Friday March 14
6:00 - Opening Night Reception
7:00 - PUSS (4 min)
DHAMMA BROTHERS 76 min, (U.S.A.) 2007
Directed by Kukura, Stein, Phillips
Best Documentary Feature, Woods Hole Film Festival, 2007
Eight years ago, cultural anthropologist, psychotherapist and now documentary filmmaker, Jenny Phillips got on a plane and went to visit a prison in Alabama. The result is The Dhamma Brothers.
Behind high security towers, double-rowed barbed wire and electrical fences, dwells a host of convicts who will never see the light of day. But for some of these men, the influence of an ancient meditation program ignites a change within them. The Dhamma Brothers closely documents the stories of 36 prison inmates who enter into an arduous and intensive Vipassana meditation program. Challenging assumptions about the nature of prisons as places of punishment, rather than rehabilitation, it raises the question: is it possible for these men—some of whom have committed horrendous crimes—to change?
Followed by discussion with filmmakers Andrew Kukura, Anne-Marie Stein, Jenny Phillips
9:15 MAN IN THE CHAIR 107 min, (U.S.A.) 2007
Directed by Michael Schroeder/Berlin International Film Festival, 2007
This award-winning independent drama stars Christopher Plummer as Flash, a prickly Los Angeles curmudgeon whose days working as a gaffer on such cinematic masterpieces as Citizen Kane are now a distant memory. Pursued by teenage film fanatic Cameron (Michael Angarano), Flash finds himself an unlikely mentor, recruiting his eccentric friends at the Motion Picture retirement home to help Cameron chase his dream. Hinging on Plummer’s remarkable performance, MAN IN THE CHAIR is both a love letter to moviemaking and a salute to society’s forgotten heroes.
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