DocWatchers and the Central Harlem CSA Present:

Curated by Hellura Lyle

Fresh

Ana Sofia Joanes, 2009, 72 min.

Fresh celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet. Among several main characters, Fresh features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

Post-screening Discussion and Reception to Follow

Links:

Trailer: http://youtu.be/KwR44T69_Is

Film Website: http://www.freshthemovie.com/

Doc Watchers: Three Short Docs

Curated by Hellura Lyle

One of These Mornings

Valery Lyman, 2010, 17 min.

Realizing the feeling would be big as people went to vote for Obama, filmmaker Valery Lyman set up a phone line and asked folks to call right after they voted and say whatever was on their minds. Messages poured in from all over the country, and while it all still hung in the balance. This tapestry of incredibly moving messages narrates our journey from dawn til dusk, revealing a nation on the brink of transformation.

Weightless

Faith Pennick, 2010, 39 min.

Fat girls rule the water in this film about a scuba diving camp for plus-size women called Big Adventures. The camp was created by a psychologist and certified scuba diver & instructor who felt ostracized by other divers because of her size. Weightless depicts larger women as they are rarely seen, physically active and not consumed by the need or expectation to be thin.

Why Are They Here?

Yara Costa, 2010, 30 min.

A tiny village in Lesotho, an isolated island in Mozambique, the bustling capital of Ghana...poor Chinese immigrants come here hoping to thrive and prosper, but find themselves facing all kinds of obstacles - even death. This film takes a close look at three stories representing the most personal encounters between Africans and Chinese in the past ten years.

Prep School Negro

Monday, February 7th, 7:00 pm

Doc Watchers

Curated by Hellura Lyle

A Work in Progress Screening of

Prep School Negro

Dir. Andre Robert Lee, 2011

Andre Robert Lee and his older sister grew up in the ghettos of Philadelphia while their mother struggled to support them by working in a local factory. When Andre was 14 years old he received what his family believed to be a golden ticket -- a full scholarship to attend one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country, Germantown Friends School. Elite education was Andre’s way up and out, but at what price? Yes the tuition was covered but this new world cost him and his family much more than anyone could anticipated. In Prep School Negro Andre takes a journey back in time to revisit the events of his adolescence while also spending time with current-day prep school students of color and their classmates to see how much has really changed inside the ivory tower.

Q&A with Dir. Andre Robert Lee

The Torture of Mothers: The Case of the Harlem Six

Monday, January 10th, 7:00pm
DocWatchers
Curated by Hellura Lyle
The Jena 6,
Big Noise, 2008, 28 min.

In a small town in Louisiana, six families are fighting for their sons lives. Two nooses are left as a warning to black students trying to integrate their playground, fights break out across town, a white man pulls a shotgun on black students, someone burns down most of the school, the DA puts six black students on trial for attempted murder, and the quiet town of Jena becomes the site of the largest civil rights demonstration in the South since the 1960s. The Jena 6 is a powerful symbol for, and example of, how racial justice works in America where the lynching noose has been replaced by the DA's pen. 

The Torture of Mothers: The Case of the Harlem Six

Woodie King, Jr., 1980, 52 min.

In 1963 a group of young Black boys living in Harlem were involved in an incident that earned them the nickname "The Harlem Six." Intent on protecting and clearing the names of their sons, several mothers bonded together to make their story known. This work emerges as a powerful close up of police brutality, and of power dynamics of 1960's Harlem.

Director Woodie King Jr. will be present for post-screening Q&A

Copy of The Torture of Mothers: The Case of the Harlem Six

Monday, January 10th, 7:00pm
DocWatchers
Curated by Hellura Lyle
The Jena 6,
Big Noise, 2008, 28 min.

In a small town in Louisiana, six families are fighting for their sons lives. Two nooses are left as a warning to black students trying to integrate their playground, fights break out across town, a white man pulls a shotgun on black students, someone burns down most of the school, the DA puts six black students on trial for attempted murder, and the quiet town of Jena becomes the site of the largest civil rights demonstration in the South since the 1960s. The Jena 6 is a powerful symbol for, and example of, how racial justice works in America where the lynching noose has been replaced by the DA's pen. 

The Torture of Mothers: The Case of the Harlem Six

Woodie King, Jr., 1980, 52 min.

In 1963 a group of young Black boys living in Harlem were involved in an incident that earned them the nickname "The Harlem Six." Intent on protecting and clearing the names of their sons, several mothers bonded together to make their story known. This work emerges as a powerful close up of police brutality, and of power dynamics of 1960's Harlem.

Director Woodie King Jr. will be present for post-screening Q&A