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The 2015 NEW HAVEN DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ITS JUNE LINEUP. MORE THAN TWO-‐DOZEN FILMS BY AREA FILMMAKERS. NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT, May 27, 2015: NHdocs: The New Haven
Documentary Film Festival is pleased to announce its schedule of documentaries
for the June 5-7 weekend. Screenings will take place at Yale’s Whitney
Humanities Center Auditorium, 53 Wall Street and, on Saturday afternoon, at the
New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street. Admission to all events is Free!
The festival will profile feature-length works Friday, Saturday and Sunday
evenings—all of which have played or will soon play at prominent international
film festivals. The festival kicks off on Friday night with first-look screenings of
two documentaries. The first, Rebecca Wexler’s We Break Things, investigates
the hackers who build and break technology to defend civil liberties worldwide.
Wexler, who’s worked with veteran filmmakers Helen Whitney and Alex Gibney
among others, grew up in Hamden and has just finished her second year as a
student at Yale Law School. This is her first feature. The second documentary
Richard Wormser’s American Reds: What Must We Dream of? tells the story of
the Communist Party USA from its heyday during the Great Depression to its
virtual destruction during the Cold War. It was funded by the National Endowment
for the Humanities and features interviews with Yale professors Glenda Gilmore
and Beverly Gage. Wormser, a veteran filmmaker known for such work as the
PBS series The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2002) relocated to New Haven from
New York City in the 2000s and has been teaching at University of New Haven.
Saturday evening features two Rock Docs: Scott Crawford’s Salad Days:
A Decade of Punk in Washington, D.C. (2015), which premiered at DOC NYC,
and Brendan Toller’s Danny Says (2015), which premiered at the SXSW Film
Festival in March. Danny Says is a portrait of Danny Fields who played a pivotal
role in late 20th Century music culture. He was closely linked to the Doors, Lou
Reed, the Ramones and Judy Collins among others. Toller, a New Haven
resident, worked closely with the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at
Yale, which has Danny Fields’ archive. Timothy Young, Curator of Modern
Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke, will moderate the post-screening
discussion. The Saturday showings will be immediately followed by a Danny
Says after party at Café Nine, 250 State Street.
The festival will conclude with a Sunday evening screening of Gorman
Bechard’s A Dog Named Gucci, which had its world premiere at the Big Sky
Documentary Film Festival (where NHdocs was conceived in 2014 by a group of
New Haven-based filmmakers). A Dog Named Gucci is the story of a puppy set
on fire and the brave man who came to his rescue. Together they forged a bond
of lasting devotion as they worked to change the non-existent animal cruelty laws
in their home state. Audience members are asked to bring a donation of pet food
or a pet toy to benefit the Friends of New Haven Animal Shelter.
Saturday and Sunday Afternoon Screenings
The festival will also screen an array of shorts and short features by
prominent local filmmakers. Michael Morand, president of the Board of Directors
of the New Haven Free Library, will host and moderate the Saturday afternoon
screenings at the New Haven Free Public Library. Documentaries in Film Block
#1 will look at the challenges and vitality of old age. Boston-raised Masha
Shpolberg, currently a Yale Ph.D. student, asks Parisian Noel Chatelin to reflect
on his life and loves in A Few More Mistakes: Noel at 90. In Tiny Miracles,
Greenwich filmmaker Audrey Appleby, a music and dance specialist, works with
a woman struggling with Alzheimer who begins to reclaim lost pleasures of living.
In Stamper’s Life, veteran New Haven-based cinematographer Sarah Hajtol
makes her directorial debut with a portrait of Allen Stamper who finds his passion
for painting late in life. These precede Kum-Kum Bhavnani’s feature Lutah: A
Passion for Architecture reclaims the history of an independent woman and
successful but forgotten architect Lutah Maria Riggs, who worked early in the 20th
century.
Later on Saturday afternoon, Film Block #2 features three films on the
arts and one on the war in Afghanistan. Michael J. Finnegan, who studied
filmmaking and journalism at Southern Connecticut College, offers a compelling
portrait of poet Michael Lexton Hawkins, who battled and overcame drug
addiction in To Touch a Nerve. Yale lecturer Josh Glick and Patrick Reagan look
at Coney Island banner painter Marie Roberts in This Side of Dreamland, made
in conjunction with Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art exhibition A
Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008 (closing May 31st).
In A Co-joining of Ancient Song, veteran filmmaker Gretchen Berland and
ethnomusicologist and jazz musician Willie Ruff, two Yale professors, look at a
rapidly eroding form of congregational singing from Scotland that became a part
of African American, Native American and European American religious song
traditions. The block ends with Aeromedical by Tim Malloy and Rebecca Abbott,
who both work and teach at Quinnipiac University. Their documentary looks at
the doctors, nurses and war-torn solders who fly out of Afghanistan in airborn
hospitals where the battle to save lives continues.
On Sunday afternoon, Film Block #3 features three documentaries on
New Haven. New Haven Green: Hearts of a City, directed by local filmmaker
Karyl Evans and narrated by Paul Giamatti, explores the rich history of the New
Haven Green. Here: One Small Blue State’s Struggle with Immigration is Jamie
Almodovar’s documentary debut: it looks at several Connecticut cities’ responses
to the influx of documented and undocumented immigrants. New Haven (with an
interview former Mayor John DeStefano, Jr.), Danbury and East Haven are
featured. This will be followed by a screening of Labeled: Explore What Life is
Like for LGBT Youth: a post-screening discussion with its young Youth Rights
Media filmmakers will be moderated by Marta Moret, president of Urban Policy
Strategies.
