a steep personal price. Featuring haunting accounts from the front lines, Raised to Be Heroes introduces the latest generation of Israeli soldiers to selectively object to military operations undertaken by their country.
This CANADIAN PREMIERE SCREENING is co-presented by RIDM, Montreal's International Documentary Film Festival and our friends at Barriere Lake Solidarity, who are starting up their own radio station, similar to the one featured in the film.
The epic tale of a maverick Midwestern farmer. Castigated as a pariah in his community, Farmer John bravely transforms his farm amidst a failing economy, vicious rumors, and arson. He succeeds in creating a bastion of free expression and a revolutionary form of agriculture in rural America.
A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.
In every corner of the globe, we are polluting, diverting, pumping, and wasting our limited supply of fresh water at an expediential level as population and technology grows. The rampant overdevelopment of agriculture, housing and industry increase the demands for fresh water well beyond the finite supply, resulting in the desertification of the earth.
This film is part of a double bill, to be screened with Black and White.
RED WITHOUT BLUE is an artistic and groundbreaking portrayal of gender, identity, and the unswerving bond of twinship despite transformation.
An honest portrayal of a family in turmoil, RWB follows a pair of identical twins as one transitions from male to female. Captured over a period of three years, the film documents the twins and their parents, examining the Farley's struggle to redefine their family.
This film is part of a double bill, to be screened with Red Without Blue.
BLACK AND WHITE shines a sensitive light on a subject that is too often either shunned or sensationalized: the experiences of intersex people (sometimes called hermaphrodites). This beautiful and stylish film artfully explores the potent creative collaboration between Mani Bruce Mitchell and the acclaimed photographer Rebecca Swan. Portrayed through this lens, Mitchell’s story introduces viewers to notions of fluid gender identity, challenging the rigid categories of “male” and “female.”
“My ancestors have farmed this land generation after generation, and I just about ended the whole thing. What do you do when nothing is left? And in a rural community where you aren’t welcome because you’re kind of different.” —Farmer John Peterson
Something's happening on the edge of town.
There's a desperate housewife in the parking lot, a musical chorus line mowing the lawn - and a loaded gun in the upstairs closet.
Welcome to Radiant City, an entertaining and startling new film on 21st century suburbanites.
Gary Burns, Canada's king of surreal comedy, joins journalist Jim Brown on an outing to the burbs. Venturing into territory both familiar and foreign, they turn the documentary genre inside out, crafting a vivid account of life in The Late Suburban Age.
In Collaboration with London Indymedia.
The belief that good triumphs over evil resonates deeply in our psyche through religious, cultural, and political discourses. It is also a common theme in the entertainment media where the struggle between good and evil is frequently resolved through violence. The potential negative impact of media violence on children has long been a public concern. It is even more troubling when U.S. military violence, both in the news and in the entertainment, is often glorified as heroic and patriotic.
El Contrato follows Teodoro Bello Martinez, a poverty-stricken father of four living in Central Mexico, and several of his countrymen as they make an annual migration to southern Ontario. For eight months of the year the town's population absorbs 4000 migrant labourers who pick tomatoes for conditions and wages no local will accept. Under a well-meaning government program that allows growers to monitor themselves, the opportunity to exploit workers is as ripe as the fruit they pick. Grievances are deflected by a long line of others "back home" who are willing to take their place.
Some time in the 1960s, in the heart of Africa, a new animal was introduced into Lake Victoria as a little scientific experiment. The Nile Perch, a voracious predator, extinguished almost the entire stock of the native fish species. However, this new gigantic fish multiplied incredibly fast, and its white fillets are today exported all around the world. Huge hulking ex-Soviet cargo planes come daily to collect the latest catch in exchange for their southbound cargo: Kalashnikovs and ammunitions for the uncounted wars in the dark center of the African continent.
This WORLD PREMIERE SCREENING is co-sponsored by RIDM, Montreal's International Documentary Film Festival. ROADSWORTH is preceded by the experimental documentary short THE SPOT (Alexandre Philippe / France / 2008 / 17 min), a MONTREAL PREMIERE SCREENING. THE SPOT looks at that infamous historical location where JFK met his maker, and where tourists and looky-loos continue to flock to.
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.
Since World War II North Americans have invested much of their newfound wealth in suburbia. It has promised a sense of space, affordability, family life and upward mobility. As the population of suburban sprawl has exploded in the past 50 years, so too the suburban way of life has become embedded in the American consciousness. Suburbia, and all it promises, has become the American Dream. But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life.
In Collaboration with London Indymedia.
The Big Sell Out is a political film. In various episodes the abstract phenomenon of privatization is depicted in stories about very concrete human destinies around the globe. The documentary tells tragic, tragicomic but also encouraging stories of the everyday life of people, who day by day have to deal with the effects of privatization politics, dictated by anonymous international financial institutions in Washington D.C. and Geneva, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO).
What Would Jesus Buy? follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they go on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!
The filmmaker may not feel he has made a political film, but we'll let the audience decide...
Celebrate Buy Nothing Day 2008 with an entertaining look at how our surplus lifestyle comes at the expense of others. On this "biggest shopping day of the year," we will say "no" to the corporate-greed economy and "yes" to a free-will exchange of goods.
Bring your loved & unwanted clothes, tools, nick nacks and toys for a Free Swap after the film in the firehouse basement. Coffee donated by Coffee Obsession. Donations are appreciated but not required!
About the film:
MONTREAL PREMIERE SCREENING
What Would Jesus Buy? follows Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir as they go on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse: the end of mankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt!
