53 minutes, 2002 By Travis Wilkerson 2004 Big Sky Award

AN INJURY TO ONE provides a corrective - and absolutely compelling - glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana. Specifically, it chronicles the mysterious death of Wobbly organizer Frank Little, a story whose grisly details have taken on a legendary status in the state. Much of the extant evidence is inscribed upon the landscape of Butte and its surroundings. Thus, a connection is drawn between the unsolved murder of Little, and the attempted murder of the town itself.

Travis Wilkerson
First Run Icarus Films
32 Court St. 21st Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
(718)488-8900
mailroom@frif.com
www.frif.com

A Revolving Door
40 minutes, 2007 DVCAM, USA By Marilyn Braverman and Chuck Braverman 2007 Best Documentary Short World Premiere Documentary Short Competition

A Revolving Door is the story of 33 year old Tommy Lennon. Struggling to deal with the dual diagnosis of mental illness and drug addiction, the film focuses not only on Tommy's life but also on his family's frustration, helplessness, courage and resilience. Was it a surfing-related head injury that turned Tommy's life upside down? For 20 years, Tommy has been stuck in a revolving door of homelessness, drug abuse, mental institutions and jails. Will Tommy and his loving family learn to deal with this constantly shifting reality?

www.arevolvingdoor.com

Citizen King
110 minutes, 2004 DVCAM, USA By Orlando Bagwell & W. Noland Walker 2005 Best Documentary Feature

Citizen King is a dramatic and intimate look at the last five years of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life from the March on Washington to his assassination in 1968.

"The most intimate portrait of King ever." - The Wall Street Journal

Susie Lee
ROJA Productions
561 Hudson Street, #17
New York, NY 10014
susie@rojaproductions.com
www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/mlk

The Color of Olives
97 minutes, 2006 miniDV, Palestine/Mexico By Carolina Rivas 2007 Artistic Vision Award Montana Premiere Documentary Feature Competition Asia Docs Series

The Amer family lives by the infamous West Bank Wall where their daily lives are dominated by electrified fences, locked gates and a constant swarm of armed soldiers. This intimate documentary shares their private world, allowing a glimpse of the constant struggles and the small, endearing details that sustain them. The Color of Olives is an artistic and beautifully affecting reflection on the effects of racial segregation, the meaning of borders and the absurdity of war.

From the Big Sky Jury: "This film transports us into a time and place through its artistic vision. It allows the viewer to observe from the vantage point of those living in the midst of a difficult conflict - a Palestinian family imprisoned in their own home. The film artfully conveys the truth and poignancy of this situation without the limits of more conventional filmmaking techniques."

www.thecolourofolives.com

80 minutes, 2005 DV/16mm, Brazil By Jeff Zimbalist 2006 Best Documentary Feature

Favela Rising documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Anderson Sa is a former drug-trafficker who, haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, turns revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro's most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to war against the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police.   At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson's grassroots AfroReggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever.

Best Feature 2005 - International Documentary Association's Outstanding Documentary Achievement Award

Favela Rising LLC
115 W. 29th St. 10th Fl
New York, NY 10001
www.favelarising.com
favela.rising@gmail.com

Ha Ha Ha America
17 minutes, 2006 miniDV, China By JD Ligon 2007 Best MiniDoc Northwest Premiere MiniDocs Competition Asia Docs Series

Ha Ha Ha America is a quirky, humorous examination of economic relations between the United States and China. In the filmmaker's words, it is "a love letter from China to America thanking us, and the current administration, for all the business."

www.hahahaamerica.com

Hardwood
29 minutes, 2004 DVCAM, Canada By Hubert Davis 2005 Best Documentary Short

Hardwood is a personal journey by director Hubert Davis, the son of former Harlem Globetrotter Mel Davis, who explores how his father’s decisions affected his life. Now a coach for young basketball players in Vancouver, Mel recalls falling in love at first sight with Hubert's mother, a white woman, at a time when racism made their union impossible, and then his subsequent marriage to a black woman and the birth of their son. Both women in Mel's life, the mothers of his two sons, speak movingly about love and betrayal, and both sons speak of the pain of their absent father and its effect on their mothers. Elegantly structured, Davis uses personal interviews, archival footage and home movies to delve into his father’s past in the hope of finding a new direction for his own.

