The Arizona International Film Festival has opened with a bang and will screen films for ten days. This year's fest is especially exciting because it celebrates the 15th Anniversary of PanLeft (Tucson's activist filmmaking group), there are also some great shorts in Cine Espanol and from all around the world.
What especially excites me is the tremendous number of youth films presented this year! There will be a free screening of some of the youth films at 11 today at the Screening Room, Downtown.
In addition, there are two films edited and/or produced by three time Reel Inspiration Film Contest winner Bill Kersey. (Some of you saw him at the Unity or Reel Vision Conference screening a few years back.) I've included the descriptions of the films Bill worked on (Rita of the Sky, Thicker than Water) because they are so inspiring and compelling.
But there are so many other great films this year! Between the Water and the Wood (about the U of A swim team), Weaving Worlds, The Gift of Mother Earth, Summer Trip, shorts and feature films from all over the world and what may be AIFF's best animation screening ever! There are also several free screenings. Please, check out the complete schedule at: http://www.filmfestivalarizona.com
Don't forget the popular Arizona filmmakers Screening Wednesday at 8 p.m. at the Screening Room!
I will catch as many of these film as possible (probably 15 of them!) Hope to see you there supporting our independents.
Movie blessings!
Jana Segal
www.reelinspiration.blogspot.com
Rita of the Sky
Kathryn Ferguson, USA, 2009, 72 min.
In a story that prowls the edges between cultures, a judge sends a mysterious woman to a Kansas mental hospital because, to officials, her language resembles the "guttural noises" of a mentally ill person.
After 10 years, they learn she is a Tarahumara Indian from the Copper Canyon in Mexico, who had been speaking her native language all along. She had walked 1500 miles from her canyon village to Kansas. Emerging from captivity, she can no longer speak at all because of the drugs given to her in the hospital.
Rita Carillo Quintero Mancinas is from Urique in the Barranca del Cobre in Chihuahua, Mexico. The film introduces Rita's Tarahumara family and friends, Mexicans involved in her repatriation, and Kansas law enforcement and lawyers.
Parallel to the story of Rita’s incarceration, the film documents her route from Mexico to Kansas. Filmmakers recreated Rita’s walk by following the route she would have walked for 1500 miles—filming in the canyon where Rita’s journey began, into the Chihuahuan mountains, into the Chihuahuan desert, and, finally, into Kansas. The resulting footage is experimental in style, using subjective camera and other effects.
To complete its three-element structure, the film also contains excerpts from a production of La Mujer Que Cayo del Cielo (The Woman Who Fell from the Sky) by Mexican playwright Victor Hugo Rascon Banda. The excerpts are performed by Borderlands Theater in Tucson, Arizona. After that production, the play was produced in theaters worldwide. In the play, Rita is played by Luisa Huertas, a famous Mexican actress best known in the United States for her role in the Academy Award-nominated Mexican movie El Crimen de Padro Amaro (The Crime of Father Amaro).
Producer: Kathryn Ferguson
Writer: Jimmy Santiago Baca, Kathryn Ferguson
Cinematographer: Rubin Ruiz, Tim O'Grady, David Valdez, Kathryn Ferguson
Editor/Sound Design: Bill Kersey
Thicker Than Water
Bradley Rappa, USA, 2009, 74 min.
World Premiere,US Premiere,Arizona Premiere
Tony is 11 years old. Hockey is his “absolutely, positively” favorite sport, and he is about to play his last game. Like his father and his father’s father, Tony has spent many of his best hours on the ice. Like his mother’s brother, Tony has severe hemophilia. That means that a bump or bruise could have catastrophic consequences for him.
The film is about hemophilia, a serious, but not unmanageable, illness; and it is about living with chronic disease. It is also about normality—being a normal child and being a parent raising normal children, one of whom has a chronic disease. Above all, the film is about loving life, doing what is possible, even if others are skeptical, and playing your last game as well as you can.
Bradley Rappa conveys a great deal of information about hemophilia and the changes in detection and treatment over the last 30 years. At the same time, and almost seamlessly, he explores the personal challenges faced by Tony and his family. Equally significant is Rappa’s willingness to share his perspective as a favorite uncle and loving brother and brother-in-law. Editor Bill Kersey has woven home movie footage, interviews, and lots of hockey action together for an engrossing mix.
The documentary is a gift, a gift first to Tony and his younger sister and brother, and then to the extended family. It is also a gift to viewers who enter the extended family circle as they watch.
Bradley Rappa received his M.F.A. in filmmaking from Syrcause University in 1995, and has directed nine films to date. He is also a professional cinematographer, with credits including four feature length documentaries, numerous shorts, and an extensive list of commercials, video documentaries, internet content, and music videos.
Producer: Bill Kersey, Nicole Koschmann and Bradley Rappa
Cinematographer: Bradley Rappa
Editor/Sound Design/Music Score: Bill Kersey