Later on Sunday afternoon Film Block #4 will feature documentaries by
students from the Greater New Haven area, including Quinnipiac University (a
collective student effort Haven), Trinity College (the class project Coaching
Colburn: A Memoir), Fairfield University (Stan Grunder’s Through the Artist’s
Eyes), and Yale University (Kristi Wagner’s Legacy: Women’s Sports at Yale).
NHdocs: The Second New Haven Documentary Film Festival is made
possible by a host of sponsors and supporters including:
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Films at the Whitney, supported by the Barbakow Fund for Innovative Film
Programs at Yale
International Festival of Arts and Ideas
The Program in Public Humanities at Yale
What We Were Thinking Films
The Whitney Humanities Center
Willoughby’s Coffee
Yale Program for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies.
Yale Film and Media Studies Program
Yale Film Study Center, courtesy of Paul L. Joskow
Yale Institute of Sacred Music
Yale Summer Session
Yale Summer Film Institute
For more information please visit: www.NHdocs.com
or email directors Gorman Bechard at: [email protected] and Charles
Musser at: [email protected]
A full film schedule follows. Filmmakers will be present for Q &A’s after their
films:
June 5th: Friday
Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium 53 Wall Street
6:00 pm Opening reception
7:00 pm: We Break Things (Rebecca Wexler, 2015) 60 mins.
8:30 pm: American Reds: What Must We Dream Of? (Richard Wormser, 2015)
85 mins
June 6th: Saturday
New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street
Moderated by Michael Morand, president of the Board of Directors of the New
Haven Free Library.
12:30 pm - FILM BLOCK #1
A Few More Mistakes: Noel at 90 (Masha Shpolberg, 2015) -22 mins
Tiny Miracles...Awakening Memory And Emotion In An Alzheimer's World
(Audrey Appleby, 2014) 15 mins.
Stamper's Life (Sarah Hajtol, 2015) 7 mins.
Lutah: A Passion for Architecture (Kum-Kum Bhavnani, 2014) 65 mins.
3:00 pm – FILM BLOCK #2
To Touch a Nerve (Michael J. Finnegan. 13 mins)
This Side of Dreamland (Glick & Reagan, 2015)
A Conjoining of Ancient Song (Berland & Ruff, 2014) -32 minutes
Aeromedical (Abbot & Malloy; 2014) -29 minutes
Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium
6:30 pm: Salad Days (Scott Crawford, 2015) 102 mins.
8:30 pm: Danny Says (Brendan Toller, 2015) 104 mins. Moderated by Timothy
Young of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
11:00 Danny Says After Party. Café Nine, 250 State Street
June 7, Sunday
Whitney Humanities Center Auditorium
1:00 pm: - FILM BLOCK #3
A History of the New Haven Green (Karyl Evans, 2012) 30 mins
Here: One Small Blue State’s Struggle with Immigration (Jamie
Alamdovar, 2014) 40 mins
Coffee
2:45 pm: Labeled: Explore What Life is Like for LGBT Youth (Youth Rights Media
, 2013) 28 mins. Moderated by Marta Moret, president of Urban Policy
Strategies.
3:45pm STUDENT SHORTS BLOCK
Through the Artist’s Eyes (Stan Grunder, 2015) 4 mins
Wizard Farm Music (Cassia Armstrong, 2015) 4 mins
Haven (Mike Morrone, 2015) 18 mins
What Will You Be? (Alex Ingber, 2015) -8 mins
Legacy: Women’s Sports at Yale (Kristi Wagner, 2015) -20 mins
Coaching Colburn: A Memoir (Trinity College, 2015) 15 minutes
Gooners. (Jen Calhoun, 2015) 12 mins
And more…
7:00 pm: A Dog Named Gucci (Gorman Bechard, 2015) 84 mins. (this will be a
benefit collecting pet food & toy donations for the Friends of the New Haven
Animal Shelter)
About NHdocs
Our Origins: NHdocs came together in 2014 when four filmmakers from New
Haven gathered together for the first time . . . in Missoula, Montana. That’s
right: The Big Sky Documentary Festival in Missoula. And despite being from the
same town, a few of us had never met before. It made us realize how
desperately New Haven needed a film festival that could bring filmmakers
together and help build community.
Our Philosophy: NHdocs seeks to build a sense of community among
documentary filmmakers from the greater New Haven area (and we are quite
inclusive in our reach!). Many of these filmmakers work as independents, some
teach at universities in the area, while others rely on various kinds of day jobs.
We look forward to showing work that has been or will be shown at prominent
International Film Festivals, but we also want to show work being done in the
city’s schools and by students at nearby universities. We are resolutely
democratic in our embrace of the documentary tradition on the local as well as
the international level. We can learn from and support each other.
Our Audience: NHdocs wants to help filmmakers find audiences for their
documentaries. And we are presenting documentaries for audiences with a wide
range of interests. This year this will include historical documentaries; music
docs; portraits of artists; documentaries about social issues such as immigration,
animal rights, and LGBT students in New Haven schools; and others that grapple
contemporary realities such as the war in Afghanistan and computer geeks
seeking to undermine the world of government secrecy. Our line up is filled with
remarkable surprises. Come and find out what your neighbors have been doing.
The Organizers: NHdocs co-directors Gorman Bechard and Charlie Musser are
veteran filmmakers who span the infamous town-gown divide. New Haven-born
Bechard has been making documentaries (and some fiction films) since 1983.
Charlle Musser has been teaching documentary filmmaking and a range of
courses on film history/theory and criticism at Yale since 1992. Our two other cofounders (Lisa Molomot and Jacob Bricca) taught at Wesleyan but have moved
to Arizona. Now we have been teaming up with other local New Haveners.
Watch our organization grow.