A Film Festival for Social Change
March 16, 2011
THEY SAY 2011 IS THE YEAR OF THE SEQUEL (for a change), but luckily for filmgoers who want more that a retread there is a new venue for personal expression and a sense of mission.
The first Global Social Change Film Festival & Institute launches this April. The festival promotes social action filmmaking, and chose “Global Women and Film” for its inaugural theme. After its first run this year in Ubud, Bali, the festival moves on to other host cities (like New Orleans in 2012).
The festival will also honor activists and award a main prize to the film that best explores a contemporary social issue.
Watch trailers for the eight nominated films below. More info about GSCFFI.
1. Climate Refugees (Various): How extreme weather events and climate change are causing a global migration of climate refugees:
2. Deep Down (U.S.): Two friends end up on opposites sides of a debate when a proposed mountain-top coal mine comes to their community:
3. Fambul Tok (Sierra Leone): about grassroots reconciliation between the perpetrators and victims of the country’s civil war:
4. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee (U.S./Korea): a Korean adoptee who came to the US in 1966 searches for her real identity:
5. Nothing Rhymes with Ngaparjti (Australia): A Pitjantjatjara actor, Trevor Jamieson, returns to his traditional country to perform a hit theatre show to an all-Indigenous audience for the first time:
6. There Once Was an Island (South Pacific): Three residents of the Polynesian community of Takuu survive a tidal flood, but continuing climate change may force them from their homes:
7. A Village Called Versailles (U.S.): A community in New Orleans East try to rebuild their homes after Hurricane Katrina, but the city instead plans a debris disposal landfill in their community:
8. Dog Sweat (Iran): follows the lives of six young people in Tehran. Watch a clip here.