National Film Board of Canada
1123 Broadway, Suite 307
New York, NY 10010
212-629-8890
j.sirabella@nfb.ca
www.nfb.ca/hardwood/

Horns and Halos
79 minutes, 2002 DVCAM, USA By Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky 2004 Best Documentary Feature

HORNS AND HALOS captures the unlikely connection of three men - an ex-con turned celebrity biographer, a janitor come underground publisher, and U.S. President George W. Bush - whose paths to power and popularity become tangled in a controversial book.

Rumur Releasing
164 Hall Street
Brooklyn, NY 11205
(718)636-0949
www.hornsandhalos.com

89 minutes, 2004 DVCAM, Bulgaria/USA By Konstantin Bojanov 2005 Artistic Vision Award

After the crumbling of the Soviet empire heroin flooded the streets of many cities behind the former Iron Curtain. It offered an alternative lifestyle largely unknown until then. In the late 1990s heroin addiction in Eastern Europe had reached epidemic proportions. Invisible takes place in Sofia, Bulgaria and follows a group of six young people on a three year journey through the highs and lows, dreams and tribulations of life with heroin addiction. The story bypasses the social problems and dynamics associated with addiction and focuses on the existential views of the participants. It is a platform for the ideas and notions of the world which surrounds them. The participants represent a group of “social outcasts” who remain largely invisible in society.

Konstantin Bojanov Projects
37 Greenpoint Ave., Suite 24
Brooklyn, NY 11222
(718) 389 2528 Work
(646) 349 9345 Cell
kbprojects@aol.com

Last Thoughts
72 minutes, 2005 Super 16mm, USA By Kevin Henry 2006 Big Sky Award

In 1926, a sixteen-year-old boy hopped his first train from Oklahoma to California, beginning a ten-year odyssey marked by life-changing experiences. He kept his stories from those Depression years to himself until the eve of his death, when he made a tape recording for posterity. Seventy-five years after that first train ride, his grandson would set out with that tape and a 16mm camera, looking for echoes of those experiences in the modern landscape. Last Thoughts is an impressionistic tour of the American West, past and present, guided by the voice of a dying hobo.

Kevin Henry
PO Box 1199
Carmel, CA 93921
www.last-thoughts.com
k@severian.com

Nome Road System
26 minutes, 2004 Super 16mm, Germany By Rainer Komers 2005 Artistic Vision Award

Nome Road System is a purely observational film shot entirely in Nome County, Alaska. The no-dialogue film stars gold-diggers, dog-sledders, hunters, and wildlife of the arctic tundra. The film is a beautiful composition of images and sounds without narration, interviews, dialogue or text.

“With Nome Road System Rainer Komers observes the life of the North in the arctic tundra, the daily tasks and little pleasures of the people when they harness the dogs to their sleighs. We feel the filmmakers sympathy and curious view and each take of the film shows his confidence in the expressive power of the image which today is lost in so many films.”
  - Rudolf Worschech, Epd-film

Golden German Short Film Prize 2004

Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen
Grillostr. 34
D-46045 Oberhausen
Germany
49-208-825 26 52
info@kurzfimtage.de
www.kurzfilmtage.de

58 minutes, 2004 miniDV, USA By Greg Snider & Dawn Smallman 2005 Big Sky Award

Through eighty years of riding, ranching and writing, Ridin’ & Rhymin’ profiles the courageous life and living legacy of renowned cowgirl poet Georgie Sicking. Whether she’s on horseback, driving hundreds of cattle through a mountain range or onstage, reciting to hundreds of fans, this documentary captures her remarkable history and the reach of her fame. Returning to the places that shaped her poetry, Georgie rides the vast western range. But when a flash flood destroys her house, she is forced home, to once again rebuild her life. When she receives news of the death of her youngest son, Georgie's strength and insight turns hardship into verse. Georgie’s words preserve western heritage and capture her life as top hand, rancher, farmer, roper, barrel racer, wife, mother, honored writer and storyteller. Ridin’ & Rhymin’ catches an intimate view of this spirited icon who has blazed her own trail.

