Today at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival

Today, the Malco Theater in Hot Springs will show many new selections at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. There are also a few repeats from earlier in the week. The description of the repeating films is in previous posts.
Tuesday, October 19
10 a.m.
BAG IT
USA, 78 minutes, Suzan Beraza / Judy Kohin / Michelle Hill
Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every five minutes, disposable bags that they throw away without much thought. But where is away? Where do the bags and other plastics end up, and at what cost to the environment, marine life and human health? Bag It follows "everyman" Jeb Berrier as he navigates our plastic world. Jeb is not a radical environmentalist, but an average American who decides to take a closer look at our cultural love affair with plastics. Film maker is present.
10:05 a.m.
HUNGRY IS THE TIGER
Indonesia, 73 minutes, Gary Hayes / Rob Allyn
From rice paddies and slums, mosques and village clinics, struggling farmers, grieving parents and the famed Milkman of India offer heart-rending, but uplifting, testimony to the idea that self-sufficiency is more than a dream: The farmers of the world can feed the children of the world. Woven with parables of wayang storyteller Sujiwo Tejo and narrated by Indonesia’s most celebrated actress, Christine Hakim, HARIMAU is a story of hope, a plan to help the world’s children to become tigers, healthy and strong.
11:40 a.m.
MISTER ROGERS & ME
USA, 80 minutes. Benjamin Wagner / Christofer Wagner
America’s Favorite Neighbor, PBS icon, Fred Rogers, sends a young MTV producer on a quest for depth and simplicity amidst a shallow and complex media landscape. Benjamin Wagner first met Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood creator and star, Fred Rogers, at Rogers’ summer home on Nantucket, Massachusetts. His mother rented the cottage next door, so Mister Rogers really was his neighbor.
11:45 a.m.
BIRDMAN
USA, 10 minutes, Jenni Morello
Brian Gibson owns Bird Camp, a specialty bird shop in Manhattan, New York. This film follows one man’s dream to keep the shop alive and the commitment he gives to carrying for these special birds. Film maker is present.
11:45 a.m.
THE CHESS SHOP
USA, 23 minutes, Harry Bainbridge
The old Chinese proverb goes "Life is like a game of Chess, changing with each move." And at The Chess Shop in the West Village of New York City, nothing could be truer. Day in and day out there are new players and new matches, new characters and new stories. Players of all ages, races, and nationalities come together at The Chess Shop and at the end of everyday everyone is part of the same family, The Chess Shop family. World premiere, film maker is present.
11:45 a.m.
TOYLAND
USA, 68 minutes, Ken Sons
Toyland takes you inside the high stakes world of the 22 billion dollar toy industry, where fun and fortune awaits those who know how to get inside the mind of a child. Meet the people behind the biggest playthings in history as we follow the ups and downs of game designer, Tim Walsh, as he tries to takes his own invention to market.
11:45 a.m.
TUNED IN
USA, 6 minutes, Kevin Gordon
From a young age, Steve McGreevy was fascinated by the natural world and by amateur radio. When he discovered that nature produced its own radio signals, he began a quest to capture these sounds, a quest that has taken him to the most remote parts of the continent. Sometimes called the ‘Music of the Planet,’ this otherworldly sound scape surrounds us all the time but few ever get to listen to it. This film explores Steve’s motivations and takes the viewer on a sonic journey into this hidden world.
11:45 a.m.
A TINY SPARK
USA, 21 minutes. Franco Sacchi
In the desert of Nevada, His Excellency Kevin Baugh has founded the independent Republic of Molossia and created a faux secession. With a population of 6, including his 3 faithful dogs, and a complex infrastructure that ranges from a miniature railroad system to a Customs Booth at the front door, Molossia provokes us and makes us reflect upon the meaning of sovereignty and the limits of our individual freedoms. World premiere, film maker is present.
1:25 p.m.
BOWLING BLIND
1:25 p.m.
OLD PEOPLE DRIVING
2:45 p.m.
INGELORE
USA, 40 minutes, Frank Stiefel / Rick Revell
Ingelore Herz Honigstein is a deaf Jewish woman born in Germany. She says her first word at age six and completes her first sentence at twelve. She offers a unique prospective to the events leading to the Holocaust and her escape to America. Her story includes a brutal rape by Nazi cadets, a kind NYC doctor who performs an illegal abortion in 1940 and her lessons of personal freedom. Ingelore is more than a biography it is a meditation on freedom both physical and emotional.
2:45 p.m.
REMEMBRANCE "YIZKOR"
Czech/USA, 23 minutes, Ruth Fertig
My grandparents survived the Holocaust but they never talked about it. After discovering a memoir my grandmother had written in the last years of her life, I finally learned their story, seven years after her death and ten years after his. Yizkor uses my grandmother’s own words, along with animation, archival material, and present-day Super 8 footage, to tell that story, one of survival and resilience in the face of crushing loss.
2:50 p.m.
