CAMDEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES FULL SCHEDULE

46 films from over 300 submissions showcase best of US and international filmmaking.


Camden, Maine – The Camden International Film Festival has announced its full slate of films for the 2010 program, presenting 46 films representing the highest standards in documentary filmmaking from around the world.  The festival, now in its sixth year, takes place September 30 – October 3 in locations throughout Camden, Rockport, and Rockland, Maine. 

The 2010 Camden International Film Festival, named one of the top 25 international film festivals for documentaries, will present features and short films from all across the globe.  This year, 46 films were selected from over 300 submissions and this year’s festival proudly hosts a number of US and regional premieres.  The Camden International Film Festival presents a snapshot of the cultural landscape through the year’s best non-fiction storytelling, connecting filmmakers and industry representatives with audiences to discuss documentary film as an art form, a catalyst for change and as an outlet for the independent voice.

“This year’s Camden International Film Festival is our most ambitious program to date,” says Benjamin Fowlie, founder and director of the Camden IFF. “We’ve got a number of international films making their first appearance in the US along with several of this year’s most award winning films from the festival circuit.  The craft and quality of these stories are remarkable and I’m extremely excited to share these incredible films with our audiences.”

Carrying on the tradition of discussion that characterizes the Camden IFF, nearly every film will be accompanied by a post-screening Q&A with directors or producers. The festival will also expand upon its POINTS NORTH Forum. POINTS NORTH, founded in 2009, has grown this year to two full days and provides the New England filmmaking community an unparalleled opportunity to connect with industry leaders from ITVS, PBS, The Sundance Channel, ZDF-ARTE and a number of other funders, broadcasters and independent executive producers.  In total, nearly fifty industry representatives and filmmakers will be in attendance over the course of the four-day festival.

Passes Available Online
Tickets to the 2010 Camden International Film Festival are available online at www.camdenfilmfest.org.  Pass options include: the VIP Pass for admittance to all screenings, panels, special events and parties throughout the weekend; and the Festival Pass for admittance to all screenings and panels. Full passes to the two-day Points North Forum (October 1 and October 2) also are available online. Day passes to the Points North Forum and individual tickets can be purchased at the appropriate venues on the day of show.  Venues include the Strand Theater, the Camden Opera House, the Bayview Street Cinema, the Rockport Opera House, and the Farnsworth Art Museum.

2010 FEATURES
Additional information about each film, including stills and video clips, is available at www.camdenfilmfest.org

A ROAD NOT TAKEN
Directors Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller | USA | 2010
The story of the solar panels that former US President Jimmy Carter had installed on the roof of the White House. His successor, Ronald Reagan, had the panels removed – accompanied by a radical alienation from Carter’s energy program. Thirty years later two filmmakers tracked down the panels and traced the story of their journey back from Maine to Washington D.C.

BUDRUS
Julia Bacha | Occupied Palestinian Territorries, Israel, USA | 2009 | 82 min
A Palestinian leader unites Fatah, Hamas and Israelis in an unarmed movement to save his village from destruction. Success eludes them until his 15-year-old daughter jumps into the fray.

CAPE WIND (Work in Progress)
Directors Robbie Gemmel and Daniel Coffin | USA | 2010 | 90 min
The film translates the furor which exploded on Cape Cod into a definitive battle which will be replicated hundreds of times over as industrial-scale renewable energy projects are proposed for America’s deserts, ridgelines and waterways.

CIRCO
Director Aaron Schock | USA | 2010 | 75 min
New England Premiere
Set within a century-old circus, CIRCO is an intimate portrait of a Mexican family struggling to stay together despite mounting debt, dwindling audiences, and a simmering family conflict that threatens this once-vibrant family tradition.

DAVID WANTS TO FLY
Director David Sieveking | Germany | 2010 | 97 min
US Premiere
In search of enlightenment, young filmmaker David Sieveking follows his idol David Lynch and uncovers the billion-dollar industry behind Transcendental Meditation.

DO IT AGAIN
Directors Geoff Edgers and Robert Patton-Spruill | USA | 2010 | 85 min
Geoff Edgers, a newspaper reporter dreading the approach of his 40th birthday, sets out to find the still-surviving members of the long dormant British rock band, the Kinks (“You Really Got Me,” “Lola” and “Come Dancing”), to convince them to reunite.

DREAMLAND
Director Andri Snær Magnason | Iceland | 2009 | 89 min
US Premiere
Leading up to the Iceland’s greatest economic crisis, the government started the largest project in the country’s history: to build the biggest dam in Europe to provide the Alcoa company cheap electricity for an aluminum smelter in the rugged east fjords. Today Iceland is left holding a huge debt and an uncertain future.

THE DISAPPERANCE OF MCKINLEY NOLAN
Director Henry Corra | USA | 2010 | 77 min
New England Premiere
Private McKinley Nolan vanished forty years ago in Vietnam on the Cambodian frontier. Some say he was captured, some say he was a traitor, some even say he was an American operative. The film follows the Nolan family from the cotton belt of Texas, to the battlegrounds of Vietnam, to the killing fields of Cambodia and unfolds as a mysterious fever dream filled with doubt, longing and the will to believe.

FAMILY AFFAIR
Director Chico Colvard | USA | 2010 | 80 min
At 10 years old, Chico Colvard accidentally shot his older sister in the leg. This seemingly random act detonated a chain reaction that exposed unspeakable realities and shattered his family. Thirty years later, Colvard ruptures veils of secrecy and silence again as he bravely visits his relatives.

