Home
Film Schedule
Film Details <<
Get Involved
Links

The UBC Okanagan Community Development Club is pleased to present the 2007 Traveling World Community Film Festival March 16 to 18, 2007.

For more information about this festival, contact Carol Kergan.

70 min.
2006
Explorart Films

Director: Alberto Arvelo

Website

To Play and To Fight is the captivating story of the Venezuelan Youth and Children’s Orchestra System, an incredible network of hundreds of orchestras formed within most of Venezuela’s towns and villages. Once a modest program designed to expose rural children to the wonders of music, ‘El Sistema’ has evolved into what has been called “one of the most important and beautiful social phenomena in modern history.”

Close to half a million students have participated in the program, which was founded in 1975 by musician and former government minister Jose Antonio Abreu as a social program to improve the lives of the country's underprivileged youth.

"As a Venezuelan musician, I proposed to make my art an instrument of authentic social development, an instrument to build citizens, a powerful vehicle to achieve an integral education for children, compensating in this way the traditional deficiencies of the continent's education system," says Abreu.

There were only two symphony orchestras in Venezuela when Abreu started El Sistema. Now there are about 200, with at least one professional orchestra in every state. Venezuela's orchestra program has inspired more than 20 other countries in Latin America to create programs of their own. Teaching musical harmony is also a means of educating people in human harmony, building community and spirit. This inspiring film weaves together impressive performances and interviews with renowned musicians such as Placido Domingo who reflect on the impact of this remarkable social project.

Director Alberto Arvelo says, "This film is about much more than music. To Play and To Fight is a film about hope, about the power and the importance of hope in our every day lives. This documentary not only changed the life of all of us [filmmakers], but is also changing the life of many people from all around the world...people who find in the message of these kids a deep inspiration. To Play and To Fight is a film about the resurrection of hope."

48 min
2005
McNabb/Connolly

Filmmakers: Merrin Cannel
& Ted Remerowski

Website

Frankensteer is a disturbing documentary that reveals how the ordinary cow has been turned into an antibiotic-dependent, hormone-laced, potential carrier of toxic bacteria, all in the name of cheaper food. This benign, grazing herbivore has undergone a transformation in how it's raised, fed and slaughtered.

Topics covered include the recent changes made to inspection rules that shift the responsibility for food safety away from government inspectors to the workers who do the slaughtering and packing.Consumers, by and large, are totally unaware of the dangers lurking in their beef.

According to Mike McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition, "When you bring a package of hamburger home from a supermarket, you have to treat it as toxic material.”

58 min
2005
Arab Film Distribution

Filmmakers: Jamal Dajani & David Michaelis\

Web Story

Occupied Minds takes viewers on an emotional, intensely personal odyssey through one of the world's most volatile regions. The film follows Palestinian-American journalist, Jamal Dajani, and Israeli journalist, David Michaelis, as they travel together to Jerusalem, their mutual birthplace.

The two journalists meet with a variety of people, including a Palestinian gunman, an Israeli soldier, an Israeli surgeon who lost his eyesight in a Palestinian suicide bombing, a Palestinian farmer whose pasture was divided by one of the walls being built around Israeli enclaves and an Israeli mother who lost her son in the conflict. As the filmmakers journey through these troubled lands, they struggle to find lasting solutions.

60 min
2004
McNabb/Connolly

Director: Bertram Verhaag

Website
Trailer

Life Running Out of Control offers a uniquely wide-ranging international perspective on the science and ethics of genetic engineering.

This film carries us on an enlightening journey to India, Norway, and the forests of Colombia, offering inspiring images of resistance and hope amidst the pressing concerns about the science and ethics of GMOs, corporate control of our food, and the patenting of human, animal, and plant life.

A must-see for those who are looking beyond the most immediate health and safety concerns, and seek to understand the wider implications of today's biotechnologies.

Golden Lynx for Best Journalistic Achievement, Ökomedia Environmental Film Festival.

75 min
2006
Brave New Films

Director: Robert Greenwald

Website
Trailer

Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wall-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and Outfoxed) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the “reconstruction” of Iraq.

Iraq For Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations and high-powered decision makers that create the groundwork for corporate financial gain.

52 min
2005
McNabb/Connolly

Director: Carlo Buralli

Website

Traditional foods are at risk of disappearing forever, as a speed-obsessed world turns increasingly to fast foods. To counter this trend, there is an international gastro-economic movement known as Slow Food. Its aim is to protect traditional culture, the environment and biodiversity by encouraging regional food production.

