All films will be shown in the Teatro Santa Ana, Biblioteca Pública,
Insurgentes #25, San Miguel de Allende
LEAVE THEM LAUGHING
A Musical Comedy about Dying
Friday, January 13th, 3pm
Monday, January 16th, 3pm
Directed by Academy Award-Wining Director, John Zaritsky and Produced by Montana Berg
Meet Associate Director: Sandy Handsher following each screening
Documentary: English - 90 minutes (2010)
VIEW TRAILER
When comedians get laughs, they are said to have “killed.” When they don’t, they’ve “died.” In John Zaritsky’s Leave Them Laughing, a California-based Canadian comic faces her death as she lived her life, “killing” audiences across the planet.
An accomplished singer, songwriter, musical comedian and parodist, Carla Zilbersmith is given the ultimate bad news. Diagnosed in 2007 with Lou Gehrig’s Disease and given less than four years to live, she leaves a teenaged son, fans and adoring students. Leave Them Laughing is a 90-minute “pre-mortem” of a life lived fully, but far too fast. From her wheelchair, Carla vows to exit the stage with songs about life, quips about death, and a smile on her face.
For Oscar-winning documentarian Zaritsky - director of the controversial film The Suicide Tourist - it’s a switch in theme from the right-to-die, to dying right. On stage, in actual and dramatized flashbacks to her giddy glory days, and on camera in her unashamed current reality, Leave Them Laughing tells Carla’s own glad, sad story in her own voice. Films of her last brave road trips to Britain and Mexico are interspersed with diary entries, travelogues, interviews and skits. What emerges is a portrait of a woman determined to savour every last drop of sweet life with spunky defiance.
“A journalist asked me what I wanted to do before I died,” Carla says, “and I
quite naturally answered: Johnny Depp.”
Leave Them Laughing is a musical comedy about the nearness of death, a unique and compelling vehicle to engage an audience with a subject that might be “death” in the comedic sense. It is the ultimate challenge for a comedian, to squeeze laughs from suffering and pain. Underpinning the entire project is the message that Carla Zilbersmith is merely facing her mortality ahead of us, and reporting back with wit, wisdom, courage, music and love.
CRUZ REYNOSO, SOWING THE SEEDS OF JUSTICE
Wednesday, February 8th, 5pm
Thursday, February 9th, 5pm
Director: Abby Ginzberg - Meet Abby after each screening
Documentary: English with Spanish subtiitles - 58 minutes
During his extraordinary life, Cruz Reynoso
has been one of those rare individuals who are not only shaped by
history-they make history. Sowing the Seeds of Justice
paints a portrait of Cruz Reynoso, a man who felt the sting of
injustice as a child and later, as a lawyer, judge and teacher, fought
for over five decades to eradicate discrimination and inequality for
all.
Sowing the Seeds of Justice
begins with Cruz Reynoso's childhood where he was born into a
Spanish-speaking farm worker family of eleven children. It shows his
struggle to be educated, leading to his graduation from Pomona College
in 1953 and from UC Berkeley Law School in 1958. He then became the
first Latino Director of California Rural Legal Assistance and later one
of the first Latino law professors in the country beginning his
academic career at the University of New Mexico Law School. His ascent
to the California Supreme Court was a singular achievement, when he was
appointed by Governor Jerry Brown as the first Latino justice on that
bench. Then in a heated recall campaign whose central issue was the
death penalty, Reynoso and two other justices lost their seats. As Vice
Chair on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, he provided leadership in
the only investigation of voting rights abuses in the 2000 election in
Florida. He received the country's highest civilian honor, the
Presidential Medal of Freedom, for his lifelong devotion to public
service and today at 78, he continues to teach law at UC Davis Law
School and to actively participate in community organizations throughout
the state of California.
“Cruz
Reynoso is the son of Mexican American farm workers who carved out a
brilliant career as organizer, activist, attorney, California Supreme
Court Justice and law professor. Principled and fearless, Reynoso — best
known, perhaps, for being pushed off the state Supreme Court with
death-penalty opponent and Chief Justice Rose Bird in 1986 — fought for
underdogs on countless fronts, from California farm workers to Florida
citizens deprived of their votes in the 2000 election. This riveting,
inspiring documentary by Abby Ginzberg (Soul of Justice: Thelton Henderson's American Journey), beautifully narrated by Luis Valdez, reintroduces us to an authentic California champion.” —Michael Fox, Mill Valley Film Festival
THEY CAME TO PLAY
Tuesday, February 14th, 5pm
Wednesday, February 15th, 5pm
Director: Alex Rotaru - Meet Alex after each screening
Documentary: English - 90 minutes (2008)
Entertaining and above all, inspiring, the film provides an intimate look into the lives of these colorful, multi-faceted competitors as they strive to balance the demands of work and family with their love of music. Years of dedicated preparation culminate in top-level performances before a professional jury and discerning audience during three nerve-wracking elimination rounds.
All of the film's heroes have made their careers outside of music in fields ranging from medicine to business, and professional tennis to education. For competitors who have faced such extraordinary challenges as drug addiction, AIDS, or political asylum, the competition is also a triumph over adversity. For all, it represents an overwhelming desire to express a deeper side of themselves, musically and otherwise.
Commentary from noted American pianist Van Cliburn and gold medalists from the Foundation’s professional competition, along with outstanding performances of great classical masterworks—from Beethoven to Alkan and from Rachmaninoff to Barber—complement the action in a film that celebrates the creator and the competitor in each of us.
Neil Genzlinger wrote in the New York Times, "...beautifully
executed... Mr. Rotaru [director] paces the film perfectly, mixing
performance footage with scenes of the competitors talking about their
lives and the role music plays for them."
Michelle Orange wrote in
the Village Voice and LA Weekly, "A welcome twist on the now-ubiquitous
kiddie competition doc... centers on the Van Cliburn Foundation's
gathering of the world's best amateur pianists over the age of 35....
[a] gentle inquiry into the egalitarian nature of art and the
compromises made for a life that involves regular meals."
THE END OF AMERICA
Monday, February 20th, 3pm
Screening at Hotel Real de Minas - Q&A with Naomi Wolf (Author) and Avram Ludwig (Producer)
Filmmakers: Annie Sundberd & Ricki Stern
Documentary: English (2008)
From award-winning filmmakers Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern (The Devil Came on Horseback and The Trials of Darryl Hunt) comes the provocative and expertly crafted film, THE END OF AMERICA, based on The New York Times best seller by the same name. In a stunning indictment of sweeping policy changes during the Bush years, author Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth) makes a chilling case that American democracy is under threat.
Along with the rest of America, best-selling author and feminist Naomi Wolf was overwhelmed by the swell of conflicting information and the sudden march to war after 9/11. Wolf looked to history to help her understand the dramatic changes she believed she was witnessing, and discovered the disturbing similarities between post-9/11 US policy and that of historically fascist regimes such as Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany. Wolf authored her next book, The End Of America, which demonstrated that the United States was on a remarkably defined path toward ending democracy. Taking the thesis of her book to the streets, Wolf set out on a national tour to discuss the evolution of America from a functional democracy into a closed, fear-driven society with a terrifying absence of due process. In this profound and eye-opening film, Award-winning veteran documentarians Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (The Devil Came On Horseback, The Trials Of Darryl Hunt) accompany Wolf as she discusses America's dangerous passage towards becoming a society of fear and surveillance, and expresses her plea to restore our nation's most cherished values.