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Featured and premiered in the World Documentary Competition, Tribeca Film Festival 2012, Official Selection HotDocs 2012, Sydney Film Festival 2012, Winner, Special Jury Prize, Independent Film Festival Boston 2012.
From TRIBECA FILM GUIDE, by Paige Blake:
As the Chinese government expands its efforts to police the Internet and block websites in the country, the rising tide of censorship has aroused a wave of citizen reporters committed to investigating local news stories. Two such rogue bloggers include Zola and Tiger Temple. When tech-savvy Zola noticed that local newspapers were selectively reporting the news, he took matters into his own hands, posing as a curious onlooker at crime scenes and snapping photos and videos that he posts to his site. Called upon for help by rural farmers and displaced city dwellers alike, Tiger Temple bicycles around the Chinese countryside drawing attention to societal issues in communities that otherwise would not have a voice.
Both relevant and timely, High Tech, Low Life probes the burgeoning world of anti-censorship rebels as they risk political persecution to become China's uncensored eyes and ears. As their numbers grow they've begun training the next generation of Internet journalists, ensuring that the truth will be documented-it's just up to the citizens to seek it out.
June 20
Featured and premiered in the World Documentary Competition, Tribeca Film Festival 2012, Official Selection HotDocs, Independent Film Festival of Boston, Silverdocs, 2012
From TRIBECA FILM GUIDE, by Joel Hogland:
The slogan on the 'Welcome to Maine' sign leading into Gouldsboro reads "Open for Business," but the recent closure of the sardine canning factory has brought this small coastal town to a total standstill. Its laid-off residents-mostly 70-year-olds-just want to get back to work, so when Italian immigrant Antonio Bussone arrives from Boston aiming to open a new lobster processing plant, most of the local labor welcomes him with open arms. After all, they're sick of sending their lobsters to Canada when there's a ready-and-willing workforce to process them at home. So why is tapping into federal relief funds to finance the plant turning into the biggest struggle of Antonio's life?
Acclaimed directors David Redmon and Ashley Sabin shed new light on the trying task of putting America back to work in Downeast. But this is no hard-hitting, in-your-face exposé-their style is gentle, poignant, poetic. They meditate on the morbid beauty of fish sloshing across the assembly line and quietly observe the petty political squabbles that hamper progress. And-in a man who's willing to risk it all to succeed, and a generation that still gives 110 percent-they find hope.
--Joel Hoglund
June 27
SNEAK PREVIEW
"I suppose that is the whole process of living... There's the wear and tear on so many levels, on your body and your psyche. And of course it leaves its indelible mark or its stamp on you." - Lalita Bharvani
Indelible Lalita tells the story of a woman whose body has been painfully transformed by ovarian cancer, breast cancer, heart failure and a dramatic loss of skin pigment. Lalita Bharvani is beautiful - but her pale, scarred body reads as a record of her difficult life experiences.
As a child in Bombay in the 1950s, Lalita began to develop white patches on her leg, caused by a skin condition called vitiligo. Her mother worried that this "defect" would prevent Lalita from ever finding a good husband. With a desire to go away and not come back, Lalita left India to study in Paris. There she fell in love with Pierre, a French-Canadian student. After marrying, the couple moved to a working-class suburb of Paris. Neighbors mistook Lalita (her skin still mostly brown) for an Arab, and they mistreated her. Lalita and Pierre left Paris and moved to Montréal.
Despite a happy marriage, Lalita found life in North America lonely. Her solitude manifested itself physically at age 30 when ovarian cancer left her unable to bear children. Meanwhile, the cold air of Montréal accelerated Lalita's pigment loss. Within a year of arriving in Canada, her skin had become totally white.
Now 60, Lalita is fighting breast cancer and heart disease as her mother lives out her last days in India. Through these health crises, Lalita has somehow managed to find the joy in life. She has learned to let go of her body as the expression of her femininity and ethnicity - and, ultimately, as the only vessel for her spirit.
Indelible Lalita poses many questions to the audience: How linked is one's identity to one's physical appearance? Is the body somehow imprinted, like a passport getting stamped, by the place where one lives? Can the body be read as a record of all that has transpired in the soul within?
For additional information please contact Nancy McCarthy, nmccarthy@massart.edu or 617-879-7175
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