The movement is now active in 45 countries. Towns, like Orvieto, Italy have declared themselves to be "slow cities", free of fast food outlets, neon and noise. Beautifully photographed around the globe, Slow Food Revolution is a celebration of the sustainability, seasonality and quality of the earth's bounty.

14 min
2006
NFB

Director: Katerina Cizek

Website

Every day in southern Malawi Pax Chingawale pedals his bicycle over 20 kilometres to visit his neighbours. Throughout his travels he fights AIDS at the grassroots level. Pax works primarily with traditional healers – those influential community members who often unwittingly contribute to the spread of the disease. He also goes in search of the abandoned, the ill and the people whose lives are being saved by anti retro-virals (ARVs).

Pax is not a doctor or a nurse. He’s an HIV-positive retired government auditor who volunteers with Canada’s Dignitas International, helping to develop a model that would make ARV drugs accessible to the world’s most vulnerable populations. This film shows the incredible difference one inspired individual can make.

90 min
2005
NFB

Director: Eve Lamont

Website

In this documentary, crop and animal farmers in Quebec, the Canadian West, the U.S. Northeast and France offer solutions to the social and environmental scourges of factory farming. Driven by the forces of globalization, rampant agribusiness is harming the environment and threatening the survival of farms.

The proliferation of GMO crops is a further threat to biodiversity as well as to farmers' autonomy. In Europe as well as North America, a current of resistance, bringing together farmers and consumers, insists that it is possible, indeed imperative, to grow food differently. The Fight for True Farming is a film of grim lucidity but also irrepressible hope.

75 min
2006

Filmmakers: Tonje Hessen Schei & David Bee

Website
Trailer

Independent Intervention is an award-winning documentary about the importance of independent media in times of war. It contrasts the mass media’s coverage of the invasion of Iraq with non-embedded, independent investigative reporting and shows the brutal realities of war.

Increasingly, as major US television and radio networks avoid depicting human suffering in their presentation of war, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ is portrayed as a successful attempt to spread democracy. This film challenges traditional media culture dominated by corporate wealth, and gives us hope for true freedom and democracy throughout the world.

50 min
2005
War Child Canada

Director: Adrian Callender

Read more...
Sum 41 site...

Rocked is a grippingly honest and unscripted account of an African country in turmoil as seen through the eyes of acclaimed rock band, Sum 41. The war in Congo has been characterized as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and the most deadly war ever documented in Africa.

The film crew follows the musical group, Sum 41, as they meet Congolese children and youth caught in the crossfire, including child soldiers and victims of assault. Sum 41's harrowing experience is caught on film as they witness firsthand what it is like to struggle for survival in a country where, since 1998, more than three million people have been killed and war has been more prevalent than peace.

94 min
2005
Skylight Pictures

Filmmakers: Paco de Onis, Pamela Yates & Peter Kinov

Website
Film Forum site

This film explores the question: How can an open society balance the need for security with the need for democracy? Based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the filmmakers of State of Fear masterfully blend personal testimony, history and archival footage to tell the story of escalating violence in this Andean nation. Fear of terror has undermined democracy in this country, making Peru a virtual dictatorship where official corruption has replaced the rule of law.

Highlighted issues include the attacks by Shining Path insurgents which in turn provoked a military occupation of the countryside. Civil authority was replaced by military ‘justice’ and widespread abuses by the Peruvian Army remain unpunished. In the end, nearly 70,000 civilians have died in Peru.

State of Fear tells the complex story of revolution, repression, and the efforts taken to bring about reconciliation in a nation plagued by violence.

58 min
2005
New Day Films

Director: Patricia Goudvis

Read more...

Goodbye Baby offers a rare, penetrating glimpse into controversial adoption issues, in this case within Guatemala. It examines a process that touches millions of lives and thoughtfully explores its complexities.

What adoptive parents see as an act of love, others may view with deep suspicion. Goudvis is the mother of two children adopted from Guatemala, where she's lived on and off during the past 25 years. Informed by the filmmaker's own experiences, Goodbye Baby provides an insightful look into the dramatic and sometimes difficult world of intercountry and intercultural adoption.

