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Archives for August 2021

Inspirational Docs

No Time to Waste

Director: Carl Bidleman
Runtime: 51:47 minutes

No Time to Waste celebrates legendary 98-year-old park ranger Betty Reid Soskin’s inspiring life, work and urgent mission to restore critical missing chapters of America’s story. The film follows her journey as an African American woman presenting her personal story from a kitchen stool in a national park theater to media interviews and international audiences who hang on every word she utters.

The documentary captures her fascinating life — from the experiences of a young Black woman in a WWII segregated union hall, through her multi-faceted career as a singer, activist, mother, legislative representative and park planner to her present public role.

At the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park, Betty illuminates the invisible histories of African Americans and other people of color. Her efforts have changed the way the National Park Service conveys this history to audiences across the U.S., challenging us all to move together toward a more perfect union.

website | facebook

Into the Canyon

Director: Pete McBride
Runtime: 84 minutes

In 2016 filmmaker/photographer Pete McBride and writer Kevin Fedarko set out on a 750-mile journey on foot through the entire length of the Grand Canyon. From the outset, the challenge was far more than they bargained for. More people have stood on the moon than have completed a continuous through hike of the Canyon. McBride and Fedarko took a sectional approach, achieving a feat that many adventurers have taken decades to complete. Others have lost their lives trying. But their quest was more than just an endurance test – it was also a way to draw attention to the unprecedented threats facing one of our most revered landscapes.

Throughout their passage, McBride and Fedarko encountered an astonishingly diverse and powerful landscape, rich in history, that is now facing perhaps the gravest crisis in the 98-year history of the Grand Canyon National Park.

Directed by Pete McBride and produced by the award-winning team at Insignia Films, INTO THE CANYON is a story of extreme physical hardship that stretches the bonds of friendship and a meditation on the timeless beauty of this sacred place. It is an urgent warning about the environmental dangers that are placing one of America’s greatest monuments in peril and a cautionary tale for our complex relationship with the natural world.

website

The Haircut…or Learning to Let Go

Director: DM (Deanna) Witman
Runtime: 4:51 minutes

The world is experiencing a time of extraordinary ecological loss – of species, habitat, ecological connectivity, and personal connection to the natural world. An increasing number of individuals and communities are experiencing grief and other health effects surrounding these losses.

It could not be more clear that the world is grappling with loss related to climate disruption and its associated impacts from (un)natural disasters, food insecurity, migration, and pandemics. As losses continues to collect globally with losses felt on so many fronts and so deeply, I undertook a video/performance piece to continue my exploration of the phenomena of grief. The piece is a two-channel piece titled “The Haircut… or Learning to Let Go”. In many culture’s cutting one’s hair is an expression of grief.

website

Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 6:30pm
Venue: Reading IMAX Theater
Address: 30 N 2nd St, Reading
Tickets: $10

Women & Politics

Can You Hear Us Now?

Director: Jim Cricchi
Runtime: 87 minutes

Small-town activism. Nail-biting elections. A last-minute power grab. In Wisconsin, where extreme partisanship has become the norm, voters are finding their lives increasingly irrelevant to state lawmakers.

Through the stories of four tireless women fighting to have their voices heard, CAN YOU HEAR US NOW? unravels the ways that years of minority rule by one-party have reshaped democracy in Wisconsin—a state at the heart of American politics.

website | facebook

Finding Justice

Director: Amanda Owen
Runtime: 18:53 minutes

Part present-day detective story and part a historical account of the movement for voting rights, “Finding Justice: The Untold Story of Women’s Fight for the Vote” tells the story of a band of intrepid women and their one-ton bronze bell that became a celebrated icon of the women’s suffrage movement.

website | watch trailer | facebook

Karma Latte: The Lenin Gutierrez Story

Karma Latte: The Lenin Gutierrez Story

Director: Ozz Gomez
Runtime: 35 minutes

Karma strikes when a barista finds himself the subject of a public social media shaming attempt that totally backfires.

website

Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 5:30pm
Venue: Reading IMAX Theater
Address: 30 N 2nd St, Reading
Tickets: $10

Women on Both Sides of the Camera

Women on Both Sides of the Camera

Director: Mahshad Afshar
Runtime: 95 minutes

Benefiting from a wide range of rare archive materials, this feature-length documentary focuses on one century of the representation of women in Iranian cinema. Looking at the formation of the Iranian film industry and its relationship with socio-political events, the film narrates the challenges of women who chose this controversial and unorthodox career in Iran’s patriarchal society and the consequences that they were faced as a result of their choice. It also highlights the integral role that female filmmakers have played in Iranian cinema to tell women’s stories, to challenge the tradition, sharia law, and ultimately to overcome the suppression of female authority on screen.


Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 4:30pm
Venue: The GoggleWorks Boscov Theater
Address: 201 Washington St, Reading
Tickets: $10

Documenting Art

Voice of Selma

Director: Roya Iravani
Runtime: 30 minutes

The Voice of Selma (Moghaddam Museum) Project is a feature-length documentary film that guides us through the treasures collected over a lifetime of work by Selma Moghaddam and her husband Mohsen. Against a backdrop of government hostility toward Persian works of art that predate the Islamic revolutionary period and a personal dislike of Mohsen Moghaddam for his family’s role in the assassination of a government official, the two highly educated and well-traveled historians embarked on a life journey to find and preserve the art and artifacts that represent Persia and Iran.

