documentary

Co-Presentation: Women Wielding Cameras Film Festival

International filmmakers Kimberlee Acquaro and Marlo Poras are among the filmmakers who will speak and answer questions about their award-winning films screening at I.M.O.W.’s Women Wielding Cameras free Film Festival in the San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium on Saturday, June 14.

CAAM Media Fund Project on PBS

CAAM Media Fund Project A DREAM IN DOUBT airs on PBS in the month of May. We hope you will mark your calendars and forward this message to your friends and colleagues.

AMONG B-BOYS: Busy as a B-Boy

I’ve been alerted by my all so loyal blogging fans that I’ve been slacking in my duties, and to that I apologize. So some of the stuff going on in the world of Among B-Boys and Christopher Woon. I’ve been finishing a video for a client (OASES 25th Anniversary celebration tonight!) and been chasing that funding paper trail. I’m also set to join a team promoting the ever so entertaining B-Boy Hella Hung, and projects revolving Hung that are in development.

WHATEVER IT TAKES: There Can Only Be One

What’s more interesting in a documentary? A story about one person or many? If you capture the lives of four or five individuals, it seems like you would have an interesting mix of narrative threads to follow. But if you follow just one person around, you might not get enough action to fill out your film.

BOLINAO 52 Screening & Discussion

BOLINAO 52 Screening & Discussion

KQED Education Network and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at UC Berkeley present a screening and discussion of Bolinao 52, a Vietnamese boat people documentary on Thursday, May 1, at 7:00 pm in Sibley Auditorium (Bechtel Engineering Center) on the UC Berkeley campus. This free screening will feature a discussion with the filmmaker Duc Nguyen.

WHATEVER IT TAKES: We got into Sundance!!!

Well, kind of… I should explain. Since July 2007, WHATEVER IT TAKES has been supported by the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund. Besides CAAM, Sundance has been our other major backer, providing us with not only a large grant, but also much needed creative and technical assistance.

Behind the Scenes: The Story Behind the Documentary OUT OF THE POISON TREE

In 1977, director and producer Beth Pielert was sitting in a Hebrew school class reading about Anne Frank who perished in the Holocaust and was told never to let something like the Holocaust happen again. But even at just age seven and 13,000 miles away, genocide was happening all over again in Cambodia.Years later Pielert met a former Nuremberg prosecutor who sparked a theme for a film – people who were creators of justice after a great injustice had occurred. After being introduced to one of the founders of the Yale Cambodian Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, Pielert began researching films that had been made about Cambodia and discovered many detailed accounts of the genocide, but none that explored the forgiveness or reconciliation process – this was 1998.

Fast forward to 2006 where the subjects and characters of Pielert’s documentary, OUT OF THE POISON TREE, take us on a journey toward understanding what happened in Cambodia and how people have come to forgive after ‘The Killing Fields.’ It follows Thida Buth Mam, an American survivor of the Khmer Rouge, as she returns to her home country with hopes of unlocking the mystery of her father’s disappearance in 1975. Mam’s quest intersects with many silent voices: widows, survivors from remote villages, monks and even former perpetrators. Her search for the truth stirs up fractured pieces of one family’s nightmare, unearths an unimaginable heartbreak and ultimately shines light on a people’s broken silence. OUT OF THE POISON TREE is even more relevant today as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal proceedings continue on, prosecuting those who committed serious crimes during the 1975-1979 regime.For more information and related classroom activities, download or print the nine-page OUT OF THE POISON TREE Educator’s Guide . The documentary is available on DVD for educational purchase or rental from CAAM Educational Distribution.For other similar films about Cambodia, check out REFUGEE, THE FLUTE PLAYER and MONKEY DANCE.

SIKHS IN AMERICA on PBS in May 2008

SIKHS IN AMERICA is a half hour documentary profiling the Sikh community in the United States. The program takes an in-depth look inside the Sikh community with its religious and cultural practices, social and family traditions, and economic and work life.