78 min
2004
NFB

Director: Helen Klodawsky

Website

A story of love, revolution, and betrayal, No More Tears Sister explores the price paid by revolutionary women in their dangerous pursuit of justice. Set during the violent ethnic conflict that has enveloped Sri Lanka over decades, the documentary recreates the courageous and vibrant life of renowned human rights activist, Dr. Rajani Thiranagama.

Mother, anatomy professor, author and symbol of hope, Rajani was assassinated at the age of thirty-five. Fifteen years after Rajani’s death, her charismatic older sister Nirmala, a former Tamil militant and political prisoner, journeys back to Sri Lanka. She has decided to break her long silence about Rajani’s passionate life and her brutal slaying. Though set in Sri Lanka, Rajani’s story has parallels in postcolonial societies around the world.

86 min
2006
Stay Human Films

Producers: Michael Franti and Catherine Enny

Website

Michael Franti, world-renowned musician and human rights worker, travels to Iraq, Palestine and Israel to explore the human cost of war with a group of friends, some video cameras and his guitar.

A compelling soundtrack, visual and musical montages and Franti's intimate commentary make this film appeal to a multi-generational audience. This is an opportunity to hear the voices of everyday people living, creating and surviving under the harsh conditions of war and occupation.

With its guerrilla style footage captured in active war zones, the documentary is unlike the many academic and politically driven pieces provided by the mainstream media. I Know I’m Not Alone is an antidote to despair.

82 min
2005

Filmmakers: Kief Davidson & Richard Ladkani

Website
Trailer

The Devil’s Miner is the story of 14-year-old Basilio Vargas and his 12-year-old brother Bernardino, who work in the dangerous Cerro Rico silver mines of Bolivia. Raised without a father and living in extreme poverty, the boys assume many adult responsibilities.

The Vargas boys chew coca leaves to stave off hunger and keep their wits about them during their long hours in the mines, where they also present offerings to El Tío, the malevolent spirit of the mines. According to local legend, El Tío is a miner’s only hope of salvation in this heavily Catholic region where the people believe that the spirit of God does not exist in the hellish underworld inside the mountain.

A moving portrait of a world where children risk their lives daily in hopes of an eventual better life. Film Critics Award: Hot Docs Festival; Best Documentary: Chicago Int’l Film Festival.

23 min
2005
Basel Action Network

Filmmakers: Jim Puckett

Website

This photo-documentary report exposes the ugly underbelly of what is thought to be an escalating global trade in toxic, obsolete, discarded computers and other e-scrap collected in North America and Europe and sent to developing countries by waste brokers and so-called recyclers.

In Lagos, while there is a legitimate robust market and an ability to repair and refurbish old electronic equipment, of the estimated 500 40-foot containers of imports shipped to Lagos each month, as much as 75% is “junk.” Consequently, this hazardous e-waste is being discarded and routinely burned in what environmentalists call yet “another cyber-age nightmare now landing on the shores of developing countries.”

60 min
2005
McNabb/Connolly

Director: Duncan Copp

Website
Online Film

This “must-see” film reveals that we may have grossly underestimated the speed at which our climate is changing. In the three days following 9/11 when the entire U.S. airline fleet had been grounded, a climate scientist, Dr. David Travis, noticed how blue the sky was.

The absence of vapour trails and the cloud cover they produce was immediate and dramatic. Travis found that the temperature worldwide had increased by an astonishing one degree Celsius during that short period.

It appears that warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by the strong cooling effect of what scientists are calling, “global dimming.” Thus, our climate may be more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than previously believed. This film helps uncover the existing impacts on climactic stability as well as proposes what may lie ahead unless the global population takes meaningful action.

52 min
2004
McNabb/Connolly

Filmmaker: Pasii Toivianinen

Website

Featuring world renowned scientist Dr. Charles Keeling, The Venus Theory is an invaluable tool for clearly explaining the science behind global warming.

This film explores the possibility of the Earth's temperature one day equaling the temperature on the planet Venus. Leading scientists from around the world clearly explain the science behind climate change. Also outlined are projections of our atmosphere's warming in the coming century, and what consequences this holds for our planet, various species, and humankind.

Special Jury Award, Best Documentary: 21st International TV Science Programme Festival.

75 min
2006
Rainlake Films

Director: Joseph Mathew

Website
Trailer

An estimated 4,500 illegal border-crossers venture into the treacherous Arizona desert every day. Most are men in search of work, but women and children are also seeking to reunite with their families. This influx of migrants and the attendant rising death toll have elicited complicated feelings about human rights, culture, class, labour and national security.

