(On the Academy Awards Short List for Best Documentary 2008)Oscar-nominee Alex Gibney ("Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room") presents a methodical, harrowing, in-depth look at the torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.
3 Peaks 3 Weeks (A great, new film from Michael Brown, "Farther Than the Eye Can See.") Follow 10 novice mountain-climbing women who braved blood, sweat and lots of tears to climb Africa's three highest peaks in just three weeks, all to raise $300,000 for African charities. (All 10 women will be coming to BIFF, along with Michael Brown.)
"One of the most extraordinary and powerful films at Sundance, " Roger Ebert
Refreshingly free of doctrinal and fundamentalist intolerance, this story of the life of Jesus is told as a gritty African fable with joyous, fullthroated South African music in beautiful landscapes strewn with impoverished shantytowns.
Short Films 2. Includes "Salim Baba" (nominated for
the 2008 Academy Awards,) and "In the Name of the Son,"
(winner of the American Film Institute Award, and awards at Telluride and Sarajevo,) along with six other great, surprising, often outrageous, short films.
( Big hit at Tribeca.) Mothers Teresa they ain’t, but Artis, Jim and Walt somehow deliver badly-needed aid directly to civilians and doctors in war-torn places that no other relief agency would dare to go.
Forever, Never, Anywhere (From Ocar-nominated Antonin Svoboda. Film Festival hit in Rotterdam and Toronto) Three men are in a car that has swerved off the road into a forest, and, because the car is Kurt Waldheim's former limo, it locks them in, and the glass is bullet-proof. How do they get out with just a piece of string and a sadistic passerby?
Southland Tales (Alternately described by critics as “brilliant,” "acquired taste" or “flailing,”) Indie favorite, Richard Kelly, "Donnie Darko," created another messy and confrontational
black comedy that really hits a nerve, and it has gone on to become another cult gem.
Then She Found Me, (Recent Winner,Palm Springs International Film Festival) In her hilarious directorial debut, Helen Hunt plays April Epner, a school teacher in mid-life crisis who's husband dumps her, her adoptive mother dies and her biological mother, Bernice (Bette Midler), a brassy talk-show host, slams into her life, right in the middle of April's passionate affair with the hunk-father, (Colin Firth) of one of her students.
Fresh from sold-out
screenings in film festivals throughout the world. This is the funny, unexpected story of what happened when the Dalai Lama invited 40 of the West's leading thinkers to his Himalayan residence to solve the problems of the planet, and the thinkers fight like cats and dogs.
...a stunning successor to "Touching the Void." Alpinist
Legendary mountain-climbing survivor Joe Simpson, "Touching the Void," recreates, on location, the cold, terror and horror of Toni Kurtz, left dangling at the end of a rope, hands frozen, during the first attempt on the Eiger North Face in 1927.
Beauty Mark (Diane Israel and others in person.) Deeply personal and funny, this film examinines popular culture's toxic emphasis on women's weight and looks, as world-class triathlete Diane Israel tells her own story and interviews athletes, models and inner-city teens about their own self-image.
(A big hit at Slamdance...Rower Tom Mailhot appears in person) In this great epic of endurance and wit, two slightly-past-prime adventurers enter a rowboat race across the Atlantic, and unfortunately, their simple pursuit of a dream turns into near-fanatic obsession.
Alexander Nevsky BIFF and the Boulder Philharmonic are proud to present this classic Sergei Eisenstein 1938 film based on the life of a 13th Century Russian warrior, with the Boulder Phil and Ars Nova singers playing Prokofiev’s thunderous score for the film.
Enemies of Happiness (World Cinema Prize, Sundance) Surviving 4 assasination attempts, 28 year-old National Assembly Delegate Malalai Joya embodies the courage to stand in the forefront of battle for women's rights in Afghanistan.
Stranded: ("Sundance 2008’s most celebrated film..." - Indiewire. "a cinematic tour de force"- Variety.) Director Gonzalo Arijon accompanies survivors and their children back to the mountaintop location of the deadly 1974 Andes plane crash, and, as their memories flood back, the men tell the horrifying story of what they had to do to survive 2 1/2 months on a glacier. Antonio Vizintin, one of the survivors, will appear for audience Q & A
20 Seconds of Joy (Winner, Banff International Film Festival.) This sad, amazing film follows 5 years of the career of the world's greatest woman BASE-jumper, Karina Hollekim, as she performs her great aerial acrobatics off the highest cliffs on earth...until the inevitable happens.
King Lines (Big hit at the Banff International Film Festival.) This jaw-dropping film follows Chris Sharma, 25, the world's best rock climber, moving with the agility and grace of a ballet dancer as he rockets up the most outrageously difficult rock climbing formations in the world.
