Washblog

DEATH OF TWO SONS
Alrick Brown - guest producer in attendance
12:00 PM     Sat, Apr 19    
Run time: 64 min.    |  USA    |  Language: English
Seattle Premiere - On Feb. 4, 1999, four New York City Police officers killed African immigrant Amadou Diallo on his own doorstep in a hail of 41 bullets. The inhumanity of Amadou's death outraged African-Americans, so often the victims of such violence themselves, and people of all ethnicities took to the streets in protest. And yet, despite all the publicity, how many of those marching in Diallo's name could tell you what his native language was or place Guinea on a map? Jesse Thyne knew Amadou's history better than any other American. An exuberant Peace Corps volunteer from Pasadena, CA, Jesse was assigned to Amadou's home village in Guinea, West Africa. He'd been "adopted" by members of Amadou's family and lived in their house. While Amadou sold hats and gloves on a New York City street corner to save money for college, Jesse was learning to speak the local language and teaching Guinean children math. When Amadou died, people in Guinea turned to Jesse for an explanation. Jesse was present at Amadou's funeral, where he sat with the Diallo family and served as a translator for American journalists. In January of 2000, almost a year to date after Amadou's death, Jesse was killed in a brutal car accident on a Guinean highway. The taxi driver responsible for Jesse's death spent three years in a Guinean prison - a harsher-than-usual punishment. Amadou's killers walked free. Jesse's death, like Amadou's, was used as a rallying cry against endemic problems. While thousands of Americans protested Amadou's death, thousands of Guineans came together to march for road safety awareness in a country notorious for reckless driving. Like Amadou, Jesse was repatriated to his home soil for burial. Both families had premonitions and dreams foreshadowing the deaths of their sons, and both deaths had a profound spiritual impact on their nation's religious communities. Beyond examining the broad societal aspects of these events, the film leads us to a very personal truth: that the loss of any human life is equally tragic. Death of Two Sons shows the common humanity shared by these young men, their families, and their nations.

12:00 NOON  INTRO TO FLASH ANIMATION CONCEPTS
Shawnelle and Shawnee Gibbs
Run time: 90 min.    |  USA
Youth and audiences of all ages will have the opportunity to engage with two delightful storytelling sisters, Shawnelle and Shawnee Gibbs and their award winning animated series Adopted by Aliens. Adopted tells the story of Whitney Ward, an orphan who never expected that the love and acceptance she seeks would come from outer space. Filmmakers Shawnee and Shawnelle Gibbs will discuss filmmaking and Flash animation. $2 for youth ages 18 and under.
2:30 - 3:30 PM  FILMMAKING WORKSHOP WITH PROFESSOR ALONZO CRAWFORD OF HOWARD
UNIVERSITY
"PEDAGOGY OF CINEMA"
$7 workshop fee
The power of motion pictures to effect change in society is not nurtured by the
traditional methods of consumption.   Instead, its' true power of
consciousness raising is inherent in the method of production.
According to Paulo Freire, the author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, there are
two basic methods of teaching or pedagogy.  One designed by the teacher for the
student, in which it is assumed that the teacher has knowledge and the student
is without knowledge.  The alternative is a dialogical teaching method, with the
area for study delineated in an interaction between teacher and student.  The
goal of this method is to perceive the processes, which create reality and the
place of the participants in those processes.
It is my belief that filmmakers must be sensitive to the needs of culture and
the community in order to produce films that are socially and culturally
functional, and support the liberating growth and psychological development.
Social change is a result of a process of critical analysis.  The filmmaking
process must be forged with the struggle of the oppressed for liberation.
The challenge for filmmakers of the future is to find a way to bring about the
involvement of oppressed people in the production process of the filmmaking
experience. In the new millennium, filmmakers must come to know that the
liberating power of film to change social consciousness is not in how a film is
watched, but how it is created. Admission: $7 general, $5 for youth age 18 and
under or seniors age 55 and over.

