CHILDREN – WHAT HOPE FOR TOMORROW?
A one-day festival of films on children’s rights, presented by the United Nations Association Traveling Film Festival Chicago and
the Documentary Department of Columbia College Chicago.
Children everywhere represent the best hope for the future, but increasingly they are victims of events and decisions beyond their control. On every continent the personal potential and rights of young people are being eroded – through exploitation, abuse and neglect, and as victims of war, preventable disease and social injustice.
The Documentary Department of Columbia College and the United Nations Association Greater Chicago Chapter are joining forces to present a day of exceptional and rarely seen films on the Rights of Children.
The films have been selected as part of the United Nations Association Film Festival (UNAFF) – an independent project of the not-for-profit United Nations Association.
WHEN: November 19, 2005 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (schedule below)
WHERE: 1104 S. Wabash Ave., 8th floor Film Row Cinema
HOW MUCH: Free for Columbia students; all others $10 suggested donation per half-day session
A BUFFET LUNCH will be available from 12.30 in the Cinema lobby.
MORE INFO: Russell Porter, Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary
Columbia College Chicago
1104 S. Wabash St, Suite 407
312.344.6732 or www.unaff.org
Screening Schedule
9:00 – 10:45
LALEE’S KIN—THE LEGACY OF COTTON Directed by Deborah Dickson, Susan Fromke and Albert Maysles (88 min)
Through the window of a school facing closure because of students’ falling grades (part of the “legacy of cotton”), Lalee’s Kin explores poverty in the Mississippi Delta area. This timely and well-made film provides a well-crafted, intimate portrait of children and their families struggling against the odds.
Plus: VALENTINE 1955 Directed by Susan B. Price (4 min)
This short, simple animation includes filmmaker narration that confronts, guiltily, the filmmaker’s unthinking childhood racism.
10:45 – 11:45
BOMBIES Directed by Jack Silberman (58 min)
The government still denies the secret CIA-run saturation bombing of Laos by the US Airforce during the Vietnam War. Bombies is a horrifying Canadian study of the legacy of this event and of “bombies” themselves, apple-sized, toy-colored fragmentation bombs designed to maim and dismember. They are unearthed daily in Laos. Ninety million bombies were dropped, eventually resulting in over 20,000 civilian deaths, most of them children.
11:45 – 1:15
STOLEN CHILDHOODS Directed by Len Morris (85 min)
Child labor engulfs the lives of 246 million children today. Narrated by Meryl Streep and focusing on the stories of laboring poor children from eight countries (including the US), Stolen Childhoods includes extraordinary footage of poor working conditions, child slaves and bonded laborers.
Buffet lunch available from 12.30 to 2 pm
1:15 – 1:45
COMING TO SAY GOODBYE: STORIES OF AIDS IN AFRICA Directed by John Ankele and Anne Macksoude (30 min)
This award-winning series of moving first-person stories, especially those of children, shows us the full scourge of the disease that is decimating almost an entire continent.
1:45 – 2:45
A GREAT WONDER: LOST CHILDREN OF SUDAN Directed by Kim Shelton (61 min) This film traces the lives of the young people who walked away from war and famine in southern Sudan and through three countries, only to arrive in white middle-America. Problems with cultural assimilation, homesickness, finding acceptance and planning for a future are revealed by these bright, traumatized young men and women.
2:45 – 4:00
JUVIES Directed by Leslie Neale (66 min)
Juvies arose out of video classes conducted in a California jail by the filmmakers. Narrated by Mark Wahlberg, Juvies studies the disturbing consequences of “get tough” laws that increasingly attempt to sentence young offenders, some of them condemned to virtual life sentences for offenses they committed as an outcome of their own abuse and gullibility, through the adult system.
4:00 – 5:00
DEAR EUROPE Directed by Ingeborg Beugel and Cees Overgaauw (54 min)
Two youths from Guinea freeze to death in the wheel-well of a plane as they try to get to Brussels. Among their remains, police find a poignant letter addressed to the leaders of Europe, pleading for assistance to relieve the grinding poverty in their homeland.
Plus: SADAKO’S CRANES Directed by Yvette O’Neill (5 min)
Sadako Sasaki was three years old when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and as result she contracted leukemia, known in Japan as the atom bomb disease. While in the hospital, Sadako tried to fold one thousand origami paper cranes, which according to legend, would make one’s wish come true.
About UNAFF
Established eight years ago at Stanford University by film critic and educator Jasmina Bojic in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UNAFF screens documentaries by international filmmakers dealing with topics such as human rights, environmental survival, women's issues, children, refugee protection, homelessness, racism, disease control, universal education, war and peace. For more details please visit www.unaff.org
