In 2010 the documentary film Where the Whales Sing by Andrew Stevenson premiered at the Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF) and since then it has screened at numerous film festivals and won several awards.
The musical score for the film was composed by Bermuda’s own Steve Gallant. Steve emerged onto the scene at an extremely early age in 1987 when he composed and music-directed an original musical adaptation of “The Diary of Adrian Mole” for a summer youth programme at the Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society (B.M.D.S.)Later on in his career as a freelance music composer (and after obtaining his Diploma in Media Music) he began collaborating with independent filmmakers.
Rebecca Faulkenberry has co-produced, with “Treehouse Productions,” a dreamy-eyed and romantic short clip starring two of her colleagues from Broadway’s spectacular “Spider-man: Turn off the Dark” musical – Natalie Lomonte and Christopher Tierney.
Set on an empty NYC Subway line, the scene slips between a timeless, and nostalgic black & white scenario to a modern day, monotonous commute and a chance encounter that is vitalized by a young couple’s fantasies.
All to the tune of Frank Sinatra‘s timeless voice “In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning.”
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas cartoon co-directed and produced by the American-born Bermudian director, producer and writer Arthur Rankin, Jr.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a 1964 Christmas stop-motion animated television special produced by Videocraft International, Ltd. (later known as Rankin/Bass Productions) and currently distributed by Universal Television. It first aired Sunday, December 6, 1964, on the NBC television network in the United States, and was sponsored by General Electric under the umbrella title of The General Electric Fantasy Hour. The special was based on the Johnny Marks song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” which was itself based on the poem of the same name written in 1939 by Marks’ brother-in-law, Robert L. May. Since 1972, the special has aired on CBS, with the network unveiling a high-definition, digitally remastered version of the program in 2005. As with A Charlie Brown Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rudolph no longer airs just once annually, but several times during the Christmas and holiday season on CBS. Unlike other holiday specials that also air on several cable channels (including Freeform), Rudolph only airs on CBS. It has been telecast every year since 1964, making it the longest continuously running Christmas TV special in history. 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the television special[1] and a series of postage stamps featuring Rudolph was issued by the United States Postal Service on November 6, 2014.[2]
Miss Big & Beautiful Bermuda Pageant 2011 held on May 1st at the Fairmont Southampton Hotel. This year there was a Reality TV Show dedicated to the pageant under the direction of Terry Lee Smith.
Sit back and watch all of the trailers of ten of the world’s best documentary films, that will be playing at at the Tradewinds Auditorium of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, October 21-23 or scroll down and watch each trailer individually with it’s relative synopses and showtime.
Date & time
Film
Playlist Number
OCT 21 Friday
6 p.m
Buck
1.
8 p.m.
The Interrupters
2
Oct 22 Saturday
2.00 p.m.
Gasland
3
4.30 p.m.
Rejoice and Shout
4
7.00 p.m.
Tabloid
4
9.00 p.m.
Senna
6
Oct 23 Sunday
3.00 p.m
The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
7
5.00 p.m
Project Nim
8
7.00 p.m
You’ve Been Trumped
9
9.00 p.m
Fire in Babylon
10
TICKETS page for information about how to purchase tickets.
Release Date: June 17, 2011 Genre: Documentary Cast: Buck Brannaman Directors: Cindy Meehl Studio: IFC Films
Plot: “Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see. Sometimes, you will.” So says Buck Brannaman, a true American cowboy and sage on horseback who travels the country for nine grueling months a year helping horses with people problems.
The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn, persistence of violence in our cities. Shot over the course of a year out of Kartemquin Films, The Interrupters captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for the violence in our cities. During that period, the city was besieged by high-profile incidents, most notably the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago High School student, whose death was caught on videotape.
The film’s main subjects work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, which believes that the spread of violence mimics the spread of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. The singular mission of the “Violence Interrupters” — who have credibility on the streets because of their own personal histories — is to intervene in conflicts before they explode into violence.
In The Interrupters, Ameena Matthews, whose father is Jeff Fort, one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders, was herself a drug ring enforcer. But having children and finding solace in her Muslim faith pulled her off the streets and grounded her. In the wake of Derrion Albert’s death, Ameena becomes a close confidante to his mother, and helps her through her grieving. Ameena, who is known among her colleagues for her fearlessness, befriends a feisty teenaged girl who reminds her of herself at that age. The film follows that friendship over the course of many months, as Ameena tries to nudge the troubled girl in the right direction.
