Seattle, Film Festival
Sunday, December 12/122pm, Seattle Art Museum
BATTLEGROUND: 21 DAYS ON THE EMPIRE'S EDGE
Director: Stephen Marshall
Documentary. 2003. USA. 81 min. English and Arabic, subtitled
SEATTLE PREMIERE
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In late 2003, two filmmakers from the Sundance award-winning Guerrilla News Network spent three weeks on the frontlines of the simmering guerrilla war in Iraq, gathering intelligence, dodging bullets, and capturing the untold stories of what has become the world's most covered, and misunderstood, conflict.
BATTLGROUND is an irreverent road movie that will challenge the orthodoxies of Left and Right, and highlight the humanity of all sides of the conflict. BATTLEGROUND is a critical film for anyone who wants to understand the powerful forces that are sucking America deeper and deeper into a Middle Eastern quagmire.
Is Iraq our generation's "Bright Shining Lie," or is it the frontline in a global battle for national survival? Or is to some combination of both?
Filmmakers/Distributors Contact Information:
Stephen Marshall
stephen@gnn.tv
4pm, Seattle Art Museum
Directors: Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott
Documentary. 2004. USA. 145 min. English
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One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today's dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history. In this complex and highly entertaining documentary, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan, to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation's increasing preeminence. Based on Bakan's book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power", the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns, and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, THE CORPORATION charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force. THE CORPORATION was the winner of the Sundance 2004 World Cinema Documentary Audience Award.
Filmmakers/Distributors Contact Information:
Clémence Taillandier
Zeitgeist Films Ltd.
247 Centre Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10013
Tel: 212.274.1989
Fax: 212.274.1644
clemence@zeitgeistfilms.com
www.zeitgeistfilms.com
7:30 pm, Seattle Art Museum
Director: Luis Mandoki
Feature Film. 2004. Mexico. 111 min. Spanish, subtitled
Cast: Carlos Padilla, Leonor Varela, Gustavo Muñoz, Jose María Yazpik, Ofelia Medina, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Jesus Ochoa
SEATTLE PREMIERE
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Based on the true story of screenwriter Oscar Torres's embattled childhood, INNOCENT VOICES is the poignant tale of Chava, an eleven-year-old boy who suddenly becomes the "man of the house" after his father abandons the family in the middle of the civil war opposing the Salvadorian army to the rebel peasants of the FMLN.
Chava's life becomes a game of survival, not only from the bullets of the escalating war, but also from the dispiriting effects of daily violence. As he hustles to find work to help his single mother pay the bills, and experiences the pangs of first love for a beautiful classmate, Chava's tiny home village becomes both playground and battlefield.
Armed only with the love of his mother and a small radio that broadcasts a forbidden anthem of love and peace, and faced with the impossible choice of joining either the army or the rebels, Chava finds there is another choice.