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Tales from Planet Earth Film Festival
Date:
November 6-8, 2009
Time:
12:00 PM
Location:
Multiple Locations
Phone:
(608) 265-6712
Email:
mayoung3@wisc.edu
Web Address:
http://www.nelson.wisc.edu/tales/index.html
Contact:
Molly Schwebach
Please see event description for sponsor information.
Cost:
All festival events are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Overview:
Tales From Planet Earth environmental film festival is a three-day celebration of the power of film as a force for environmental and social change. In addition to the more than 35 films screened in three downtown Madison theaters (Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin Union Theater, and Cinemateque), audience members are invited to enjoy distinguished lectures, community activities, public conversations, and Q&A with filmmakers. Join us November 6-8, 2009, on a journey across the globe to explore how stories told through film shape our understanding of nature and inspire action on behalf of environmental justice and the diversity of life. All festival events are free and open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
More information is available on the festival website.
All the films are free and open to the public. No tickets required. We recommend that for the smaller theaters (Play Circle, Cinematheque and MMoCA) people arrive early to secure a seat.
Sleep Dealer (2008)
Alex Rivera (90 min., color, 35mm, US)
Saturday, November 7, 9:00 pm
Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer, a multiple Sundance Award winning science-fiction masterpiece, imagines a future in which all U.S. borders are closed to immigration yet foreign workers continue to perform labor remotely via robotic connections. After Memo Cruz's home is destroyed in an attack, he travels to Tijuana with dreams of working in the high-tech labor factories, even though workers there go until the point of collapse. Along the way, he meets the mysterious Luz who is trying to use him for her own reasons. A mind-blowing, satirical look at modern labor and the uses of people, this film will change how you think about people's relationships to the land and asks you to consider what it is we really are arguing about in our recent debates over U.S. immigration policy. Part of a three film retrospective of Rivera's work, along with The Sixth Section and Papapapá. Filmmaker scheduled to be in attendance.
Visit the film's official website
The Sixth Section (2003)
Alex Rivera (26 min., color, DVD, US)
Saturday, November 7, Noon
Alex Rivera is seeking to challenge and destroy many of the assumptions underlying Americans' debates over immigration. A child of Peruvian and Irish-American parents, Rivera brings his unique perspective to an exploration of immigration and its myriad impacts –documenting the ways in which Americans rely upon immigrant labor and ways in which many of these immigrants, far from being a silent and exploited underclass, are organizing to empower themselves. In The Sixth Section, Rivera highlights the efforts of Grupo Unión, a coalition of Mexican immigrants who work in New York state in order to support their community of Boqueron, Mexico. Their goal - to provide their community with something it needs but would never do for itself: build a baseball stadium! Part of a three film retrospective of Rivera's work, along with Sleep Dealer and Papapapá. Filmmaker scheduled to be in attendance. (Showing with Papapapa)
Visit the film's official website
Losers and Winners (2006)
Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken (96 min., color, DVD, Germany)
Saturday, November 7, 3:45 pm
An official selection of over 30 film festivals and winner of numerous documentary film awards, Losers and Winners faithfully recounts the dismantling of a steel coke plant in the heart of Germany's Ruhr Valley for relocation to China. The simultaneous slowdown of European industry and explosion of the Chinese economic behemoth has transformed landscapes of labor around the globe and, in this case, led to the transplanting of what was once the world's most sophisticated coke plant after only eight years of operation at its original site in Germany. In the race to relocate the plant quickly, the new owners bring hundreds of Chinese workers to Germany, creating a clash of cultures as each country's workers view the demolition of a manufactured landscape with opposing feelings of optimism, despair, alienation and understanding. (Showing with Solitary Life of Cranes)
Visit the film's official website
The Story of Stuff (2007)
Louis Fox and Annie Leonard (21 min., color, DVD, US)
Sunday, November 8, 1:30 pm
In 2007, activist Annie Leonard got to wondering: with almost half a trillion dollars in sales occurring every Christmas holiday season in the U.S., what happens to all that stuff? The Story of Stuff is her fast-paced, animated answer - distilling the life cycle of products down in ways that are compelling and comprehensible. In the process she raises a series of questions - who is buying these things? Who is trying to get us to buy them? And who is really incurring the costs of extraction, production, transportation, and disposal of all this STUFF? (The film will be shown as part of a panel of filmmakers discussing the potential and the challenges of trying to turn complicated scientific and ecological principles into compelling animation.)