THE DESERT OF FORBIDDEN ART
Russian Federation, 80 minutes, Tchavdar Georgiev / Amanda Pope
During the Soviet rule artists who stay true to their vision are executed, sent to mental hospitals or Gulags. Their plight inspires young Igor Savitsky. He pretends to buy state-approved art but instead daringly rescues 40,000 forbidden fellow artist’s works and creates a museum in the desert of Uzbekistan, far from the watchful eyes of the KGB. Savitsky amasses an eclectic mix of Russian Avant-Garde art. Ben Kingsley, Sally Field and Ed Asner voice the diaries and letters of Savitsky and the artists.
4:15 p.m.
GREENLIT
4:15 p.m.
LAST NIGHT AT THE DRIVE-IN
4:35 p.m.
COMMON GROUND
USA, 27 minutes, Vera Brunner-Sung
Abandonment, decay; demolish, rebuild: Common Ground follows the life cycle of land in Southern California to observe the way economics are shaping the terrain. A portrait of place and process, where perspectives shift to question our relationship with the past, designs on the future, and notions of progress in today’s world. Film maker is present.
4:35 p.m.
MILLTOWN, MONTANA
Germany/USA, 34 minutes, Rainer Komers
Milltown, Montana is an elegiac excursion across a magnificent landscape deeply scarred by man. Rainer Komers documents what was once the largest mining region in the United States, now contaminated by toxic substances and heavy metals, and seemingly trapped in a post- industrial phase of standstill.
5:35 p.m.
PERRY COUNTY
USA, 27 minutes, Matt Durning / N’Jeri Eaton
Perry County is a half-hour film documenting the controversial decision to dump millions of tons of coal ash waste from the 2008 spill in Kingston, Tennessee, at a landfill in this poor, disenfranchised, and predominantly black county in rural, west central Alabama. The long-term health and environmental risks, wholly dismissed by local politicians, have raised a chorus of concern among local residents who question the true cost of this supposed progress. Film maker is present.
5:35 p.m.
SHELTER IN PLACE
U. K., 48 minutes, Zed Nelson
Texan industries are legally permitted to release millions of tons of toxic pollutants into the air each year, plus thousands of tons more in accidental or unscheduled releases. When these incidents happen, local residents are told to stay in their homes and tape up their windows and doors. This procedure is called Shelter in Place. Communities living on the fence-line of Texan industry are usually poor, African American and powerless to protest.
6 p.m.
GOODBYE, HOW ARE YOU?
Serbia, 55 minutes, Boris Mitic
The wittiest, blackest political aphorisms of the modern era are saluted in this entertaining Serbian travelogue detailing how citizens use language to critique – and resist – the madness of politics. A fascinating essay-film in the tradition of Chris Marker and Jean-Luc Godard, and a primer on Balkan intellectual thought, resistance, and history.
6 p.m.
OVERNIGHT STAY
USA, 9 minutes. Daniela Sherer
Overnight Stay uses hand-drawn animation to illustrate an 83-year-old woman’s vivid memory of an event during World War II that likely saved her life when she was a young girl. On a cold night in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941, she was taken in by strangers and given a place to sleep. This memorable film reminds us of the power of one simple act of kindness.
7:15 p.m.
JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD
USA, 94 minutes, Tamra Davis
Centered on a rare interview that director and friend Tamra Davis shot with Basquiat over twenty years ago, this definitive documentary chronicles the meteoric rise and fall of the young artist. With compassion and psychological insight, Tamra Davis details the mysteries that surround this charismatic young man, an artist of enormous talent whose fortunes mirrored the roller coaster quality of the downtown scene he seemed to embody.
7:30 p.m.
MY LIFE WITH CARLOS "MI VIDA CON CARLOS"
Chile, 83 minutes, German Berger-Hertz
My Life with Carlos is an elegantly crafted, heartbreaking, personal documentary about a man, director German Berger-Hertz, who decides to confront the painful memories associated with his father’s death. Carlos Berger was a resistance fighter who was tortured and murdered by Pinochet during the years of the military dictatorship. His death tore his family apart, and they never truly spoke about what happened until German brought them together for this film.
9:05 p.m.
SINGULARITY IS NEAR
USA, 90 minutes, Anthony Waller / Ray Kurzweil
While the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes will be profound, and the threats they pose considerable, celebrated futurist Ray Kurzweil presents a view of the coming age that is both a dramatic culmination of centuries of technological ingenuity and a genuinely inspiring vision of our ultimate destiny.
9:20 p.m.
MEZZANOTTE OBSCURA
USA, 24 minutes, Lori Petchers
An inside look into an artist Thomas Mezzanotte’s creative process as he constructs an innovative body of work. Scientific in nature, but aesthetically compelling, the nude images blur the line between art and science and beget the question ‘What really is visual truth? Viewer discretion is advised.
9:20 p.m.
OLIVIERO TOSCANI - THE RAGE OF IMAGES
Germany, 44 minutes, Peter Scharf
A dead soldier’s blood-soaked t-shirt; a nun kissing a priest; a gaunt young man with AIDS; all were images used by the fashion label Benetton to advertise its clothing in the 90’s. The provocative campaign was the work of Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, a man who brought topics such as war, racism, the death penalty, and the misery of refugees into the business of advertising. The film examines the life and work of the controversial artist and pioneer of anti-advertising, Oliviero Toscani.