DJ Joplin (LA)
DJ Saffiyah (Santa Fe)
DJ Kabir (Albuquerque)

Projection art provided by Field & Frame

Cash bar provided by Birds of Paradise. No one under 21 allowed. Anyone without ID will be turned away at the door.

Please join us at the at the for this historic event!

Tickets available at the Film Office, 102 Gold Ave. Sw
or online here.

Todd Scalise and Joe Spear are artists in Santa Fe that have come together in collaboration to design the Dennis Hopper Lifetime Achievement Award to be presented at this year’s Albuquerque Independent Film Festival. The design of the award is highly unique and portrays Dennis Hopper’s contribution to Independent Film. Spray paint cans and camera lenses are cast in bronze and then fused together in a Tetradecagon (14-sided shape) as an artistic expression for ‘independence’. Dennis Hopper has collected cutting-edge art for a number of decades and this award will be a perfect fit for his already elaborate collection of American art.

Todd Scalise is an artist and designer in Santa Fe with a passion for applying his vision onto almost anything. Developing an application for art is the basis of Todd’s professional work. Since studying painting in Rome during the early nineties, Todd has created and exhibited an elaborate body of work. His work has been selected to hang in the Andy Warhol Museum, The Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and a number of galleries in New York City. Todd’s designs have appeared in several national magazines such as The Progressive for Howard Zinn, Juxtapoz, and Parade Magazine. Recently, Todd appeared on the six week TV mini-series, Best Life Ever, to talk about his unique approach to making and marketing his designs. Todd has served in higher education as a Professor of Art and Design for institutions in Pennsylvania and New Mexico and has distinguished himself by receiving two Heinz Endowments. Currently, Todd exhibits large-scale paintings, creates eye-catching artwork for his clients, and designs highly collectable art rugs that cleverly blur the line between art and design.
www.toddscalise.com

Joe Spear was born in Philadelphia and received his BFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art. Geometric sensibilities arising from a childhood passion for origami characterizes his sculptural aesthetic. Spear starts the majority of his sculptures as paper models. These forms are then scaled up onto wax sheets and folded or cut into sheet metal to be manipulated by hand. Through his intimate knowledge of the beautiful geometry intrinsic in origami, Spear is a part of an artistic linage using expression to point out the positive aspects of life.

www.metalorigami.com
jsauergallery.com

Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920’s jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as “the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told.”

SYNOPSIS

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, VISUAL ACOUSTICS celebrates the life and career of Julius Shulman, the world’s greatest architectural photographer, whose images brought modern architecture to the American mainstream. Shulman, who passed away this year, captured the work of modern architects since the 1930s, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Pierre Koenig. His images epitomized the singular beauty of Southern California’s modernist movement and brought its iconic structures to the attention of the general public. This unique film is both a testament to the evolution of modern architecture and a joyful portrait of the magnetic, whip-smart gentleman who chronicled it with his unforgettable images.

VISUAL ACOUSTICS won the Mercedes-Benz Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Audience Award at the Austin Film Festival, and the Grand Jury Prize at the Lone Star International Film Festival.

ABOUT JULIUS SHULMAN (1910 – 2009)

Photographer of architecture, naturalist, educator, and commentator on urban form. One of the leading architectural photographers of the 20th century, Shulman developed close association with the modernist architects, principally those active in Southern California such as Gregory Ain, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, and R.M. Schindler. Shulman’s images played a major role in crafting the image of the Los Angeles and “Southern California lifestyle” to the rest of the nation and world during the 1950s and 1960s. A prolific author, consultant, lecturer, exhibitor, and editor of his own vast archive, Shulman remained active up until his passing away in July of 2009.

Author: Philip J. Ethington, University of Southern California

Director, writer and star of this iconic film, Dennis Hopper, will be in attendance at the screening.

Easy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers (played by Fonda and Hopper) who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom. The success of Easy Rider helped spark the New Hollywood phase of filmmaking during the late sixties.

A landmark counterculture film, and a “touchstone for a generation” that “captured the national imagination”, Easy Rider explores the societal landscape, issues, and tensions in the United States during the 1960s, such as the rise and fall of the hippie movement, drug use, and communal lifestyle. Easy Rider is legendary for its use of real drugs in its portrayal of marijuana and other substances.

