Zampogna: The Soul of Southern Italy is a cultural journey through Southern Italy as experienced by an Italian American re-connecting with his family roots. The film takes on a fist person narrative perspective as the filmmaker immerses himself in the peasant culture of Southern Italy. To the viewer it might feel like they have been taken back in time to a different era when culture was local, self sustainable and home made. The story is driven by the filmmaker’s interactions with his distant Italian relatives and a host of local folk musicians on his voyage north from Sicily towards the annual ‘Zampogna Festival.’ He witnesses and interacts with peasants, shepherds, farmers, poets, and musicians that play a colorful array of folk instruments that the average viewer will never have known even existed. Some of the interesting people he meets along the way include his quirky Sicilian relatives whom sweating under the Mediterranean sun fill baskets with colorful fruit in their small vineyard and inform the filmmaker about his family’s connection to the land.

Chris Brown has often been compared to director John Cassavetes for his incisive ability to peel back the skin of intense human emotions in a way that feels both disturbingly intimate and deeply real. Fanny, Annie, and Danny, is as tightly wound as the characters themselves. Fanny, Annie, and Danny are dysfunctional adult siblings brought together by their horrific mother for the Christmas holiday. What seems commonplace on the surface becomes riveting in the details. In this family, even Christmas is not given its proper day.

We first meet Fanny, an obsessive-compulsive who lives in a group home and works in a candy factory on the brink of bankruptcy. Jill Pixley’s phenomenal performance ropes us in as she reconnects with her self-absorbed sister Annie and their too-perfect-to-trust brother Danny. Their Vietnam vet father may act like his emotions died with his friends on the battlefield, but the audience will glimpse the last few pulses of compassion the broken man has for those around him.

As with a tsunami building strength silently offshore, we sense the impending climax without knowing exactly when or where it will hit – or how hard.

Kristie and Tie-Rell, BFF’s from no man’s land, Arkansas, have big dreams and are determined to “clog” their way into realizing them. Kristie, a no-nonsense, blonde cutie dearly loves Tie-Rell, a Milli Vanilli throw back in tap shoes, and will do anything to make sure they succeed together…and she means anything. Despite their reality-challenged view of the world, these misfit dreamers believe they deserve riches and stardom – unlike their counterparts Michael Flattery and the desperate wannabes on America’s Got Talent – and are ready to prove it to anyone in their path.

This animation was based on a photograph taken during the month-long process of dismantling an office building in downtown Calgary, Alberta. It explores the inner structures of synthetic objects and devices as taking them apart disables their function. The filmmaker questions the waste of a perfectly good building being torn down just to build another one in it’s place.

Using watercolor paint on a stack of four or five sheets of paper is a stop-motion capture method. About 1200 frames were created using a Lunchbox frame capture machine running at 24 FPS. This animation process leaves little or no remaining tangible painted scene as things are constantly being torn away, broken down and saturated with water. A compact digital camera then recorded to mini-DV cassette and was imported into a computer. The sound elements were recorded onto an audio cassette and imported into the computer. This film was created over three days and 21 hours during the 2009 Animation Lockdown at the Quickdraw Animation Society in Calgary, Alberta.

Winter’s Bone features breakout performer Jennifer Lawrence who brilliantly plays 17-year-old Ree Dolly, an overburdened teen trying to look after her two younger siblings and mentally-handicapped mother in the Missouri Ozarks. The thriller follows Ree as she attempts to track down her meth-head father who put up the family homestead up for bail before disappearing. Ree’s ex-con uncle, Teardrop, played by veteran character actor, John Hawkes, helps her along the way.

The film is a naturalistic portrayal of a community battling the effects of an invasive methamphetamine problem. The film was completely filmed in Forsythe, Missouri and includes contributions by many regional film professionals including, Cinnamon Schultz, Marina Proctor, Michael Grinage, Heather Laird, Sarah Grace Johnson, Cristina Martinez, and Shawn Patrick Nash.

This screening does not include a Q&A.

Just when despair began to set in about the decline in cinema production from sub-Saharan Africa, here comes the irrepressible Dyana Gaye to turn things around. Her new film, Saint Louis Blues, is a musical that takes place on a road trip in Senegal, and the result is every bit as unlikely as it sounds.

At a taxi stop in the capital, Dakar, people gather and wait for the battered old Peugeot station wagon to depart; the taxi won’t leave until the driver finds a seventh passenger. As they wait, one woman breaks into song, and suddenly an impromptu musical number begins, right there in the dusty parking lot. And this is not the music you might expect on a Senegalese road trip. In what may be Gaye’s most brilliant stroke, she reaches back to the tradition of French musicals from the fifties and sixties to lift her characters into an altogether different register from the world that surrounds them. As if transported straight from a Jacques Demy film, they translate their plight into light lyrics and lilting melodies, stepping gracefully in sync with the music. When the song ends, the story continues.

Gaye lives in both France and Senegal, and the bridge between these worlds has never been so finely expressed as in this film. The bright future of African cinema, she has already won the attention of Focus Features in the United States, who supported this film through their Africa First programme.

Chris Brown has often been compared to director John Cassavetes for his incisive ability to peel back the skin of intense human emotions in a way that feels both disturbingly intimate and deeply real. Fanny, Annie, and Danny, is as tightly wound as the characters themselves. Fanny, Annie, and Danny are dysfunctional adult siblings brought together by their horrific mother for the Christmas holiday. What seems commonplace on the surface becomes riveting in the details. In this family, even Christmas is not given its proper day.

