Over the next 2 weeks we at TakePart will be providing coverage of the 2008 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival. Any post that has the above banner will feature content related to the festival, whose films highlight issues that define us as world and prove how powerful the movies can be.

This year’s fest travels the globe taking us to Laos, the American West, Chile, Russia and many more places deserving of some attention. We visit the likes of writer Ariel Dorfman (pictured to the left), two Shoshone grandmothers and Russian independent journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

One thing that has always been interesting for me is watching the festival develop as digital filmmaking has developed over the years. When dealing with films that have important and unique content, sometimes the craft of documentary becomes less important, but with filmmakers tools have become more affordable and more transportable, sloppy filmmaking is becoming harder to let go.

That being said, there isn’t another festival where I consistently learn more.

Check back for our coverage of HRWFF 08 and takepart to check out the entire line-up!

Lincoln Center is without a doubt my favorite place to watch movies in the city, the Walter Reade Theater is beautiful and they show the best in world cinema. But now I have another reason to love The Film Society of Lincoln Center, their awesome Green Screens program:

The Film Society’s Green Screens program addresses through film the vital environmental concerns of global warming, the safety of our food supply, sustainable living, and more. Each screening includes a discussion and reception with artists and expert commentators, where we invite non-profit organizations and others to provide materials and raise awareness of the many positive actions we can all take.

In addition to this new series, the Film Society screens Environmental Public Service Announcements showcasing climate change, sustainability and other matters concerning the health of our planet and its inhabitants. We are one of the first movie theaters in the country to regularly screen such PSAs and we encourage other theaters to join us. [FilmLinc]

This month they’ll be screening an environmental pic by animator Hayao Miyazaki, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

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May 68 happened 40 years ago…

While we primarily think of France when we think of the time period associated with student protests and a general sense of shaking up old society, events were happening throughout the world. Like the heightened sense of political involvement, cinema was also a source of motivation and inspiration during this time and May 68 was heavily documented by filmmakers everywhere.

GreenCineDaily has a great post up about the different film series that are happening around the world in honor of the 40th anniversary of the events in 1968. Here in New York City:

“New Yorkers can mark the occasion with two rich and wide-ranging programs that aim to capture, on screen, the spirit of that bygone age,” writes AO Scott in the New York Times. “One, at Film Forum (Friday through June 5), is devoted to [Jean-Luc] Godard in the 1960s, when he was at the height of his influence, productivity and creative power. The other, at Lincoln Center (Tuesday through May 14), stretches across geography, time and genre:

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Eat, for This Is My Body, Michelange Quay’s binary heavy film acts more like a poem than a movie. There is no plot to speak of and we instead follow images and sounds that lead us on a journey of post-colonialism of the Haitian variety. The scenes aren’t all disparate though, we see the same characters throughout the piece, and together they help to build a tension that is both erotic and filled with disgust. Those characters include an old woman or matriarch of an old estate (amazingly played by Catherine Samie), a young male servant, a younger woman called Madame and the troop of young black boys she instructs.

The feature film is a first for Quay, who was born in Queens and is a first generation Haitian. The film is filled with a cinematic language that strays from convention and instead offers up it’s own rules of comprehension. The mishmash of images and auditory emphasis on sounds that are wet and bring the focus to the human aspect of things, seem fitting considering how the “story” came to be

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The New Directors/New Films festival starts today! Put on by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MOMA, the festival is:

Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists. New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation as the premiere festival for works that break or re-cast the cinematic mold. Twenty-six features and six shorts, handpicked by curators of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, made the cut this year, as the 37th edition of this non-competitive program spotlights the very best in the current class of new directors, actors, producers, writers, cinematographers, editors and more. We expect many of the filmmakers will be attending the festival to discuss their work first hand. [Filmlinc]

The line-up looks pretty great this year, with many films lining up with Takepart’s motto of media inspiring social action. Below are the films I plan on seeing, and interestingly enough, they all coincide with ideas that encourage folks to examine the world we live and make it better.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Don’t miss these excellent posts on some very engaging and thoughtful topics - from going green at the office to Julian Beever to dystopian film telling us to take action now. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Katoucha’s Body Found: Model Helped African Women Escape Mutiliation

Julian Beever Brings Art to New Orleans Sidewalks

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Nicole:

Heath Ledger Nick Drake Video for “Black Eyed Dog” Hits Web

Top 10 Ways to Go Green in the Office

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Giulia:

Crate & Barrel Goes Green

The Black Comedy Project

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Gina:

Top 10 Dystopian Future Films Telling Us to Take Action Now

Going to “The Edge of Heaven” with Fatih Akin

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Kerry:

Sustainable Songstrees Sue West’s Rural Revival

No Impact Home A Hit At Ecobuild Exhibition

After seeing Lukas Moodysson’s black and white mystery film Container last night as part of Lincoln Center’s Film Comment Selects, I was left in a hypnotic daze contemplating first and foremost consumption here in America. The film is 72 minutes of silent black and white footage, mostly of two characters in various messy grotesque spaces, with a continual narration by Jena Malone. Malone speaks in the first person and talks about a variety of things including celebrity culture, Chernobyl/other disasters, being a woman in a man’s body, a porn star named Savannah, and being pregnant with Jesus. I later learned upon reading, that there are 21 voices or stories that she is telling, all mixed up and all heard over the black and white footage.

While I agree with Moodysson, that this is not a film you can decipher in one viewing, I also think that on the surface (since I’ve only seen it once) he has created one of the most poignant critique’s on the container that is American culture and the consumptive nature of all of us that I’ve seen in some time. The black and white images of excess, garbage, human bodies, and simple discomfort create a visual atmosphere that makes you question all the items in your own various spaces. Malone’s voice is calming and serene, a nice contrast to her words that are disturbing, sad, grotesque, confused and brutally honest.

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Last night I went to the pre-premiere of the Film Comment Selects Series at New York’s Lincoln Center for a screening of George A Romero’s latest venture into zombiedom, Diary of the Dead.

The film focuses on a group of film students who while shooting a film learn that dead people are coming back as zombies and the world is turning into chaos. We follow the group as they try to figure out what’s going on and also as they hurry up and turn the video cameras on to document the experience. As the film progresses it becomes clear that the real villain is not the zombies but is in fact the video camera and people that are determined not to put it down, regardless of the consequences.

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