Pictograph

Director: Roya Iravani
Runtime: 30 minutes

The pictograph is a documentary that takes a unique and comprehensive look into the relatively unknown world of modern art in Iran. This historical perspective examines an ancient culture that has run the gamut from actively repressing to ecstatically embracing, artists and art itself – Iranian artists have ridden the whirlwind in their quest to express the creative genius within


Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 4pm
Venue: Reading IMAX Theater
Address: 30 N 2nd St, Reading
Tickets: $10

Tackling Politics

We Are All in this Together

Director: Daniel Troia
Runtime: 70 minutes

During divisive times in America, a man sets off on a cross-country bicycle journey, with no food, no money, and the hope of gaining a better understanding of the human connection.

website

Vitriol

Director: Mark Clauburg
Runtime: 25 minutes

A short documentary exploring vehement social media interactions from both sides of the political spectrum.

website

MEN in Charge

Director: Melanie Kloetzel & Linnea Swan
Runtime: 37 minutes

Tracking the antics of the performance group kloetzel&co., ‘MEN in charge’ documents the development of the satirical dance theatre work ‘It began with watching’. Through a physical and artistic representation of a sector enthralled by alternative facts, ‘MEN in charge’ provokes audiences to reconsider the cunning, and sometimes comical, intersection of art and politics.

website | facebook

Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 3:30pm
Venue: Reading IMAX Theater
Address: 30 N 2nd St, Reading
Tickets: $10

Iranian Short Films

Goodbye Olympic

Director: Mojtaba poorbakhsh
Runtime: 18:37 minutes

Maria is a girl whom she is a champion of Kayak; she is waiting for dispatching to the Olympics Qualification which held in France. The schedule of dispatching the kayaking team will be called off because of some troubles.

Synthesis

Director: Mohammad Towrivarian
Runtime: 15 minutes

A poor family has a child with a disability. Due to his inability to pay for medical expenses, the father and his brother decide to kill their child. The father tries to do his job at night, but the mother, who is suspected of his behavior, goes to the road with them.
On the way, the father sees his brother and tells him that he regrets his decision, but his brother humiliates him and makes him miserable and miserable. The brother goes after his brother.
In the morning, he takes care of the woman and puts her to sleep, and picks up the child and puts him on the sidewalk. When she returns to her husband, she is confronted with the scene of her murder.

Inhale

Director: Nasser Zamiri
Runtime: 19:30 minutes

Ebrahim’s chronic insomnia has caused tension between him and his wife, Marziyeh.

website

Hermit

Director: Omid Mirzaei
Runtime: 15 minutes

I am American

Director: Omid Mirzaei
Runtime: 15 minutes

ISIS captures an American reporter. He will soon experience the meaning of peace in a different way.

Today is Friday

Director: Mohammad Ahangar
Runtime: 14 minutes

Nader and Saed are arguing with each other because of their problems in the company.
But suddenly something happens which causes some changes to their destiny.

I Come From That Crowded City

Director: Mina Salimi
Runtime: 12:04 minutes

Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 2:30pm
Venue: The GoggleWorks Boscov Theater
Address: 201 Washington St, Reading
Tickets: $10

I’ll Be Your Mirror

I’ll Be Your Mirror

Director: Johanna Faust
Runtime: 91 minutes

To what degree can motherhood and self-fulfilment be reconciled? Johanna Faust would like to leave her children and her husband behind in order to pursue her artistic career. But when she gets an invitation to study art at Oxford, doubts arise. Johanna vaguely remembers painful stories that her mother told her about her grandmother. Didn’t she leave her family, too? And what were the consequences? In search of an answer, Johanna and her family embark on a journey into the history of her family, which takes them from Switzerland through the USA to the Mexican desert. «I’ll be your mirror» is the intimate portrait of three generations of women torn between social norms, children’s needs and their own desires.

website | watch trailer | facebook

Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 2pm
Venue: Reading IMAX Theater
Address: 30 N 2nd St, Reading
Tickets: $10

The Remnants of War

Our Feet are Rooted

Director: Krista Imbesi
Runtime: 29:54 minutes

“Our Feet Are Rooted” is a documentary about government sponsored land grabbing in Northern Uganda and the non-violent techniques community members are using to fight for their ancestral land.

watch trailer

Buddha’s Shame

Director: Morteza Atashzamzam
Runtime: 30 minutes

Bangladeshi local reporter Tamna travels to Myanmar-Bangladesh border to cover Rohingya genocide.


Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 2pm
Venue: Reading IMAX Theater
Address: 30 N 2nd St, Reading
Tickets: $10

Special Block: Mental Health

In the Balance

Director: Kemuel Charles
Runtime: 23:57 minutes

Two US Marine Soldiers returning home from the Iraq war, suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, must learn how to cope with their “new” everyday reality. Shawn is an ill-mannered alcoholic on the verge of exploding, while Chris seeks redemption within his psychiatrist, with the hopes of reclaiming his family and life.

After Chris has a brief yet awkward encounter with his Ex-Marine Sergeant, Shawn, whom has cut himself off from everything except cigarettes and alcohol. Chris begins to question his ethics and morality, as Shawn settles into a life of anger and self-destruction. Chris wants nothing more than to
reunite with his beautiful wife, Kenia, who still has concerns about her husband’s state of mind as well as the safety of their six-year-old daughter.

Chris confidently seeks the help of his new therapist, which ultimately turns out to be God manifesting as part of his spiritual sanity.

The Darkness Before Me

Director: Rachael Quinn
Runtime: 15 minutes

What lurks in the darkness – hides plainly in the light.

Tony, a grown man, suffers an inexplicable fear of the dark. Seeking help, he finds himself on the couch of a less than perceptive psychoanalyst. What’s really haunting Tony? Does he know? Can the doctor find it? Will the doctor find it? To understand what takes place when the lights go out, one must pay close attention while they’re still on.


Screening Info

Date: Saturday, October 2, 2021 at 1pm
Venue: The GoggleWorks Boscov Theater
Address: 201 Washington St, Reading
Tickets: $10

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