We first meet Fanny, an obsessive-compulsive who lives in a group home and works in a candy factory on the brink of bankruptcy. Jill Pixley’s phenomenal performance ropes us in as she reconnects with her self-absorbed sister Annie and their too-perfect-to-trust brother Danny. Their Vietnam vet father may act like his emotions died with his friends on the battlefield, but the audience will glimpse the last few pulses of compassion the broken man has for those around him.

As with a tsunami building strength silently offshore, we sense the impending climax without knowing exactly when or where it will hit – or how hard.

Kristie and Tie-Rell, BFF’s from no man’s land, Arkansas, have big dreams and are determined to “clog” their way into realizing them. Kristie, a no-nonsense, blonde cutie dearly loves Tie-Rell, a Milli Vanilli throw back in tap shoes, and will do anything to make sure they succeed together…and she means anything. Despite their reality-challenged view of the world, these misfit dreamers believe they deserve riches and stardom – unlike their counterparts Michael Flattery and the desperate wannabes on America’s Got Talent – and are ready to prove it to anyone in their path.

This animation was based on a photograph taken during the month-long process of dismantling an office building in downtown Calgary, Alberta. It explores the inner structures of synthetic objects and devices as taking them apart disables their function. The filmmaker questions the waste of a perfectly good building being torn down just to build another one in it’s place.

Using watercolor paint on a stack of four or five sheets of paper is a stop-motion capture method. About 1200 frames were created using a Lunchbox frame capture machine running at 24 FPS. This animation process leaves little or no remaining tangible painted scene as things are constantly being torn away, broken down and saturated with water. A compact digital camera then recorded to mini-DV cassette and was imported into a computer. The sound elements were recorded onto an audio cassette and imported into the computer. This film was created over three days and 21 hours during the 2009 Animation Lockdown at the Quickdraw Animation Society in Calgary, Alberta.

The latest little kidnappee is a voracious toddler named Denree (Joseph Lucien). Although Denree remains impressively calm, his adopted brother, One (Ron Perlman), a circus strongman, is distraught. While searching high and low for his “baby brother,” One is shanghaied by Miette (Judith Vittet), a nine-year-old femme fatale. Miette is the undisputed leader of a gang of orphans who, like petite resistance fighters, have developed ingenious strategies to survive, and evade, the sinister forces at work.

The brave little girl and the gentle giant need each other: she has the brains, while he has the brawn. Together, the pair embark on a series of wondrous but harrowing adventures. They escape the clutches of Siamese twin sisters (collectively known as The Octopus) who operate both an orphanage and a black-market business. They encounter an amnesiac Diver (Dominique Pinon) who collects refuse from the bottom of the harbor…and whose striking resemblance to Krank’s Clones is the key to the mystery of Krank and his fiendish plotting. One and Miette must ultimately challenge Krank and his ultra-dysfunctional “family” on a level playing field — within the world of a little boy’s dream.

A sweet, surprising story about romance between senior citizens; the process of falling in love is lovely, still, even after all these years.

It is Christmastime and Robert Malone (Martin Landau) is a lonely old man. He lives by himself in a house that he has occupied for 48 years, with minimal furniture and no pictures on the walls. The only gift under his Christmas tree is one he wrapped himself, addressed to himself. He works part-time as a bagger at a grocery store.

Across the street, a widow named Mary (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Alex (Elizabeth Banks) have just moved in. Mary, seemingly smitten upon first laying eyes on the old man, invites Robert to dinner. Delighted by his sudden great fortune, Robert seeks dating advice from everyone he encounters the following day. Has he never even been on a date? Or has it just been too long since the last time?

Soon the two are dating, with Mary taking charge and Robert awestruck by her attention. He cannot believe that love has finally found him, so late in life. For the first time, he will have someone to spend Christmas with.

The film is a well-crafted debut from writer/director Nik Fackler. What has been a moving and warmhearted love story becomes poignant for different reasons — lovely, still, but deeper and more powerful.

Donatello, played by American stage and screen icon Stacy Keach, is a gambler with a difference. He runs a pro football pool with computer and cell phone but says he doesn’t give advice or take money. If someone wins they are “free to make a contribution” to his web site. Concealing his real occupation from his wife, he works at night from the thirtieth floor of an unfinished luxury condo loaned to him by a friend. A knock on the door reveals Lydia, a beautiful call girl looking for someone else. Donatello fancies himself a feminist, Lydia a realist. Through a long night of disguises and revelations they challenge each other. Sensual, provocative and unsettling; filmed in a refuge, high in the San Francisco skyline, IMBUED explores dangerous terrain in America’s sexual no man’s land.

Through candid interviews and unprecedented backstage access, this documentary explores the world of the working comedian and reveals a funny psychological profile of its practitioners. Also, we follow a retired comic’s attempt to get back on stage after a thirteen-year absence. Ritch Shydner, at the top of his game in the 1980’s, had HBO specials, shot five pilot TV shows, and had numerous late night appearances (Carson, Letterman, Leno, etc.) but never reached the big time. Ritch gives it another shot, but the scene has changed. Does Ritch have what it takes to connect with today’s young crowds, and still get the laughs?