DocWatchers Presents: A World Not Ours

Thursday, November 20th, 7:00pm

DocWatchers Presents:

(Curated by Hellura Lyle)

A World Not Ours

Mahdi Fleifel, 2012, 93 min.

Director Mahdi Fleifel's first documentary feature is a uniquely engaging and personal project. Drawing on a family history of video-taping, Fleifel offers an intimate glimpse into the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in Lebanon—a settlement of less than a square mile that's home to over 70,000 people and has existed for over 60 years. Dubai-born and London-based writer, director, and cinematographer Fleifel spent his formative years in the camp in the 1980s, before his family settled in Denmark. For years he's been returning and keeping a video diary, and in A World Not Ours he provides a frank yet affectionate portrait of the community. Fleifel's conversations with the camp residents provide an unfiltered take on Palestinian grievances with Israel, Lebanon, and their own political leaders. Elsewhere he explores how residents use the World Cup series to articulate their own ideas of home, community, victory, and hope. Engaging and accessible, with a quirky, upbeat soundtrack, Fleifel's personal journey offers a fresh and inviting point of entry to a thorny political history.

Q&A (via Skype) with Director Mahdi Fleifel & Reception to follow screening.

Trailer: vimeo.com/57316804

BPT: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/916758

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/645662225552017/

DocWatchers Presents: Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth

Thursday, November 13th, 7:00pm

DocWatchers Presents:

(Curated by Hellura Lyle)

Alice Walker: Beauty In Truth

Pratibha Parmar, 2013, 84 min

Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth offers a penetrating look at the life and work of this artist, human rights activist, and self-confessed renegade. Though Walker broke into national prominence in 1983 as the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, her influence on American literature was already well-established. Director Pratibha Parmar traces Walker's extraordinary journey from the cotton fields of Georgia, through her precarious life as a black rights activist living in an interracial marriage, to her international fame as the writer of The Color Purple. But the success of that novel, as well as the subsequent film and stage versions, came at a high price. Employing intimate interviews with Walker and members of her inner circle including Angela Davis, Quincy Jones, Gloria Steinem, Howard Zinn, and Walker's ex-husband, Beauty in Truth seeks not simply to document Walker's many achievements, but to restore her to her rightful place in history; not only as a key literary figure of the 20th Century, but as a profoundly influential activist whose inspiring journey reflects the national story of our country and people during a time of great historical change.

Q&A (via Skype) with Director Pratibha Parmar & Reception to follow screening.

Trailer: vimeo.com/29261995

BPT: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/916353

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/645662225552017/

DocWatchers and the African Film Festival Present: Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony

Thursday, November 6th, 7:00pm

DocWatchers and the African Film Festival Present:

(Curated by Hellura Lyle)

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony

Lee Hirsch, 2002, 103 min

Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony depicts the extraordinary role of freedom songs in the very long struggle against apartheid in South Africa.Featuring Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Vusi Mahlaselaand others, the film uses a mixture of interviews, musical performances and historical film footage. Amandla follows South Africans’ stories to be told through the voices of the people themselves.Amandla!is a beautifully crafted film which gives a fresh perspective on the importance of resistance songs throughout a conflict. This celebratory film is a testimony to the power of song and reveals that the inspiration of music provides fuel for the soul.

Q&A with Director Lee Hirsch & Reception to follow screening.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkv2dUcGAn4

BPT: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/916014

Facebook (general for all DocWatchers): https://www.facebook.com/events/645662225552017/

Doc Watchers

Thursday, September 18th, 7:00pm

Doc Watchers

Curated by Hellura Lyle

The New Black

Yoruba Richen, 2013, 74 min.

The New Black tells the story of how the African-American community is grappling with the gay rights issue in light of the recent gay marriage movement and the fight over civil rights. The film documents activists, families and clergy on both sides of the campaign to legalize gay marriage and examines homophobia in the black community’s institutional pillar—the black church and reveals the Christian right wing’s strategy of exploiting this phenomenon in order to pursue an anti-gay political agenda

Followed by Q&A with Director Yoruba Richen.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX4XiTSuuF0

http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/830370

(Preceded by…)  Flying Solo: A Transgender Widow Fights Discrimination

Leslie Von Pless, 2014, 8 min.

At 92, Robina Asti, a World War II veteran and pilot, tells her story of living as a transgender woman since 1976 and her fight to be treated like any other widow.

Post-screening reception sponsored by Harlem Pride.

Fostering fellowship and informed discussion within Harlem’s LGBT community.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/274739146060336/

BPT: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/830370

Doc Watchers

Thursday, September 4th, 7:00pm

Doc Watchers

Curated by Hellura Lyle

Out In the Night

Blair Dorosh-Walther, 2014, 75 min.

Out in the Night is a documentary that tells the story of a group of young African American lesbian friends who are out, one hot August night in 2006, in the gay friendly West Village in New York City. When they are violently and sexually threatened by a man on the street, they defend themselves and are charged and convicted in the courts and in the media as a 'Gang of Killer Lesbians'.

Screening followed by Q&A with Director Blair Dorosh-Walther, and film subjects Renata Hill, Patreese Johnson & Terrain Dandridge.

Trailer: http://vimeo.com/58462469

(Preceded by…)  How To Be A Girl

Directed & Animated by Marlo Mack, 2014, 7min.

When Marlo Mack’s son was three years old, he told his mom that she was actually her daughter.  Three years later, she is the mother of a happy, confident, six-year-old girl.  How To Be A Girl tells the story of how one mother let go of the son she never really had and wound up with a beautiful transgender daughter.

Post-screening reception sponsored by Harlem Pride.

Fostering fellowship and informed discussion within Harlem’s LGBT community.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/274739146060336/

BPT: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/830338

Doc Watchers Presents: A Women's Hostory

Thursday, March 6th, 7:00pm

Doc Watchers Presents A Women's History Month Special

(Presented in association with Asian Cinevision, producer of the 37th Asian American International Film Festival, July 23 - August 2, 2014), Third World Newsreel, the Guillermo Morales-Assata Shakur Center, the Sisters Circle Collective, Universal Zulu Nation and the Peoples Survival Program

Curated by Hellura Lyle

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

Grace Lee, 2013, 82 min

When we think of the Civil Rights Movement, we tend to overlook leaders like 98 year-old Chinese American Grace Lee Boggs. As an activist, writer and philosopher, Boggs was not only deep in the trenches during the Civil Rights Movement, but continues to be a pivotal figure in minority rights to this day. Much of Boggs’ work has centered on Detroit and the racial discrimination that plagued the city.

As she wrestles with a Detroit in ongoing transition, Boggs emerges with an approach that is radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression or merely a protest. Revolution, Boggs says, is about something deeper within the human experience — the ability to transform oneself in order to transform the world. In an age when seemingly insurmountable injustices and contradictions face us, American Revolutionary inspires concerned citizens and dreamers of all ages with new thinking to sustain their struggle and engagement.

Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Bill Ayers, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Boggs’s late husband James Boggs and a host of Detroit comrades across three generations help shape this uniquely American story.

Skype Q&A with director Grace Lee followed by a reception.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNTDB_mBTeA

BPT: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/583974

FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/405037942973964/