Three Antiwar Congress Members by David Swanson, 8/19/18
Congress members do not talk like Rashida Tlaib, or Ilhan Omar, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Omar’s predecessor never talked this way. Even John Conyers never talked this way, with or without meaning it. Yet these three are very likely to be in Congress, and if they at all act on their professed positions, we need to demand that their colleagues join them.
When three candidates for Congress who’ve won their primaries and are virtually guaranteed to join Congress speak up for peace, we need to celebrate it.
Great Stories.
Blue Magic
Dir. Yoel Morales
Directed by Yoel Morales, this sy fy movie is beautifully shot. In a remote part of a Caribbean island, completely cut off from modern technology, we find Moises. The love Moises feels for the girl from another moon gave him the strength to defeat his flesh-eating opponent.
Director Yoel Morales adds: 'the best way to tell our story was to deliver a fantasy movie, with a detailed focus on each character.' Release date: 2017, 76 minutes.
Dr. Steeve Coupeau Goes One-on-One with Shraysi Tandon, Director of 'Invisible Hands' Featured at AAIFF, 8/3/18
What was the development origin of the movie?
Invisible Hands was inspired by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi. I met Kailash a few years ago when I was working as a journalist and interviewed him on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. He won his Nobel Peace Prize because of over the last 35 years he has rescued over 85,000 children from child trafficking and slave labor. I was so inspired by his work and him as a person that I felt his story and the issue deserved to be seen by audiences around the world. Kailash and I met for lunch a few months later in New Delhi when I shared my idea of making a documentary with him and that was the start of the journey.
Can you tell us about your artistic influences and the journey to get your film to AAIFF?
I come from a journalism background, I have been journalist throughout my career so I have always gravitated towards hard-hitting, issue-driven stories with a human angle. Global issues, human suffering and how we as both individuals and as a collective group can contribute to making sure that injustices don't prevail - and doing achieving that through cinema - those are all ideas that motivate and inspire me. Artistically there are so many documentary filmmakers I adore - my friend and producer of Invisible Hands Charles Ferguson is someone whose work I deeply respect; Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras, Anand Gandhi and Ken Burns are others whose work I really admire. As far as fiction films go - Steven Soderbergh, Martin Scorcese and Alejandro Inarritu are among my favorites.
Finance
Dr. Steeve Coupeau Goes One-on-One with Ari Gold, Director of 'The Song of Sway Lake' Featured at Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema, 8/9/18
Dir. Ari Gold
What was the development origin of the movie?
I loved French movies from the 70’s, and was also fascinated by the Adirondacks where I went a lot as a kid. Combining these passions into a story of love, memory, loss, and music seemed like a great way to make a beautiful 'lake story'.
Can you tell us about your artistic influences and the journey to get your film to Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema?
Shooting in the Adirondacks with a limited budget, I had to look at a lot of European cinema of the 60’s and 70’s to get a sense of how they used natural light and told stories through silences. The edit process was insanely long because we ran out of money, and I also had to find the true meaning of the story, which is about letting go of lost time to come into a sway with the present. It took deep work to discover that meaning within myself — and was great to bring the final product to Kew Gardens Festival of Cinema, which is kind of "upstate" from Manhattan — like our movie is!