Cobe Williams, scarred by his father’s murder, was in and out of prison, until he had had enough. His family — particularly a young son — helped him find his footing. Cobe disarms others with his humor and his general good nature. His most challenging moment comes when he has to confront a man so bent on revenge that Cobe has to pat him down to make sure he’s put away his gun. Like Ameena, he gets deeply involved in the lives of those he encounters, including a teenaged boy just out of prison and a young man from his old neighborhood who’s squatting in a foreclosed home.
Eddie Bocanegra is haunted by a murder he committed when he was seventeen. His CeaseFire work is a part of his repentance for what he did. Eddie is most deeply disturbed by the aftereffects of the violence on children, and so he spends much of his time working with younger kids in an effort to both keep them off the streets and to get support to those who need it — including a 16-year-old girl whose brother died in her arms. Soulful and empathic, Eddie, who learned to paint in prison, teaches art to children, trying to warn them of the debilitating trauma experienced by those touched by the violence.
The Interrupters follows Ameena, Cobe and Eddie as they go about their work, and while doing so reveals their own inspired journeys of hope and redemption. The film attempts to make sense of what CeaseFire’s Tio Hardiman calls, simply, “the madness”.
Follow @theinterrupters on Twitter and at Facebook/interrupters.
The Interrupters opens July 29 in New York.
3. GASLAND
(2010) Directed by Josh Fox. Winner of Special Jury Prize – Best US Documentary Feature – Sundance 2010. Screening at Cannes 2010.
It is happening all across America and now in Europe and Africa as well – rural landowners wake up one day to find a lucrative offer from a multinational energy conglomerate wanting to lease their property. The Reason? In America, the company hopes to tap into a huge natural gas reservoir dubbed the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Halliburton developed a way to get the gas out of the ground—a hydraulic drilling process called fracking—and suddenly America finds itself on the precipice of becoming an energy superpower.
But what comes out of the ground with that natural gas? How does it affect our air and drinking water? GASLAND is a powerful personal documentary that confronts these questions with spirit, strength, and a sense of humor. When filmmaker Josh Fox receives his cash offer in the mail, he travels across 32 states to meet other rural residents on the front lines of fracking. He discovers toxic streams, ruined aquifers, dying livestock, brutal illnesses, and kitchen sinks that burst into flame. He learns that all water is connected and perhaps some things are more valuable than money.
Release Date: 3 June 2011 Genre: Documentary Directors: Don McGlynn MPAA: PG Studio: Magnolia Pictures
Filled with hard-to-find performances and recordings by Mahalia Jackson, Smokey Robinson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Wards, James Cleveland, the Staple Singers, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and many others, Rejoice and Shout hon- ours and celebrates the musical history ofAfrican-AmericanChristianity. The film shows how gospel was, and remains, so much more than mere pop music — how it helped sustain the spirits during the darkest hours of repression during slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the civil rights movement. The film connects the dots that led to soul and R&B music — as Claude Jeter’s falsetto voice begat Al Green, so the Dixie Hummingbirds led to groups such as The Temptations. The film is a must-see not just for gospel aficionados but for anyone who appreciates the inspirational power of music.
5. Tabloid
Documentary by Errol Morris
Tabloid Synopsis: Thirty years before the antics of Lindsay, Paris and Britney, Joyce McKinney made her mark as a peerless tabloid queen. In TABLOID, Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Errol Morris (THE FOG OF WAR) follows the salacious adventures of this beauty queen with an IQ of 168, whose single-minded devotion to the man of her dreams leads her on a labyrinthine crusade for love. Down a surreal rabbit hole of kidnapping, masochistic Mormons, risque photography, magic underwear, celestial sex, jail time and a cloning laboratory in South Korea, Joyce’s fantastic exploits were constant headlines.
In Cinemas June 3, 2011 www.facebook.com/sennamovie
Senna’s remarkable story, charting his physical and spiritual achievements on the track and off, his quest for perfection, and the mythical status he has since attained, is the subject of SENNA, a documentary feature that spans the racing legend’s years as an F1 driver, from his opening season in 1984 to his untimely death a decade later. Far more than a film for F1 fans, SENNA unfolds a remarkable story in a remarkable manner, eschewing many standard documentary techniques in favour of a more cinematic approach that makes full use of astounding footage, much of which is drawn from F1 archives and is previously unseen.