Short Films 1. Short films are extremely popular programs at film festivals because they showcase new talent. BIFF's event includes "The Death of Shula," (“25 minutes. That’s all it takes for one of the world’s next great filmmakers to announce himself.” Cannes Film Festival) and eight other world-class short films.
The Life Penalty How did a rebel public defender from Boulder, Colorado throw a monkey wrench into America’s death-penalty machine? (David Quint, Doug Bry, former public defender Judy Lucero and CU law professor H. Patrick Furman in person.)
In Times of War: Ray Parker's Story Outspoken and funny, 84-year-old Ray Parker, tells what daily life was really like during his four years at Stalag 12, a German POW camp, and how his and thousands of other soldier's lives were saved by the Geneva Convention.
Seeing Sally - A Psychic's Tale ("...her unfeigned rapport with people make s believers of us all." World Premiere, 2007 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival) The funny story of Sally Morgan, who has a strange ability to see and hear dead people, as she travels to the USA, to find a larger audience for her services. Will Sally be debunked?o
Charlie Bartlett Director Jon Poll, "Meet the Fockers"The 40-Year-Old Virgin." appears for audience Q & A )Working out of a toilet stall, Ferris-Bueller-like free-spirit Charlie Bartlett becomes his school’s resident psychiatrist, dishing out both ernest advice and powerful prescriptions. What could possibly go wrong?
True North ("one of the decade's best films about fathers, sons and human struggle." - Variety) This Joseph-Conradian high-seas thriller, filmed in battering North Sea storms, manages to find sympathy for both perpetrator and victim in the vast world-wide tragedy of human trafficking. Co-sponsored by the Boulder Asian Film Festival.
The Monastery (Winner of the world's greatest documentary prize: the Joris Ivens Award at the International Documentary Festival (IDFA) in Amsterdam) Mr. Vig, a flinty 82-year-old lifelong bachelor decides to will his other-worldly Danish castle to the Church for a monastery, but his world is turned upside down by the arrival of a "transition team" of headstrong nuns...who, so far, have stayed five years.
"... one of the most important musical documentaries of our time." He is the Godfather of the electric guitar, the inventor of multi-track recording , the architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll. At 92, he's still performing in clubs and he looks better than Keith Richards, also in the film.
Sputnik Mania (Winner of 2007 International Documentary Association Award, Amsterdam) To 1957 America, a paranoid country whose schoolchildren were already trained in surviving a nuclear attack, the Russian Sputnik was a devasting, humiliating, threatening blow. Now, recently released documents from the former Soviet Union, tell the full story of how close we came to global nuclear war, because of a Southern US Senate hawk, Lyndon Johnson.
Greensboro: Closer to the Truth ( From Adam Zucker, "A Boy's Life")On November 3, 1979, a heavily armed caravan of Klansmen drove into Greensboro, North Carolina and confronted anti-Klan marchers. During the ensuing gunfire, captured on videotape by TV crews, five marchers were killed and 10 others wounded. No one was ever convicted. add text.
"...a profoundly moving cinematic work of art." Sundance Film Festival
Rose, Dominic and Nancy, leave the squalor of their 60,000-person Ugandan Refugee camp to compete in the National Music Competiton, where thousands of childrens' voices are heard, singing strong, without fear, as their feet stomp to the rhythms of their ancestors.(On the Academy Awards Short List ).
How do you rebuild a country from zero after 14 brutal years of civil war? First—elect women. This film puts us in the room as outspoken President Ellen Sirleaf and her “Iron Ladies” forge a new, democratic African revolution.(Big hit at the Toronto Film Festival)
(World Premiere to rave reviews at Tribecca, winner of a dozen major film festivals and on the short list for the Academy Awards Best Documentary 2008)
This moving, unforgettable film follows five autistic children over the course of a year as they write, rehearse and produce their own full-length musical, tossing aside all stereotypes in the process.
"Imagine the scene in 'Casablanca' in which the French patrons sing 'La Marseillaise' in defiance of the Germans, then multiply its power by a factor of thousands..." The NY Times
How hundreds of thousands of Estonians singing forbidden hymns in the streets brought an end to the 40-year Soviet occupation of Estonia, without the loss of a single life.
Everybody Wants to Be Italian ("A laugh-out-loud romantic comedy").Because Jake is convinced that a beautiful Italian woman from Boston’s North End would never even consider dating a non-Italian, he embarks on a crash course in how to fake Italian ethnicity.
Last Hat in Town This extraordinary film chronicles the transformation of the Rocky Mountains from wide-open ranch land to a patchwork of natural gas drilling sites, and it's vast, permanent, environmental and social impact on western Colorado.
2 0 0 8 Q U I C K S Y N O P S E S
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