New York Peace Film Festival: New York Peace Film Festival

NEW YORK PEACE FILM FESTIVAL
~ Films About Peace ~

Saturday, Sept. 27 - Sunday, Sept. 28, 2008
at Anthology Film Archives: 32 Second Ave. New York, NY 10003

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Saturday, September 27, 2008

On A Paper Crane; Tomoko’s Adventure (27 min) – 3:00pm

Animation Short / Directed by Seiji Arihara, Animation Production by Mushi Production

Tomoko is a young school girl living in Hiroshima. One day during her summer vacation, she visits the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum alone. It was for a project called “My Adventure” as part of her homework. The unbelievable facts about atomic bombing of Hiroshima overwhelm Tomoko. Shocked and exhausted, she strolls to the Peace Memorial Park and there she meets a mysterious girl. The girl’s name is Sadako. She was exposed to radiation at the age of 2 and died when she was 10. Sadako guides Tomoko to strange tour.

PEACE (17 min) – 4:00pm – NY Premiere

Documentary Short & Student Film / A film by Stephen Sotor / Trace Gaynor

Stephen and Trace, two 15 year olds from Chicago, ask the question “What is Peace?”. They send one-time use video cameras to students in Pakistan, Kurdistan, India, Angola, Vanuatu, Australia, China, Russia, Serbia, West Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, and Japan asking them opinion of Peace. PEACE is the compilation of film footage from various countries sent back to Stephen and Trace.

ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB (57 min) – 4:45pm

Documentary Feature / Directed by Carey Schonegevel McKenzie

ORIGINAL CHILD BOMB reveals the human cost of nuclear weapons. Declassified footage, photographs, drawings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and testimonies of mothers, brothers and soldiers show the nuclear past. The present is explored through the lens of “security” and “weapons of mass destruction”. The film is a wake-up call and an invitation to action.

On Paper Wings (67 min) – 6:15pm – NY Premiere

Documentary Feature / A film by Illana Sol

In 1945, a Japanese balloon bomb claimed the lives of the only people killed on the continental U.S. as the result of enemy action during WWII. Forty years later, the decision to fold a thousand paper cranes would unite the Japanese and American civilians who were affected by the incident.

*Q&A session with filmmaker

The Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (118 min) – 8:15pm –NY Premiere

Feature / Directed by Kiyoshi Sasabe, Production by Art Port, Produced by Toji Kato, Masaaki Usui, Shin Yoneyama, Cast: Rena Tanaka, Kumiko Aso, Masaaki Sakai

Since the atomic bomb, Hiroshima has finally recovered its energy, after 13 years of rebuilding the town. Minami, who lives in Hiroshima together with her mother, has just been proposed to by her co-worker, Uchikoshi. But she has difficulty accepting it. The bomb had taken the lives of her family, and left her with the unforgettable nightmarish experience which is now a deep sar in her heart. Uchikoshi tries to tenderly hold her and the scar, but Minami starts to show effects of radiation exposure.

Present day: Half a century after Minami died at the age of 26, Nanami lives with her retired father Asahi and her brother in Tokyo. One day, she follows Asahi, who left without a word, to Hiroshima. Following her father’s footsteps, she experiences the lives of her family, and discovers her roots…

*Q&A session with Producer/Art Director

（C）2007「夕凪の街桜の国」製作委員会

Sunday, September 28, 2009

Hidden in the Sand (38 min) – 3:00pm – NY Premiere

Documentary Short / Student film / A film by Vasia Markides

Famagusta, a city in the Turkish-occupied part of Cyprus, was evacuated during the 1974 invasion and still remains surrounded by barbed wire and under surveillance by the Turkish military. While examining the fate of this “hostage ghost city”, the film explores the ugly effects of nationalism and propaganda in the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities.

*Q&A session with filmmaker

Listen to Iran's People: A Call for Peace (30 min) – 3:50pm – NY Premiere

Documentary Short / A Video by Margot Smith

Peace delegates from Fellowship of Reconciliation visited Iran in March, 2007. The 23 were welcomed by Iran's vice president, and were told by students, professors and imams, and people on the street that Iranians all want peace. The video shows historic religious diversity--Zoroastrians, Jews and Christians-- the controversial Holocaust Conference, their desire for nuclear power (but not nuclear weapons). Iranians sent a message to the United States that they desire to maintain peace.

*Q&A session with filmmaker

Arid Lands (98 min) – 5:10pm

Documentary feature / A film by Grant Aaker / Josh Wallaert

Sixty years ago, the Hanford nuclear site produced plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Today, it is the focus of the largest environmental cleanup in history. Arid Lands takes us into a world of sports fishermen, tattoo artists, housing developers, and radiation scientists living and working in a unique landscape of the American West.

*Q&A session with filmmaker

Wings of Defeat (89 min) – 7:30pm

Wings of Defeat: Another Journey (39 min) – 9:15pm

Documentary Feature / A film by Risa Morimoto / Linda Hoaglund

Wings of Defeat brings viewers behind the scenes of World War II’s Pacific theater to reveal the truth about the Kamikaze—the “suicide bombers” of their day. Interviews with surviving kamikaze, rare battle footage and Japanese propaganda reveal a side of WWII never before shown on film. American vets from the greatest generation tell harrowing tales of how they survived attacks. Wings of Defeat shatters the myth of the fanatical kamikaze to reveal a generation of men forced to pay for an empire’s pride with their lives.

*Q&A session with filmmaker

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Advance tickets available at www.smarttix.com