When a young school teacher, Rosie (Julia Stiles), moves to town she not only begins dating Joel, but also joins Sarah Malcom in fighting the development. This sets in motion events that will draw all the parties together. Forcing them to make a choice about what is right and wrong and come face to face with the ghosts of their past.

website: www.gospelhillfilm.com

Neshoba tells the story of a Mississippi town still divided about the meaning of justice, 40 years after the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. In the summer of 1964, these three young men, two whites from New York and a black from Mississippi — went to Philadelphia, a small town in the heart of Neshoba County, to register black voters and investigate a church burning. When their bodies were found 44 days later buried beneath an earthen dam, many people rationalized the men came looking for trouble and got what they deserved. For more than forty years, Mississippi refused to prosecute any of the Klansmen directly responsible for the murders, even though they bragged openly about what they did. While the killers continued to live and prosper, most townspeople remained silent, as if the murders never happened.

In 2004, a multi-racial coalition of Neshoba County citizens got together for the first time in 40 years to erase the stain from their town by publicly pressuring the State to bring murder charges against the so-called “Mississippi Burning” murderers. Meeting with opposition and even hostility from some of their neighbors, members of the Philadelphia Coalition were resolute in their call for justice, healing and racial reconciliation. Finally, on January 6, 2005, the State of Mississippi indicted the alleged mastermind of the killings, Edgar Ray Killen, an 80-year-old Baptist preacher and notorious racist.

The filmmakers gained unprecedented access to Killen, following him from shortly after his indictment through his conviction, 41 years to the day after the murders. For the first time ever, the film captures the outspoken views of a Klan member charged with a civil rights murder and takes viewers on a journey into the mindset of a man who, to this day, feels the murders of two Jews and an African-American were justified as “self-defense” of a way of life. Through exclusive interviews with Killen, intimate interviews with the families of the victims, and candid interviews with black and white Neshoba County citizens with diverse points of view, the film exposes the social and political forces that perpetuated state-sanctioned terrorism and created an atmosphere of hate and fear, allowing murderers to walk free.

Neshoba takes an unflinching look at ordinary citizens struggling to find peace with their town’s violent, racist past. By interweaving new and archival footage, the 90-minute documentary paints a picture of Neshoba County from 1964 to 2005, using the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner case as a barometer of what has changed for both blacks and whites since the murders. The film examines the complicity of local, state and federal government who deliberately fanned the flames of hate and violence. It questions why the State took four decades to seek justice, and why only one person was singled out when at least eight others who participated in the murders are still alive. Finally, the film explores whether the prosecution of one unrepentant Klansman constitutes justice and whether healing and reconciliation are possible without telling the unvarnished truth.

website: www.neshobafilm.com

Featuring the lives of:
Waleed Khalid – Lawyer & religious moderate
Rabia Aamir – Journalist & working mother
Mohsin Waraich – Aspiring Politician
Tara Mehmood – Event & PR Manager

website: www.talkingfilmain.com

The film is often compared to Koyaanisqatsi, the first of the Qatsi films by Godfrey Reggio of which Fricke was cinematographer. Baraka’s subject matter has some similarities—including footage of various landscapes, churches, ruins, religious ceremonies, and cities thrumming with life, filmed using time-lapse photography in order to capture the great pulse of humanity as it flocks and swarms in daily activity. The film also features a number of long tracking shots through various settings, including one through former German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Tuol Sleng (in Cambodia) turned into museums honoring their victims: over photos of the people involved, past skulls stacked in a room, to a spread of bones. In addition to making comparisons between natural and technological phenomena, such as in Koyaanisqatsi, Baraka searches for a universal cultural perspective: for instance, following a shot of an elaborate tattoo on a bathing Japanese yakuza mobster with one of Native Australian tribal paint.

The movie was filmed at 152 locations in 24 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, China, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Nepal, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States. It contains no dialogue. Instead of a story or plot, the film uses themes to present new perspectives and evoke emotion purely through cinema. The film was the first in over twenty years to be photographed in the 70mm Todd-AO format.

The title Baraka is a word that means blessing in many different languages. The score by Michael Stearns and featuring music by Dead Can Dance, L. Subramaniam, Ciro Hurtado, Inkuyo, Brother and David Hykes, is noticeably different from the minimalist one provided by Philip Glass for Koyaanisqatsi. The film was produced by Mark Magidson, who also produced and directed the film Toward the Within, a live concert performance by Dead Can Dance. A sequel to Baraka, Samsara, is planned to be released in 2010.