Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Trenton International Film Festival 2012 screens 7 Exciting Films/Many are New Jersey Premieres!




"Where can you see the critically acclaimed and hard to find film about Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi an animated film about the Hindu legend of Sita and Rama, and a political-crime drama about out of control musicians in Stockholm? Right here at the  2012 Trenton International Film Festival. Join us at the Mill Hill Playhouse in Trenton for 7 exciting films from around the world. We even have two directors coming in to present their films in person. Hope to see you at the festival!
---curator, Nadine Patterson

Tickets are $8 General Admission
Students & Seniors $5
For more information on purchasing tickets go to http://trentonfilmsociety.org/


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Friday November 9th

7:30pm 

ELZA
Director  Mariette Monpierre                 
Guadeloupe/France, 2011, 78 min. French with English Subtitles. Drama. Kick off the festival with writer/director Mariette Monpierre, and join us for a Q&A after the film!

Director Mariette Monpierre
Bernadette, a single mother in Paris, tries to provide her daughters with everything.  She is thrilled when her eldest daughter, Elza, is the first in the family to graduate from college earning a master's degree. But Elza breaks her mother's heart by running away to their native Guadeloupe in search of a distant childhood memory:  the father she barely remembers.   ELZA offers an insider’s view of a lush island culture, capturing the passion and contradictions of this family in transition.

WINNER: Pan African Film Festival (PAFF) - British Academy of Film and Television Arts/LA (BAFTA/LA) Festival Choice Award 2012
WINNER: FESTIVAL PROGRAMMERS’ AWARD – Narrative PAFF/Los Angeles, 2012
WINNER BEST NARRATIVE FEATURE: Roxbury International Film Fesival 2012  
NOMINATED FOR  BEST PICTURE American Black Film Festival 2012
NOMINATED FOR CESAIRE AWARD 2011 




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Saturday November 10th

12:30pm

ALASKALAND
Director  Chinonye Chukwu
USA, 2011, 76 min. Ibo & English. Drama. This is a special screening with writer/director Chinonye Chukwu joining us for a Q&A after the film!  
Director Chinonye Chukwu

Chukwuma, an Alaskan-raised Nigerian struggles to balance the expectations of his traditional Nigerian parents and the larger world around him. After a tragic car crash, Chukwuma is separated from his younger sister, Chidinma, who moves to Nigeria with their Uncle until she becomes of legal age. Two years later the siblings reconnect to find their estrangement has created new personal and cultural frictions in ways that bring them closer to each other and their roots, as well as help them define what it means to be a Nigerian in Alaska.
 
                                                                                                            




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2:30pm


EL CAMINO DEL VINO
Director Nicolás Carreras
Argentina, 2010, 90 min. English & Spanish w/English Subtitles. Documentary/Comedy/Drama.

OFFICIAL SELECTION
BERLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL · 2011

The famous sommelier Charlie Arturaola arrives at the Mendoza, Argentina, to take part in the glamorous event “Masters of Food and Wine”, after having “travelled the world on a wine bottle”, as he usually says. Once in the event and before his tasting, between glamour, stress and marketing something unusual happens: he loses his palate. Charlie needs to recover it. In the search of a solution for his problem, he has decisive encounters with the most important people of the wine world, like Michel Rolland, who thinks that he has to “wash” his palate with the best wines of the region. Charlie starts a journey from huge wineries through small vineyards and wine harvest’s processions getting closer with the people of the villages who work the vine.  “The ways of the wine” oscillates with cruelty between comedy and the true drama of a man who got lost because of his desire of belonging to a world, other than his own.



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4:15pm

THE LADY
Director  Luc Besson. Starring Michelle Yeoh as Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi. France, 2011, 132 min. English & Burmese w/English subtitles. Biography/Drama. 

The film tells the story of Aung San Suu Kyi as she becomes the core of Burma's (Myanmar) democracy movement, and her relationship with her husband, writer Michael Aris. Despite distance, long separations, and a dangerously hostile regime, their love endures until the very end. A story of devotion and human understanding set against a background of political turmoil which continues today. THE LADY also is the story of the peaceful quest of the woman who is at the core of Burma's democracy movement.

Text on card reads: "You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom-- Malcolm X"


This timely film acts as a herald of the very real world events that have taken place this year in her life.  Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat to Parliament April 1, 2012.  Democratic reform is happening, albeit very slowing. On June 16,  2012, Aung San Suu Kyi  delivered her Nobel acceptance speech at Oslo's City Hall, two decades after being awarded the peace prize.




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8pm 

SOUND OF NOISE



Directed by Ola Simonsson & Johannes Stjarne Nilsson. Sweden/France, 2010, 102 min. Swedish with English Subtitles. Comedy/Political-Crime Drama.

Police officer Amadeus Warnebring was born into a musical family with a long history of famous musicians. Ironically, he hates music. His life is thrown into chaos when a band of anti-establishment musicians decides to perform a musical apocalypse using the city as their instrument... Reluctantly, Warnebring embarks on his first musical investigation.





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Sunday November 11th

1:30pm


AUDRE LORDE: THE BERLIN YEARS
1984 TO 1992   
Director Dagmar Schultz, in cooperation with Ika Hügel-Marshall and Ria Cheatom
German, 2012, 84 min.  English and German w/English Subtitles. Documentary.

Audre Lorde, the highly influential, award winning African-American lesbian poet came to live in West-Berlin in the 1980s. During her stay as a visiting professor, she was the mentor and catalyst who ignited the Afro-German movement. Lorde also had a decisive impact on white women, challenging them to acknowledge the significance of their white privilege and learning to deal with difference in constructive ways.





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3:30pm

SITA SINGS THE BLUES
Director Nina Paley
USA, 2008 91 min. English. Animation/Musical.


Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."