Reel Justice Movie Night Schedule:
All movies at 6pm unless otherwise noted
Bring your own chair and snack--movies are free
November 21 Which Way Home
Nominated for a 2010 Academy Award, Which Way Home, through its shocking depictions of neglected immigrant children struggling to sneak into America by train, manages to charm viewers into concern for its audacious young stars. Director Rebecca Cammisa's choice to focus almost exclusively on interviews with the train-hopping children, who range in age from roughly 8 to 18, makes this documentary infinitely more touching and effective. One gets a more well-rounded impression of the socioeconomic problem here; for every feeling of liberation the children experience, there are dangers lurking around the corner, several of which come to fruition during the filming period covered. For example, Kevin, a 14-year-old Honduran boy, and his pal, Yurico, a.k.a. "The Dog," a 17-year-old from Chiapas, occupy the bulk of the film footage, as the two boys and their cohorts ride "The Beast" through various territories. But as they skirt some sketchy situations, they can't help but tell stories of less lucky children who die on the trains en route to the United States. Additionally, tracing the aftereffects of their journey offers a less than ideal outcome for both boys. Many of the children in Which Way Home, like José from El Salvador, have experienced abandonment by their parents, who left in search of income and provided little in the way of role models. A few key scenes, like that filmed in the Guatemalan Consul where national officials interview boys before deporting them back to their home countries, and the scene showing Grupos Beta, a grassroots group that travels by van alongside the trains to provide free supplies and medical care to these children, are inspiring. Still, one comes to realize that the problem is overwhelming, as viewers gain access to the filthy flophouses, like House of Migrants, that are packed wall to wall with minors running away from home to find work. However, Cammisa captures a certain hobo humor here, which permeates the film's sad subject matter, as the boys tell jokes, lounge around with each other in the most brotherly ways, and care for each other in the absence of their parents. While Which Way Home chronicles a problem that demands attention, it does so in a touching manner, leaving its star characters' dignities intact as they confess their motivations, namely devout family loyalty.
January 16 Bought & Sold: An Investigative Documentary About the International Trade in Women Based on a two-year undercover investigation, Bought & Sold documents the illegal trafficking in women for forced prostitution out of Russia and the Former Soviet Union, and into Europe, Asia and the United States.
February 20 Mardi Gras: Made in China
This is a wry, eye-opening documentary about the Chinese sweatshops that manufacture the strings of beads tossed out as prizes for flashing one's flesh during Mardi Gras in New Orleans. Everyone's familiar with the tradition (which the film says began in 1978, by the way); but where do those beads come from? Have you ever thought about that?
David Redmon has. A writer who has never made a film until now, he followed the beads' genealogy back to the industrial town of Fuzhou, China, where there is a factory that is the world's largest producer of beads and other Mardi Gras-related trinkets. Some 500 employees live on the premises and make beads for at least 14, and as many as 20, hours a day. For this they are paid approximately $1.20 a day -- low even by the standards of sweatshop-dense Fuzhou
Last Train Home tracks the Zhang family, opening with scenes in a clothing warehouse where married couple Changhua Zhang and Chen Sugin work assiduously to support, one discovers through interview footage, their two children living over 1,000 kilometers away. Cut to a rural village, where Zhang's two kids, teenage girl Qin Zhang and her younger brother Yang, pine for the city while their elderly grandmother cares for them. This story of parents arguably forced to leave behind their two infant children serves as a microcosmic example of what is happening to 130 million migrant workers throughout China, and the film chronicles familial efforts to acquire train tickets out of the cities to celebrate the Chinese New Year rurally with relatives. Between takes filming various Zhang family members, shots of the insanely overcrowded Guangzhou train station make the documentary more politically tense, as massive crowds explode with rage and exhaustion trying to fight for tickets then board packed trains for sweaty rides home. As much as Last Train Home chronicles the Zhang parents toiling behind sewing machines or washing their feet in the cubby they call living quarters, while their kids back home pick corn and otherwise work a small garden, the film is obviously about the larger issue surrounding split families and lack of income among China's rural working poor. The film is beautifully shot, maintaining its respect and sensitivity towards its subjects throughout, though it's careful not to glamorize with slick scenic footage what is far from a glamorous cultural problem. Heated familial arguments break out, as Qin decides against her parents' will to forge ahead with an urban warehouse career of her own, and one may come away with a sense of despondence for the overwhelming amount of difficulty the documentary's subjects experience daily. But like any of the finest sociopolitical films, Last Train Home presents a gray scale between the black and white of its topical coverage, with several charming and funny moments, proving that the resiliency of the Zhang family can, too, act as stand-in for how millions of others undoubtedly roll with the punches
April 16th Sour Milk & Honey
Sour Milk and Honey is a videojournal-style independent documentary that explores the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the eyes of an outsider of both Jewish and Muslim decent. It has been featured at the Montreal World Film Festival, Non-Violence International Film Festival, Harlem International Film Festival, and World Peace Film and Music Festival, amongst others. The film has been used as an instructional tool and a platform for discussion by university instructors and community groups engaged with the subject.
Synopsis: Despite its prominence in news reports and cafe conversations, most of us are strangers to the reality of the Middle East crisis that has plagued the Holy Land for over half a century and often served as a flashpoint for regional and global instability. Sour Milk and Honey follows a traveler on a quest to find out what lays behind the headlines and buzzwords. As he wanders through Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank, we see the lives and hear the stories of men, women, students, settlers, activists, soldiers, Hamas, and political leaders. From the scene of a suicide bus bombing and a protest that sparks a conflagration with the Israeli army, to a visit with the parents of Rachel Corrie, the film portrays a reality that is at times shocking, tragic, complex, and inspirational. While peace has become an uncertain word, we meet those who are willing to listen, learn, share, and change.
International Street Fair May 12, 2012