Forerunner Film Festival Recommended Films

U.S.A., 2007, 93 mins, Color – Documentary

Irena Salina’s cautionary documentary is determined to stir things up. Water, the quintessence of life, sustains every creature on Earth. The time has come when we can no longer take this precious resource for granted. Unless we effect global change, impoverished nations could be wiped from the planet. Roused by a thirst for survival, people around the world are fighting for their birthright.

Under the cover of darkness, African plumbers secretly reconnect shantytown water pipes to ensure a community’s survival. A California scientist exposes toxic public water supplies. A “water guru” promotes community-based initiatives to provide water throughout India. The CEO of a billion-dollar water company argues for privatization as the wave of the future. A Canadian author pops the cork on bottled water, unveiling the disturbing realities that drive profits in the global water business.

Flow: For Love of Water is an inspired, yet disturbingly provocative, wake-up call. The future of our planet is drying up rapidly. Focusing on pollution, human rights, politics, and corruption, filmmaker Salina constructs an exceptionally articulate profile of the precarious relationship uniting human beings and water. While each community’s challenges are unique, the message is universal–the time to turn the tide is now.
In Theatres Aug/Sept 2008 – don’t miss it.
Director(s): Irena Salina
Executive Producer: Stephen Nemeth
Producer: Steven Starr

http://flowthefilm.com/about.php

Tags: Documentary, Environmental, Science and Technology by Mediaguy
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U.S.A., 2007, 90 mins, Color – Documentary

Most Americans know we’ve got a problem: an addiction to oil that taxes the environment, entangles us in costly foreign policies, and threatens the nation’s long-term stability. But few are informed or empowered enough to do much about it. Enter Josh Tickell, an expert young activist who, driven by his own emotionally charged motives, shuttles us on a revelatory, whirlwind journey to unravel this addiction—from its historical origins to political constructs that support it, to alternatives available now and the steps we can take to change things.

Tickell tracks the rising domination of the petrochemical industry—from Rockefeller’s strategy to halt ethanol use in Ford’s first cars to the mysterious death of Rudolph Diesel at the height of his biodiesel engine’s popularization, to our government’s choice to declare war after 9/11, rather than wean the country from fossil fuel. Never minimizing the complexities of ending oil dependence, Tickell uncovers a hopeful reality pointing toward a decentralized, sustainable energy infrastructure—like big rigs tanking up on biofuel at Carl’s Corner Texas truck stop, a new Brooklyn biodiesel plant serving three states, a miraculous Arizona algae-based fuel farm, and the Swedish public voting to be petroleum free by 2020.

Sweeping and exhilarating, Tickell’s passionate film goes beyond great storytelling; it rings out like a bell that stirs consciousness and makes individual action suddenly seem consequential.

Director(s): Josh Tickell
Screenwriter(s): Johnny O’Hara

http://www.fieldsoffuel.com/

See the Trailer – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOsQILZFJE8

Tags: Documentary, Economy, Environmental, Science and Technology by Mediaguy
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Strong Love is the story of world-class weight lifter Jon Shapiro and his childhood sweetheart Holly James, both of whom were born with Down syndrome. This documentary follows the couple over the course of three years, starting with their decision to get married. Their challenges, their triumphs, and their complex, sometimes surprising relationships with family and friends are at the heart of this inspiring film.

http://www.bonnieburt.com/movies/strong-love.html

Tags: Biography, Documentary, Government, Science and Technology by Mediaguy
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Boy, what a frustrating film to watch….even though it is very good and has been a part of my collection for a number of years now. Still, it’s hard to see the good guy, the little guy, beaten up by the big guys. Here’s one story where Goliath beats David.

Anyway, this was an interesting supposedly- true-life story of how Preston Tucker got a raw deal form the Big Three car-makers of the day, and by the government after he built a much better automobile in 1948. The film details how the big boys made sure Tucker’s company never sold any of those cars.

As mentioned, it’s maddening to watch at times, to hear lies and false charges brought against a man who had the right ideas about car safety and engineering and was way ahead of his time.

The 1940s atmosphere in this film is very good and the old music is fun to hear, too. The cinematography is great, too, with some tinted vintage-type color at times. It looks wonderful on DVD.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096316/

Tags: Biography, Drama, Science and Technology by Mediaguy
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In the days when ships measured themselves by yardage of sail and bank of cannon, knowing your north-south latitude was easy. Finding your east-west longitude however (and keeping your ship off the reefs) was hit-and-miss. That could get you killed. The cure was to know the time in London, precisely, but keeping time accurate on a rolling ship was tougher than keeping milk fresh; pendulum clocks need stable ground, and pendulum clocks were all they had.

Queen Anne (Br., 1665-1714) had another idea: a 20,000 pound-sterling prize to anyone who had a solution. Problem was, no one expected a country carpenter cum-clockmaker to do it. John Harrison (Michael Gambon) was that carpenter, and it became *his* problem–a three-decades-long problem. It would also pose one for Rupert Gould (Jeremy Irons) two centuries later, as a marriage-busting, sanity-breaking obsession over restoring Harrison’s neglected prototypes: clocks that could keep time at sea better than the quartz-timed digital you might be wearing now.

“Longitude” weaves seamlessly–almost–between the two eras, tracking the exertions and miseries of John Harrison and Rupert Gould with the same kind of synchronicity Harrison spent half his life pitching to astronomers who had scarce respect for the tinkerings of a hayseed. Michael Gambon’s passionate performance as John Harrison is truly Oscar-calibre, eclipsing Irons–but only because the tunnel-visioned Rupert Gould is hardly a vehicle for the memorable. Too bad this was “only” a TV mini-series. As a theatrical release it would have lent due reknown to a scarce-remembered true epic of genius.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0192263/

Tags: Drama, Science and Technology by Mediaguy
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