Film Fest

This year we will be showing four great documentaries (showtimes to be announced later):

Bye-Bye Babushka

By Rebecca Feig and Mitchell Rosenbaum. Cinematography: Mitchell Rosenbaum. Persistence of Vision Film Corp. in association with Prolink International. (1997). Director Rebecca Feig introduces us to a film full of wonderfully weathered faces, "babushkas" born in the wake of the Russian Revolution that transformed their motherland and now living past the death of communism. Feig's camera cherishes all of these survivors -- a 90-year-old collective farmworker, a passionate party member and devotee to Lenin, a history professor who paid for political protest with a four-year sentence in Siberia. Though each has her own take on history, these Russian grandmothers -- a generation on the way to extinction -- all find honor in the enduring work of their hands and minds.

Portrait of Boy with Dog

by Robin Hessman and James Longley, Wide Angle Pictures, (1993) This touching documentary focuses on Gosha, a 13-year-old orphan, and his troubled life in modern Russia. Winner of the 1994 Student Academy Award. [weblink]

The Children of Leningradsky

by Hanna Polak (2004) This documentary by Hanna Polak and Andrzej Celinski was nominated for the 2005 Best Documentary Short Subject Academy Award. The film is a shocking report of the tragic daily life of children living at the Moscow railway stations and garbage dumps. [weblink]

The Ballad of Bering Strait

by Nina Seavey, Emerging Pictures (2003) A cinema-verite film following seven Russian teenagers who have come to America to become country music stars. Principle photography began in July 1999 when the band, Bering Strait, entered the United States and began recording their first album in Nashville. The film documents the band responding to the twists and turns of the recording industry, rehearsing for their tour, preparing for their debut concert at the Grand Ole Opry, charting the course for their career with their managers, and living every-day life on the farm where they reside in rural Tennessee.

The crew traveled with the band to their homes in Obninsk, Russia and to their music conservatories in Moscow, documenting how these two girls and five boys became so adept at playing American country music. The film culminates with the band's arrival on the U.S. stage at Wolf Trap National Park.

"The Ballad of Bering Strait" is a two and a half year epic that follows Bering Strait's amazing cultural fusion-coming of age journey in America. [weblink]