Sunday, May 16

West Hollywood - EGYPTIAN THEATRE & PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER

2PM
FINAL SOLUTION US PREMIERE

4PM
S21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

4:45PM
NO. 17 preceded by PASSIONATE VOICES WEST COAST PREMIERE

6PM
PRESIDIO: THE TRIP BACK WORLD PREMIERE preceded by DISSIDENT: OSWALDO PAYÁ AND THE VARELA PROJECT WEST COAST PREMIERE

7PM
CONDOR - AXIS OF EVIL LOS ANGELES PREMIERE preceded by ARCHIVO DE LA IDENTIDAD US PREMIERE

8PM
DISBELIEF WEST COAST PREMIERE

9PM
TESTAMENTO LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

FINAL SOLUTION

Director: Rakesh Sharma
2004. India. 140min. Gujarati and Hindi, subtitled. US PREMIERE

India has shouldered a long and complicated history of conflict between Muslims and Hindus. In February of 2002, 59 Hindus were brutally burned in a Sabarmati Express train. The reaction was more deadly violence. In the months that followed, some 2,500 Muslims were brutally murdered and countless women were raped. Winner of the Wolfgang Staudte Award at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, this documentary follows the bloodshed of a never-ending cycle of reprisal killings. FINAL SOLUTION takes the words of George Santayana as its inspiration and motto: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

SUNDAY, MAY 16, 2PM EGYPTIAN THEATRE

S21: THE KHMER ROUGE KILLING MACHINE

Director: Rithy Panh
2003. Cambodia. 101 min. Khmer, subtitled. LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

Between 1975 and 1977, Cambodia witnessed nearly a quarter of its population, almost 2 million people, exterminated by the Khmer Rouge regime. In one detention center, called S21, only a handful of the 17,000 prisoners survived their imprisonment. Director Rithy Panh catches up with two of these survivors and over a dozen of their former jailers for the film. One former prisoner, painter Vann Nath, interviews former guards who express little remorse for their crimes, instead describing themselves as victims of the Khmer Rouge. Filmed in the former S21 prison, now a museum memorializing those tortured and killed there, the film explores the historical memories of victims - and of perpetrators - of Pol Pot's ruthless vision.

SUNDAY, MAY 16, 4PM PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER

NO. 17

Director: David Ofek
2003. Israel. 75min. Hebrew, subtitled.

In June 2002, a bus on its way from Tel Aviv to Tiberius was bombed. Seventeen people were killed, sixteen of whom were identified. No. 17 wasn't, and was buried, anonymously, a few weeks later. The police stopped investigating his identity, believing that he must have been a foreign worker. This is where the filmmakers stepped in, documenting their six month search for the identity of a man no one claimed missing. In the course of their investigation, they pursue the stories of several people who were affected directly or indirectly by the bombing, creating a tragicomic portrait of a society living under the shadow of death. When it seems that the investigation has reached a dead end, a vague lead appears...

PLAYS WITH Passionate Voices SUNDAY, MAY 16, 4:45PM EGYPTIAN THEATRE

PASSIONATE VOICES

Director: Cindy Burstein, Tony Heriza & Wendy Univer
2004. USA. 35 min. English. WEST COAST PREMIERE

PLAYS WITH No. 17 SUNDAY, MAY 16, 4:45PM EGYPTIAN THEATRE

PRESIDIO: THE TRIP BACK

Director: Rafael Lima
2003. USA. 54min. English. WORLD PREMIERE

In 1998, braving almost assured capture, award-winning writer Rafael Lima returned to Cuba to clandestinely film its historical prisons. The unique footage that emerged retraces his steps as an eight year-old child, when he visited his father and two uncles, condemned pilots sentenced to Cuba's firing squads. Today, the prisons are tourist attractions, but the cells and dungeons are off-limits to visitors, and photographing the interiors is strictly forbidden. Lima's is a rare glimpse behind the bars of Cuba's infamous prisons, and a still rarer return by an exile to document and honor those who endured and perished within them.

PLAYS WITH Dissident: Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project SUNDAY, MAY 16, 6PM PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER

DISSIDENT: OSWALDO PAYÁ AND THE VARELA PROJECT

Director: Heidi Ewing
2003. USA. 20min. English and Spanish, subtitled. WEST COAST PREMIERE

Shot in Cuba and taken out of the country for international screening, this film tells the story of the Varela Project, a campaign for open elections, free speech, free enterprise and freedom for political prisoners led by Havana-based activist Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas.

PLAYS WITH Presidio: The Trip Back SUNDAY, MAY 16, 6PM PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER

CONDOR - AXIS OF EVIL

Director: Rodrigo Vazquez
2003. France. 90mins. English, Spanish and French, subtitled. LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

Launched in 1975, Operation Condor united half a dozen Latin American dictatorships with a singular cause: to stamp out the threat of leftist political opposition by any means possible, often by torture and assassination. In the name of "the struggle against terrorism," Condor conducted a secret war on South American dissidents for more than a decade - a war its architects openly claim as a progenitor of the current "War on Terrorism." Through the stories of both victims and perpetrators, CONDOR - AXIS OF EVIL chillingly explores this brutal coalition, whose roster of collaborators included then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the CIA.

PLAYS WITH Archivo de la Identidad SUNDAY, MAY 16, 7PM EGYPTIAN THEATRE

ARCHIVO DE LA IDENTIDAD

Director: Simone Duarte
2004. Brazil/Argentina. 28 min. Spanish, subtitled. US PREMIERE

PLAYS WITH Condor-Axis of Evil SUNDAY, MAY 16, 7PM EGYPTIAN THEATRE

DISBELIEF

Director: Andrei Nekrasov
2004. USA/Russia. 105min. English and Russian, subtitled. WEST COAST PREMIERE

In September 1999, two working-class Moscow apartment buildings were bombed in atrocious and deadly attacks that authorities blamed on Chechen terrorists. As fear rippled through Russia, Vladmir Putin centered his presidential bid on settling the score with the breakaway republic of Chechnya, vying to "rub them out in the outhouse." With this visually stunning documentary, Andrei Nekrasov powerfully questions Chechen responsibility for the blasts, and explores recent evidence that the bombings were orchestrated by Russian authorities, in order to discredit the democratically elected Chechen leadership and to precipitate a second war with Chechnya.

SUNDAY, MAY 16, 8PM PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER

TESTAMENTO

Director: Uli Stelzner & Thomas Walther
2003. Germany. 95min. Spanish and German, subtitled. LOS ANGELES PREMIERE

An 83-year-old lawyer living in Guatemala, Alfonso Bauer Paiz has tirelessly fought for social justice for more than half a century. A socialist and a freemason, he has pledged to do everything in his power to keep dictators out of his country. Even after repeated exiles, Paiz refuses to give up the long battle for justice. His life journey and ambition has led him to a post as a legal counsel for indigenous refugees, and even to a Congressional seat. The film depicts the life and legacy of a man who revives the past and present of Latin America, carrying with him a relentless belief that no struggle is in vain.

SUNDAY, MAY 16, 9PM EGYPTIAN THEATRE