7.The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975
THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-1975 mobilizes a treasure trove of 16mm material shot by Swedish filmmakers, after languishing in a basement of a TV station for 30 years, into an irresistible mosaic of images, music, and narration chronicling the evolution one of our nation’s most indelible turning points, the Black Power movement. Featuring candid interviews with the movement’s most explosive revolutionary minds, including Angela Davis, Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and Kathleen Cleaver, the film explores the community, people and radical ideas of the movement. Music by Questlove and Om’Mas Keith, and commentary from and modern voices including Erykah Badu, Harry Belafonte, Talib Kweli, and Melvin Van Peebles give the historical footage a fresh sound and make THE BLACK POWER MIXTAPE 1967-75 an exhilarating, unprecedented account of an American revolution.
Release Date: 12 August 2011 Genre: Documentary Cast: Bob Angelini, Bern Cohen, Reagan Leonard Director: James Marsh Studio: Roadside Attractions
Plot: Tells the story of a chimpanzee taken from its mother at birth and raised like a human child by a family in a brownstone on the upper West Side in the 1970s.
9. You’ve Been Trumped
www.youvebeentrumped.com Feature length (95 minute) documentary following the building of a golf resort by Donald Trump on a unique stretch of natural wilderness in Scotland
They brought the world to its knees, and a nation to its feet.
Fire In Babylon is the breathtaking story of how the West Indies triumphed over its colonial masters through the achievements of one of the most gifted teams in sporting history.
In a turbulent era of apartheid in South Africa; race riots in England and civil unrest in the Caribbean, the West Indian cricketers, led by the enigmatic Viv Richards, struck a defiant blow at the forces of white prejudice worldwide. Their undisputed skill, combined with a fearless spirit, allowed them to dominate the game at the highest level, replaying it on their own terrifying terms.
Actor Earl Cameron returns for Prisoner’s 40th anniversary
One of British TV’s first black actors is returning to the north Wales village of Portmeirion for the 40th anniversary of his part in cult show The Prisoner.
Earl Cameron, who was 90 this month, appeared in an episode of the 1960s series, as well as four episodes of an earlier programme, Danger Man. read more
The Lion and the Mouse, narrated by Michael Douglas, tells the story of twin British colonies, America, and Bermuda over the last 400 years through centuries of war and the development of modern times.
The moral of the story is that Little Friends can make Great Friends.
Never in global history has such a small country played such a large role in International Affairs.”— U.S. President William Taft
Living In Emergency – Doctors Without Borders [trailer]
The Bermuda Documentary Film Festival (“Bermuda Docs”) is a bi-annual independent film festival, held every April and October, featuring top documentary films from around the world. It was founded by Duncan Hall in 2009. The first event was held at the Tradewinds Auditorium of the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute in November 2009.
Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders: Director: Mark Hopkins / United States / 2009 / 94 minutes / Rated R
This Way of Life: Director: Thomas Burstyn / New Zealand / 2010 / 85 minutes / Rated G
Imagine finding a pterodactyl alive and nesting on an obscure island. Rare Bird is the true story of a 15-year-old boy who helped find a bird believed extinct and solve the mystery of its existence … read more
Poverty in Paradise explores the causes and consequences of the widening gap between Bermuda’s wealthy and poor, the struggles families face in providing for themselves and their children, and the consequential spiral in crime plaguing the community. in 2000, 50% of black female-headed households with children were living at or below the poverty line and increasingly families are finding it impossible to afford basic necessities such as rent, food and electricity. The documentary gives a voice to the lives of homeless, low-income and working class mothers, addressing assumptions held by many as to why particular people live in poverty. The coalition’s hope is to affect the social and political will, transforming the way Bermudians understand their community and influencing the necessary policies to put Bermuda on a more positive and prosperous path for all.
Poverty in Paradise: The Price We Pay premiered at the Bermuda Docs Film Festival April 30, 2011: 8.30 p.m.Director: Lucinda Spurling (photo) / Bermuda / 2011 / 58 minutes / Rated G World Premiere – Presented by the Coalition for the Protection of Children