Far Away Films
(503) 295-6832
velvethammer00@hotmail.com
www.farawayfilm.com

15 minutes, 2007 16mm, USA By Travis Peterson 2007 Big Sky Award World Premiere Big Sky Award Competition

In 1984 Leonard Knight stopped off at the side of the road in Slab City, California. Twenty five years later, he has built a mountain to God in the middle of the desert on land owned by no one. "I'm touchy about not mouthing off too much about God's love and all that, but I want the mountain to prove that I love him." People now come from all over to see the mountain, bringing paint and donations. At 74, Leonard lives on the mountain without running water or electricity. He works everyday.

travisjpeterson@gmail.com

10 minutes, 1990 16mm, USA By John Starr & Roger Teich 2005 Artistic Vision Award

While the city sleeps, hardcore adrenaline junkies are at play in the "vertical playground" of downtown Los Angeles. They call themselves "BASE jumpers." Theirs is the riskiest of all sports: parachuting from fixed objects such as skyscrapers. Stealing Altitude explores the dreams and adventures of one BASE jumper.

"A stylish and unsettling documentary ... achieves a grainy, black & white visual poetry." - Los Angeles Times

Roger Teich
rteich@juno.com
www.stealingaltitude.com

The Cats of Mirikitani
74 minutes, 2006 DV, USA By Linda Hattendorf 2007 Best Documentary Feature Montana Premiere Documentary Feature Competition Asia Docs Series

"Make art not war" is Jimmy Mirikitani's motto. This 80 year old Japanese American artist was born in California and grew up in Hiroshima, but by 2001 he is living on the streets of New York City, angrily drawing pictures of WWII internment camps and atomic bombs. When a filmmaker stops to ask about his art, a friendship begins that will change both their lives after 9/11. An intimate exploration of the lingering trauma of war and discrimination -- and the healing power of art.

www.thecatsofmirikitani.com

19 minutes, 2005 DVCAM, United Kingdom By Eva Weber 2006 Best Documentary Short

You used to have to make an effort to overhear other people's conversations, now you have to make an effort not to. The Intimacy of Strangers is a story of life, love, loss and hope - entirely constructed out of real, overheard cell phone conversations of random strangers. Exploring the conflict between the private and public, between being intimate yet distant, the film weaves these seemingly random exchanges into a modern-day love story that is both absurd and tender.

Hemant Sharda
National Film and Televison School
Beaconsfield Studios
Station Road
Beaconsfield
Bucks HP9 1LG
+44 (0) 1494 731 452
festivals@nftsfilm-tv.ac.uk

The Invisible Hand
12 minutes, 2003 video, USA By Lori Hiris 2004 Best Documentary Short

The Invisible Hand is a hand-drawn history of corporate corruption from Enron, to Halliburton to Marthagate. Hiris uses her stunning craft to reveal new connections between some of the worlds’ most powerful conglomerations. A dazzling confluence of stop-motion chalk illustrations, combines with an intricate score and the result is a beautiful, powerful and total take down of today's corporate thieves.

Two Museums
53 minutes, 2005 Super 16mm, Canada By Lea Nakonechny 2006 Artistic Vision Award

Two Museums is a cinematic exploration of memory and place set in the starkly beautiful landscape of the Canadian prairies. First-time filmmaker Lea Nakonechny follows two characters-one at the beginning of life's journey and one at the end-to portray the cyclical beauty of farm life. Two Museums weaves the lives of these people into a universal experience that speaks to the nature of identity in the face of change.