Frustrated ranchers repair cut fences while humanitarian groups place water stations in the desert in an attempt to save lives. Political activists rally against anti-migrant ballot initiatives and try to counter rampant fear mongering. Farmers who depend on the illegal work force fear that they may lose their workers to a border patrol sweep.

Crossing Arizona reveals the surprising political positions people take when immigration and border policy fails everyone. Screened at Sundance2005.

72 min
2006
NFB

Director: Bonnie Sherr Klein

Website

Art, activism and disability are the starting point for what unfolds as a funny and intimate portrait of five surprising individuals. Director Bonnie Sherr Klein has been a pioneer of women’s cinema.

This film marks Klein's return to a career interrupted by a catastrophic stroke in 1987. She now turns the lens on the world of disability culture and the transformative power of art. Joining Klein are artists with diverse (dis)abilities; humourist David Roche, poet and scholar Catherine Frazee, dancer and impresario Geoff McMurchy, sculptor and writer Persimmon Blackbridge.

As we get to know each of these remarkable people driven by a passion for art and transformation, the everyday complexities and unexpected richness of life with a disability are exposed.

80 min
2005
Las Americas Film Network

Filmmakers: Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary

Website
Trailer

Favela Rising documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police.

“Favela Rising celebrates the strength of the human spirit to assert itself in the face of human rights violations, social injustice, and unexpected adversity. Chronicling the rise to greatness of the AfroReggae movement, the film shows how the music and culture of Brazil's underclass transform into a catalyst for grassroots social-change. But most of all, Favela Rising is the story of a community that works. The success of the film should be judged on how well it serves to activate its viewers; how well it inspires action,” says filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist.

This film has received numerous awards including: Film of the Year, International Documentary Association; Best Emerging Documentary Filmmaker, Tribeca Film Festival.

22 min
2005
Guerilla News Network

Director: Stephen Marshall

Kensington Welfare Rights Union
National Truth Commission

This film takes you on a guided tour through the heart of America’s heroin capital. Sponsored by the Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), The Drug War Reality Tour transports busloads of tourists to the battlefield of America’s own domestic Drug War, showing them every aspect of the drug game, from where the dope arrives to where it is sold and used.

Throughout the tour, street-wise KWRU members break down facts about the narco-culture and how forces like police complicity and corporate investment are aiding and using the drug epidemic to drive Kensington’s people out of their own neighborhood in order to make room for new urban development.

52 min
2005
NFB

Director: Nadia Collot

Website

This France-Canada co-production goes behind the scenes of the huge tobacco industry, whose economic power has been expanding for five decades at the expense of public health. A gripping investigation covering three continents, Nadia Collot's film exposes the vast conspiracy of a criminally negligent industry that conquers new markets through corruption and manipulation.

With its diverse viewpoints, shocking interviews and riveting images, The Tobacco Conspiracy deftly defines the issues in a complex situation where private interests and the public good collide. Enlightening and engrossing, this documentary is a hard-hitting critique of an industry gone mad.

80 min
2005
Las Americas Film Network

Filmmakers: Jeff Zimbalist & Matt Mochary

Website
Video

Humans are the most successful species on the planet but we are placing unprecedented demands on the planet's limited ecological resources.

"We can choose to live on a depleted planet or we can choose to live on a rich, biologically diverse, more stable planet" proposes Dr. Mathis Wackernagel, co-creator of the Ecological Footprint. The Ecological Footprint is a resource accounting tool that measures human demand on the Earth.

Wackernagel concludes on a hopeful note, showing how a new organization, Global Footprint Network, is partnering with government agencies, businesses, universities and NGOs to support the use of the Ecological Footprint accounting model to help turn this vision of a sustainable future into reality.

72 min
2006
NFB

Filmmakers: Ben Addelman & Samir Mallal

Website

Bombay Calling dives into a bustling world of late nights, long hours and hard partying to chronicle the rise of a new force in Indian society—the telemarketers. This new generation of call-centre employees works late into the night, trying to perfect their English and American accents, in order to sell to clients half a world away.

For their efforts, they are paid more money than their parents ever dreamed of earning. Fast-paced, gritty and fun, the film is a compelling inside look at youth culture in India and the emerging and already conflicted middle-class. It’s quite a feat to get the audience to sympathize with telemarketers.

Grand Jury Prize Best Documentary at the Indian Film Festival of LA.