GENERAL ORDERS No. 9
Director Robert Persons | USA | 2009 | 72 min
Northeast Premiere
One last trip down the rabbit hole before it’s paved over.  An experimental documentary that contemplates the signs of loss and change in the American South as potent metaphors of personal and collective destiny.

GOODNIGHT NOBODY
Director Jacqueline Zünd | Switzerland/Germany | 2010 | 77 min
US Premiere
Four protagonists from four different continents share the same affliction: they can’t sleep. With varying tactics, they resign themselves to the fact that they must live around the clock without interruption. A hypnotic journey through the most beautiful of all film settings: the night.

GREETINGS FROM THE WOODS
Director Mikel Cee Karlsson | Sweden | 2009 | 75 min
New England Premiere
Life follows its peaceful course in a remote little town in the Swedish forest.  The unforgettable characters introduced enliven the sometimes absurd little scenes in this immersive exploration of everyday life in a particular place in Sweden.

HEAVEN AND EARTH AND JOE DAVIS (Work In Progress)
Director Peter Sasowski | USA | 2010
Thirty years ago, a peg-legged motorcycle mechanic named Joe Davis walked into the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. They had not returned his calls. The police were summoned. Forty-five minutes later he walked out with an academic appointment.

LA BELLE VISITE (JOURNEY’S END)
Director Jean-Francois Caissy | Canada | 2010 | 80 min
New England Premiere
In the far reaches of the Quebec countryside, between a road and a headland that plunges into the sea, an abandoned motel has been converted into a retirement home. In this former travelers’ retreat, time seems to have ground to a halt. This film is an elegiac exploration of old age, set in a place at once physical and allegorical.

MARWENCOL
Director Jeff Malmberg | USA | 2010 | 82 min
After a vicious attack leaves him brain damaged and broke, Mark Hogancamp seeks recovery in Marwencol, a 1/6th –scale World War II-era town he creates in his backyard.

MY PERESTROIKA
Director Robin Hessman | USA | 2010 | 88 min
This film follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times — from their sheltered childhoods, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia.

ON COAL RIVER
Directors Francine Cavanaugh and Adams Wood | USA | 2010 | 81 min
New England Premiere
Coal River Valley, West Virginia is a community surrounded by lush mountains and a looming toxic threat. The film follows four longtime residents as they confront a notorious coal company, their local school board, and state government to protect their families and community from the effects of an increasingly mechanized and destructive coal industry.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF LIFE
Director Stefanie Brockhaus and Andy Wolff | Germany | 2009 | 88 min
To survive in a Cape Town township, brothers Lucky and Bongani learned their lessons early. They move through ever-shifting worlds, cultures, and traditions in a film that transcends a social environment study to become a far-ranging essay about the future of an Africa ground to pieces between tradition and modernity.

PRODIGAL SONS
Kimberly Reed | USA | 2008 | 86 min
Returning home to a small town in Montana for her high school reunion, filmmaker Kimberly Reed hopes for reconciliation with her long estranged adopted brother, Marc. But along the way she uncovers stunning revelations, including his blood relationship with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, intense sibling rivalries, and unforeseeable twists of plot and gender that force them both to face challenges no one could imagine.


Special Work-in-Progress Screening: untitled film about light pollution and the disappearing dark
USA | 2010
When a filmmaker and amateur astronomer moves into his apartment in New York, he climbs atop his Brooklyn rooftop to survey the night sky. But bathed in its glow of orange streetlights, the City that Never Sleeps only has a dozen stars to see. One disappointing autumn evening becomes a journey to answer a simple question: do we need the dark?

SUMMER PASTURES
Director Lynn True and Nelson Walker | USA | 2010 | 85 min
A film about a young couple living with their infant daughter in the nomadic pastures of eastern Tibet. With rare access to an area seldom visited by outsiders, the film opens a unique window into a highly insular community and offers a sensitive portrait of a family at a time of great transition.

SUN COME UP
Director Jennifer Redfearn | USA | 2010
New England Premiere
This film follows the relocation of some of the world’s first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders – a community living on a remote island chain in the South Pacific Ocean. When rising seas threaten their survival, the islanders face a painful decision: they must leave their beloved land in search of a new place to call home.

TANKOGRAD
Director Boris B. Bertram | Denmark | 2010 | 58 min
US Premiere
Chelyabinsk, in Western Siberia, is infamous for its extreme pollution and its vibrant dance community. This film is a lyrical documentary about a world-class modern dance company that examines the hopes and struggles of a group of young Russians trying to find meaning and expression in the dreary and frightening reality of New Russia through the art of dance.

WAR DON DON
Director Rebecca Richman Cohen | USA | 2010 | 83 min
In Krio, war don don means “the war is over,” and although today Sierra Leone is at peace, the specter of war remains ever-present. Can the trial of one man uncover the truth of a traumatic past?  With unprecedented access to prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims, and – from behind bars – the accused himself, War Don Don puts international justice on trial for the world to see.

WASTELAND
Director Lucy Walker | Brazil | 2010 | 89 min
We follow renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world’s largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Muniz’s collaboration with the “catadores” to recreate photographic images of themselves out of garbage reveals both dignity and despair.



About the Camden International Film Festival
The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) is dedicated to presenting a snapshot of the cultural landscape through the year’s best non-fiction storytelling and connecting audiences with the industry’s emerging talent to discuss documentary film as an art form, a catalyst for change and as an outlet for the independent voice.
Taking place from September 30th – October 3rd, 2010, the Camden International Film Festival will hold screenings, discussions, forums and special events at several locations around Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. CIFF ‘10 is made possible in part through the generous support of the Quimby Family Foundation, the University of Maine, Maine Magazine and Cellardoor Winery. Please visit www.camdenfilmfest.org for more information.