Visit the film's official website
A Drop of Life (2007)
Shalini Kantayya (17 min., color, BetaSP, US)
Sunday, November 8, 4:45 pm
Set in the near future, A Drop of Life is the story of two women –a teacher in a rural Indian village and an African American corporate executive, whose lives intersect as they both confront a lack of access to clean drinking water. Mirabai, the teacher, notices that since a privatized well has come to her village the number of children getting sick has dramatically increased. Nia, the executive, wants nothing more than to prove to her investors that this pilot project is profitable and safe. Ultimately, each woman will have to make the choices that serve her best - their own lives may depend on it. This science fiction film raises global questions about the impact of water privatization. A winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Rain Bird Intelligent Use of Water film competition, director Shalini Kantayya has used A Drop of Life as a teaching and advocacy tool worldwide to promote water conservation. (Showing with Restoring the Mauri of Lake Omapere)
Visit the film's official website
The Hunger Season (2008)
Beadie Finzi (60 min., color, DV, UK and US)
Sunday, November 8, 1:00 pm
When watching news about famines and starving people in foreign countries, we often feel removed from the problem, even as we express pity and regret. Beadie Finzi's The Hunger Season shatters our illusions of distance, however, revealing the complex interconnections between global economic systems, the hunger for new biofuel sources of energy, global climate change, political unrest, and resulting devastation of drought and famine for millions of people around the world. Tracing the journey of food aid from the fields of Wisconsin farmers to USAID and finally to Swaziland, where Justice, a village leader, struggles to feed his neighbors, Finzi brings home our role in hunger crises and also our ability to help avert such problems. A moving experience, The Hunger Season had its sneak peek world premiere at a Tales from Planet Earth event in October 2008 and is back for the 2009 festival by popular demand.
Visit the film's official website
Sun Come Up (2010)
Jennifer Redfearn (~15 min., color, DV, US)
Sunday, November 8, 5:30 pm
This is one of a series of clips from works-in-progress that Tales from Planet Earth will screen as a group along with a panel discussing the alarming phenomenon of climate change refugees. Sun Come Up is the story of the Carteret Islanders, a people living on a remote archipelago 50 miles from Papua New Guinea. Due to human-induced global climate change, the sea levels are rising - threatening the islanders' fresh water supply, eroding their shorelines, and subjecting them to ever more unpredictable storms. Unwilling to stand by passively while these mounting troubles threaten her people's way of life, Ursula Rakova searches for new land for her people to move to on nearby Bougainville Island, which has troubles of its own in the wake of a recent civil war. Disturbing in its implications, yet inspiring in its portrait of people's resilience, Sun Come Up promotes a much-needed discourse about how we as a planet will respond to a growing crisis of our own making. Filmmakers scheduled to be in attendance. (Showing with In the Footsteps of Elephants)
Visit the film's official website
Yes Men Fix the World (2009)
Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno, and Kurt Engfehr (90 min., color, Digibeta, US)
Sunday, November 8, 7:30 pm
Following up on their smash success from 2003, The Yes Men, professional rabble-rousers Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno are back in a sequel, Yes Men Fix the World. The mission of The Yes Men is to produce razor-edged satire that exposes corporate hypocrisy and the institutions of power around the globe that lock us into unsustainable lifestyles without our knowledge or consent. In their first film, the target was the World Trade Organization. This time around, they are taking on a variety of corporate targets - Dow Chemical Company and its refusal to acknowledge responsibility in the Bhopal disaster, Exxon-Mobil, contractors cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina, and more. Come see the only film at our festival that opens with a rousing water ballet and that managed to knock $2 billion off the stock value of a single corporation! A selection of the 2009 Sundance, Berlin, and Hot Docs Film Festivals and winner of the Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival!
Visit the film's official website
Sponsors:
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