Camden International Film Festival Next Month

The Camden International Film Festival returns for its sixth season in October 2010. The festival will shine the spotlight on a number of great artistic works.

All films are selected because of their ability to arouse discussion on documentary film as an art form, a catalyst for change and as an outlet for the independent voice.

Each year, the event takes over multiple venues throughout three coastal towns in Maine.

Nestled against the mighty Atlantic during fall’s explosion of color, the festival becomes a unique setting to experience the very best in international documentary film.

Accompanying the screening of nearly fifty features and shorts are Q&A’s with directors and producers, the Points North Documentary Film Forum, musical concerts, interactive and video art installations, parties, panels and an opportunity to connect with eager audiences and industry leaders in an extremely intimate setting.

The main venues they use are Camden’s Opera House and Bayview St. Cinema and Rockland’s Strand Theatre and Farnsworth Art Museum.

Some of the films you can view this year include:

A ROAD NOT TAKEN Directors Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller | USA | 2010

The story of the solar panels that former US President Jimmy Carter had installed on the roof of the White House. His successor, Ronald Reagan, had the panels removed – accompanied by a radical alienation from Carter’s energy program. Thirty years later two filmmakers tracked down the panels and traced the story of their journey back from Maine to Washington D.C. BUDRUS Director Julia Bacha | Occupied Palestinian Territorries, Israel, USA | 2009 | 82 min A Palestinian leader unites Fatah, Hamas and Israelis in an unarmed movement to save his village from destruction. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter jumps into the fray.

CAPE WIND (Work in Progress) Directors Robbie Gemmel and Daniel Coffin | USA | 2010 | 90 min

Cape Wind Illuminates the divisive controversy of the Cape Wind Project, a proposal to build 130 massive wind towers five miles off the coast of Cape Cod in Nantucket Sound. The film translates the furor which exploded on Cape Cod into a definitive battle which will be replicated hundreds of times over as industrial-scale renewable energy projects are proposed for America’s deserts, ridgelines and waterways.

CIRCO Director Aaron Schock | USA | 2010 | 75 min

New England Premiere Set within a century-old circus, CIRCO is an intimate portrait of a Mexican family struggling to stay together despite mounting debt, dwindling audiences, and a simmering family conflict that threatens this once-vibrant family tradition. This cinematic road movie opens the viewer to the luminous world of a traveling circus while examining the universal themes of family bonds, filial responsibility, and the weight of cultural inheritance.

DAVID WANTS TO FLY Director David Sieveking | Germany | 2010 | 97 min

US Premiere In search of enlightenment, young filmmaker David Sieveking follows his idol David Lynch and uncovers the billion-dollar industry behind Transcendental Meditation.

DO IT AGAIN Directors Geoff Edgers and Robert Patton-Spruill | USA | 2010 | 85 min

It is a quest. Geoff Edgers, a newspaper reporter dreading the approach of his 40th birthday, decides to take a most improbable leap. He sets out to find the still-surviving members of the long dormant British rock band, the Kinks (“You Really Got Me,” “Lola” and “Come Dancing”), to convince them to reunite.

DREAMLAND Director Andri Snær Magnason | Iceland | 2009 | 89 min

US Premiere A film about a nation standing at crossroads. Leading up to the Iceland’s greatest economic crisis, the government started the largest project in the country’s history: to build the biggest dam in Europe to provide the Alcoa company cheap electricity for an aluminum smelter in the rugged east fjords. Today Iceland is left holding a huge dept and an uncertain future.

THE DISAPPERANCE OF MCKINLEY NOLAN Director Henry Corra | USA | 2010 | 77 min

New England Premiere Private McKinley Nolan vanished forty years ago in Vietnam on the Cambodian frontier. Some say he was captured, some say he was a traitor, some even say he was an American operative. The U.S. Army officially claims he was radicalized and “went native,” joined the Viet Cong and was later murdered by the Khmer Rouge. The film follows the Nolan family from the cotton belt of Texas, to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, to the killing fields of Cambodia and unfolds as a mysterious fever dream filled with doubt, longing and the will to believe.

FAMILY AFFAIR Director Chico Colvard | USA | 2010 | 80 min

At 10 years old, Chico Colvard accidentally shot his older sister in the leg. This seemingly random act detonated a chain reaction that exposed unspeakable realities and shattered his family. Thirty years later, Colvard ruptures veils of secrecy and silence again. As he bravely visits his relatives, what unfolds is a personal film that’s as uncompromising, raw, and cathartic as any in the history of the medium.

GENERAL ORDERS No. 9 Director Robert Persons | USA | 2009 | 72 min

Northeast Premiere One last trip down the rabbit hole before it’s paved over. An experimental documentary that contemplates the signs of loss and change in the American South as potent metaphors of personal and collective destiny.