YARI YARI Pemberi: BLACK WOMEN WRITERS & GLOBALIZATION
Jayne Cortez - guest director in attendance
2:00 PM     Sat, Apr 19     $7
Yari Yari Pemberi - Documentary chronicling the international conference,
sponsored by the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Inc., brought together
fiction writers, poets, performers, visual artists, journalists, scholars,
archivists and activists all over the world who are involved in globalization
projects. Maya Angelou, Maryse Conde, Jayne Cortez, Paula Giddings, Octavia
Butler, Edwidge Danticat, Sonia Sanchez, and Alice Walker were just some of the
many conference participants.. Filmmaker talkback after the screening. Don't
miss this rare opportunity to hear the legendary Jayne Cortez discuss her work
as an author, artist, and filmmaker.

ROOTS TIME
7:00 PM     Sat, Apr 19    
Run time: 77 min.    |  Jamaica    |  Language: English Subtitled
Seattle Premiere - Jah Bull and Baboo are two Rastafarians that sell LP records in a colourful old car through the countryside towns of Jamaica. By chance their favourite and well known radio broadcaster, Farmer Roots, hitches a ride with them in an emergency while trying to take his sick girlfriend to the hospital. Jah Bull and Baboo don't believe in western medicine because of their Rastafarian beliefs and 'convince' their passengers to seek the help from the bush doctor Bongo-Hu. Getting to the doctor turns out to be much more difficult than they expected and all kinds of adventures happen along the way... Born in 1978, Silvestre Jacobi is an Argentinian director with an abiding interest in music who has previously worked in the documentary medium. He graduated as a lawyer in 2002 and then studied cinematography in New York. In 2001 he teamed up with Hassen Balut to make the highly acclaimed "Candombe." "Roots Time" is his first feature and won the Best Film Award at the 2006 Portobello Film Festival

THIS IS THE LIFE
Ava Duvernay - guest director in attendance
9:00 PM     Sat, Apr 19    
Run time: 97 min.    |  USA    |  Language: English
Seattle Premiere - In 1989, a collective of young artists gathered weekly at a small health food store in South Central LA called "The Good Life." Their mandate? To explore and expand the musical boundaries of hip hop.
THIS IS THE LIFE tells the little known story of a group of teenagers, who revolutionized hip hop by innovating the very rhyme patterns, melodic concepts and lyrical styles used by many of today's biggest rap stars.
While their innovations have yielded billions of dollars for the recording industry, the Good Life emcees have toiled in relative obscurity in the United States. But much like their jazz heroes of a bygone era, these street poets have garnered a rabid and musically sophisticated fan base abroad, with a cult-like following in Germany, Australia, France, England and Japan.
This feature-length documentary, directed by former Good Life emcee Ava DuVernay, chronicles the rise and fall of an unusual family of artists, while examining their obstacles to commercial success. They all took different paths, but remain connected by the music they made, the alternative hip hop movement they developed, and their worldwide influence on the art form.

NAMIBIA : THE STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION
Charles Burnett - guest director in attendance
4:00 PM     Sun, Apr 20. Admission for this screening and reception: $15.00.
Run time: 161 min.    |  Namibia, USA    |  Language: English
Seattle Premiere - Critically acclaimed director Charles Burnett's latest film follows the legend of Samuel Nujoma (Carl Lumbly), Namibia's first president and a prominent leader in the struggle for independence from apartheid South Africa. The film opens when Nujoma is 16 years old, the country is under constant oppression from South Africa, and the young man learns that he is the direct descendant of royalty. He sets out to live with an aunt, and befriends a religious man (Danny Glover) who has maintained a low profile after legal troubles stemming from a staged car accident. Eventually Nujoma, in the face of severe racism, forms the SWAPO political movement that, with the assistance of some foreign governments, eventually earns Namibia its independence. Later on, a boycott and massacre of protestors turn up the heat, forcing Nujoma into exile. This film is 160 minutes long (3 hours) and includes one intermission.