52 min
2006
NFB

Director: Neil Docherty

Website

One quarter of the world’s population has no access to clean drinking water. Many governments lack either the resources or the will to provide this essential commodity to their citizens. In recent years, a number of powerful companies have spotted this crisis and seen a business opportunity.

In thousands of cities and towns throughout the world, often with the involvement of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, these corporations have attempted to privatize the water supply.

Dead in the Water investigates the results of these efforts at privatization in several key locations, and chronicles what many see as the first in a wave of battles in the years to come.

80 min
2005
Soda Soap Productions

Website
ninemillion.org

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars tells the remarkable and ultimately life-affirming story of The Refugee AllStars, a group of six Sierra Leonean musicians who come together to form a band while living as refugees in the Republic of Guinea.

Forced from their homes by a brutal, decade long civil war (1991-2002) in Sierra Leone, the members of the band represent the thousands of untold stories that exist amongst the survivors of the civil war. It took the lives of many of their loved ones and left them with physical and emotional scars, but it could never take away their music.

Through music, The Refugee AllStars have found a place of refuge, a sense of purpose and a source of power. Filmed in the climate of fear pervading the West African refugee camps on the Guinea-Sierra Leone border, the film provides a unique and intimate perspective on war and conflict in the developing world. Following the group over the course of three years, we see them travel to Guinean refugee camps and back to war-ravaged Freetown.

The members of the band struggle with the decision of whether stay in the relative safety of the refugee camps or face their fears by returning to their homes in Sierra Leone. Through the uplifting music and emotional stories of these six characters, the film shows the brutal realities of a war so often dismissed by the mass media as well as the incredible ability of individuals to sustain hope and create art in a landscape dominated by rage and loss.

Sierra Leone’s Refugee All Stars is an inspiring story of survival and rebirth in the wake of the horrors of war and a triumphant testament to the power of music.

95 min
2005
NFB

Filmmaker: German Gutiérrez

Website

One day filmmaker German Gutiérrez got a call from Colombia informing him that there had just been an assassination attempt on his older brother Oscar, a political activist hated by the establishment but adored by the disenfranchised. This film captures German Gutiérrez as he recounts his quest to find the hired gunmen, and at the same time, trys to expose the roots of violence that have taken hold of his native country.

Beautifully filmed, Who Shot My Brother? takes a courageous look at the current state of Columbia - a lawless, neo-liberal nation run by a corrupt middle class. It comments on Colombia’s connection to the USA wherein Americans play the puppet-masters, and drug traffickers, guerrillas, and paramilitaries violently clash in the name of the “war on drugs.”

78 min
2004
First Run Features

Filmmakers: Deb Ellis & Denis Mueller

Website
Trailer

Narrated by Matt Damon and featuring music by Pearl Jam, Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg.

In these turbulent times, Howard Zinn is inspiring a new generation. This acclaimed film looks at the amazing life of the renowned historian, activist and author. Following his early days as a shipyard labour organizer and bombardier in World War II, Zinn became an academic rebel and leader of civil disobedience in a time of institutionalized racism and war. His influential writings shine light on and bring voice to factory workers, immigrant laborers, African-Americans, Native-Americans and the working poor.

Featuring rare archival materials, You Can’t Be Neutral captures the essence of this extraordinary man who has been a catalyst for progressive change for more than 60 years.

80 min
2005
Soda Soap Productions

Website

The Four Seasons Mosaic unveils a remarkable and bold musical endeavour, the reinvention of Antonio Vivaldi's beloved masterpiece, The Four Seasons, for our global village. Filmed in Nunavut, India, China, and Toronto, the documentary explores how different world cultures have responded to the seasons through music, and asks the question, “What if they all came together?”

This film explores how four different world cultures respond to the seasons through music.

“An absolute joy to watch and hear.” (The Globe and Mail)

2005 Gemini nominations for Best Performing Arts Program, Best Photography and Best Editing.

53 min
2005
Community Solution

Filmmakers: Faith Morgan & Pat Murphy

Website

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, Cuba lost over half of its oil imports and survived. During the difficult "Special Period", Cuba was undergoing a transition from a highly industrial society to a sustainable one, from large farms or plantations and reliance on fossil fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, to small organic farms and urban gardens.

Cuba became a living example of how a country can successfully traverse what we all will have to deal with sooner or later, the reduction and loss of finite fossil fuel resources. It's a story of their dedication to independence and triumph over adversity, and a story of cooperation and hope.