GOODNIGHT NOBODY Director Jacqueline Zünd | Switzerland/Germany | 2010 | 77 min

US Premiere A journey through night, space and time. Four protagonists from four different continents share the same affliction: they can't sleep. With varying tactics, they resign themselves to the fact that they must live around the clock without interruption. A hypnotic journey through the most beautiful of all film settings: the night.

GREETINGS FROM THE WOODS Director Mikel Cee Karlsson | Sweden | 2009 | 75 min

New England Premiere Life follows its peaceful course in a remote little town in the Swedish forest. The unforgettable characters introduced enliven the sometimes absurd little scenes in this immersive exploration of everyday life in a particular place in Sweden.

HEAVEN AND EARTH AND JOE DAVIS (Work In Progress) Director Peter Sasowski | USA | 2010

Thirty years ago, a peg-legged motorcycle mechanic named Joe Davis walked into the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. They had not returned his calls. The police were summoned. Forty-five minutes later he walked out with an academic appointment. This film documents the life of an artist who is driven to pursue questions that can only be answered in the space where the boundaries between science and art blur.

LA BELLE VISITE (JOURNEY’S END) Director Jean-Francois Caissy | Canada | 2010 | 80 min

Northeast Premiere In the far reaches of the Quebec countryside, between a road and a headland that plunges into the sea, an abandoned motel has been converted into a retirement home. In this former travelers’ retreat, time seems to have ground to a halt. This film is an elegiac exploration of old age, set in a place at once physical and allegorical.

MARWENCOL Director Jeff Malmberg | USA | 2010 | 82 min

After a vicious attack leaves him brain damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in Marwencol, a 1/6th –scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard.

MY PERESTROIKA Director Robin Hessman | USA, Russia | 2010 | 88 min

This film follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times — from their sheltered childhoods, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia.

ON COAL RIVER Directors Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood | USA | 2010 | 81 min

New England Premiere Coal River Valley, West Virginia is a community surrounded by lush mountains and a looming toxic threat. The film follows four longtime residents as they confront a notorious coal company, their local school board, and state government to protect their families and community from the effects of an increasingly mechanized and destructive coal industry.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE Directors Stefanie Brockhaus/Andy Wolff | Germany | 2009 | 88 min

To survive in a Cape Town township, brothers Lucky and Bongani learned their lessons early. They move through ever-shifting worlds, cultures, and traditions in a film that transcends a social environment study to become a far-ranging essay about the future of an Africa ground to pieces between tradition and modernity.

PRODIGAL SONS Kimberly Reed | USA | 2008 | 86 min

Returning home to a small town in Montana for her high school reunion, filmmaker Kimberly Reed hopes for reconciliation with her long estranged adopted brother, Marc. But along the way she uncovers stunning revelations, including his blood relationship with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, intense sibling rivalries, and unforeseeable twists of plot and gender that force them both to face challenges no one could imagine.

Special Work-in-Progress Screening: Untitled Film About Light Pollution & Disappearing Dark USA 

When a filmmaker and amateur astronomer moves into his apartment in New York, he climbs atop his Brooklyn rooftop to survey the night sky. But bathed in its glow of orange streetlights, the City that Never Sleeps only has a dozen stars to see. One disappointing autumn evening becomes a journey to answer a simple question: do we need the dark?

SUMMER PASTURE Directors Lynn True and Nelson Walker | USA | 2010 | 85 min

A film about a young couple living with their infant daughter in the nomadic pastures of eastern Tibet. With rare access to an area seldom visited by outsiders, the film opens a unique window into a highly insular community and offers a sensitive portrait of a family at a time of great transition.

SUN COME UP Director Jennifer Redfearn | USA | 2010 | 38 mins

New England Premiere This film follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.

TANKOGRAD Director Boris B. Bertram | Denmark | 2010 | 58 min

US Premiere Chelyabinsk, in Western Siberia, is infamous for its extreme pollution and its vibrant dance community. This film is a lyrical documentary about a world-class modern dance company that examines the hopes and struggles of a group of young Russians trying to find meaning and expression in the dreary and frightening reality of New Russia through the art of dance.

WAR DON DON Director Rebecca Richman Cohen | USA | 2010 | 83 min

In Krio, war don don means “the war is over,” and although today Sierra Leone is at peace, the specter of war remains ever-present. Can the trial of one man uncover the truth of a traumatic past? With unprecedented access to prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims, and – from behind bars – the accused himself, War Don Don puts international justice on trial for the world to see.

WASTELAND Director Lucy Walker | Brazil | 2010 | 89 min

We follow renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he photographs an eclectic band of "catadores" – or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials. Muniz’s collaboration with the “catadores” to recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both dignity and despair.