Films & Schedules - Global Classroom

Garbage Dreams explores the rapidly disappearing way of life of the Zaballeen, Cairo's "garbage people."

Garbage Dreams looks at the hopes and dreams of a group of teenage boys whose livelihoods wholly depend on trash. As members of the Zaballeen, a Coptic Christian community on the outskirts of Cairo, they inhabit a small village constructed almost entirely of the garbage they sort for a living. For generations, Cairo has depended on “the garbage people” to collect their trash. The Zaballeen survive by recycling the city’s waste—80 percent of all the garbage they collect—creating what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. In 2003, the city decided to replace the Zabelleen with private, multinational garbage disposal companies. Their giant waste trucks now line the streets, but they are contractually obligated to recycle only 20 percent of what they collect, leaving the rest to rot in giant landfills. The Zabelleen community is finding their way of life disappearing before their eyes.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by World Affairs Council of Oregon.

82 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Middle Eastern.

Heiran and Mahi are in love. He is Afghan, she is Iranian. Her father forbids her to see him, and thus begins a tale of love and prejudice, a modern-day, Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet.

During the post-Soviet period of Taliban rule in Afghanistan, almost three million Afghans fled across the border into Iran, triggering prejudice and strife among their hosts. Heiran is one such refugee. Mahi, a successful 17-year-old student from a poor family herself, falls in love with Heiran. Her father, however, flies into a violent rage when he learns of their relationship and forbids Mahi to see Heiran. And that is only the beginning of the couple’s problems. When they flee to Tehran together, their hard-won bliss is soon threatened again. Heiran is a timeless tale of star-crossed lovers thrown into turmoil by family differences and cultural circumstances—a modern-day, Middle Eastern Romeo and Juliet.

First Feature Film.

88 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Narrative Feature, Global Classroom, Middle Eastern.

Eugenio Polgovsky’s remarkable documentary is a day-by-day study of the lives of several groups of child laborers in rural Mexico.

Polgovsky’s poetic The Inheritors, which he wrote, directed, and edited, immerses us in the daily lives of children who, along with their families, survive only by their unrelenting labor. Polgovsky (Tropic of Cancer, PIFF 29) documents reality in rural Northern Mexico in a way that captures the people’s dignity and humanity as they work long hours, in often hazardous conditions, picking tomatoes, peppers, corn, and beans. The film observes them in other labor routines, such as producing earthen bricks, cutting cane, gathering firewood, ox-plowing fields, and planting by hand, as well as in their artistic endeavors, such as carving wooden figures and weaving baskets to sell. The indelible impression: from the frailest elders to the smallest of toddlers, the cycle of poverty continues.

Filmography: Tropic of Cancer (04).

Best Documentary, Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences.

Sponsored by the Consulate of Mexico.

90 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Spanish Language, Latino.

A revelatory documentary exploring the vision of I.M. Pei, the distinguished 90-year-old Chinese-American architect as he works on his latest commission, the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, one of the most complex building projects of his long career.

One of the most distinguished architects of our time, I.M. Pei has spent his storied career creating designs for some of the world’s most treasured structures, including Paris’s Pyramide du Louvre and The National Gallery in Washington D.C. Learning From Light chronicles Pei’s adventure through a recent and historically monumental challenge: his commission to design the Museum of Islamic Art for Doha, Qatar. Traveling the Islamic world from Spain to Cairo, the 90-year-old modernist architect embarked on a journey of discovery to research the culture, history, and landscape that would inform the project. Pei searched for inspiration in the ancient origins of desert architecture and translated his findings into one of the most complex building projects of his career.

Filmography: Alan and Namoi (92), The Haunted Desert (01), The Work and the Glory (06).

Sponsored by The Nines.

84 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom.

Reporter, a feature documentary about Nicholas Kristof, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the New York Times, reveals the man and his methods, and just how and why real reporting is vital to our democracy, our world-awareness, and our capacity to be a force for good.

Old-fashioned investigative journalists who rely on a unique synthesis of persistence, guile, courage, curiosity, and very thick skins to break the news are increasingly in short supply. One such rare creature is New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof’s columns have earned him two Pulitzer Prizes, convinced Bill Gates to significantly increase his charitable donations, introduced the world to places like Darfur and arguably changed the tide of history. Filmmaker Metzgar trailed after Kristof when he took off to pay a visit to rebel warlord General Nkunda in the middle of a Congolese jungle in 2007. What Reporter reveals is the dangerously high price of reporting on world events at a time when the translation of complex facts half a world away into meaningful, impelling stories has never been as necessary nor as urgent.

Filmography: The Chances of the World Changing (07), Life. Support. Music (08).

92 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom, History.

Sons of Cuba follows three boys at the prestigious Havana Boxing Academy as they prepare for the 2006 National Boxing Championship of Under-12’s.

Sons of Cuba is set in the legendary Havana Boxing Academy, no ordinary institution: this is a boarding school that handpicks nine-year-old boys and turns them into the best boxers in the world. The results have been stunning—Cuba has dominated Olympic boxing for the past quarter of a century. The boys’ duties extend far beyond the ring: they are groomed not only as world-class fighters, but also as international symbols of their country. Castro dubs them “the standard bearers of the Revolution.” Lang follows three young hopefuls through eight dramatic months of training and schooling as they prepare for the biggest event of their lives, Cuba’s National Boxing Championship for Under-12’s. During the season, crisis strikes: Fidel Castro, the boys’ leader and inspiration, is taken ill, and all of Cuba’s Olympic boxing champions defect to the USA, leaving the boys contemplating a future which is altogether different from the one they have been taught to believe in.

First Feature Film.

88 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Spanish Language.

Sweetgrass takes on the mythology of the American West as it observes a seasonal last roundup of sheep by ranchers in Montana.

Lucien Castaing-Taylor, who teaches in Harvard’s Visual Anthropology department, and Ilisa Barbash, of Harvard’s Peabody Museum, describe themselves as “recordists” rather than filmmakers, as they capture a family and their animals in their final season herding sheep in Montana’s spectacular Absaroka-Beartooth mountain range. The herders work like cowboys out of the old West, but unlike cattle, stubborn sheep can be hilarious to watch. From the cockeyed sight of a massive sheep drive down a small town’s empty main drag, to a herder pouring his heart out on a cell phone at the top of a monumental vista, Castaing-Taylor and Barbash sharpen their sense of humor as well as their all-embracing lens to create an unforgettable cinematic experience. “A really intimate, beautifully shot examination of the connection between man and beast.”—The New York Times.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by Alaska Airlines.

105 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Documentary Views, Global Classroom.

Don Hahn's engaging look at the resurgence of the Disney company's animation tradition.

By the mid-1980s, the once mighty Disney Animation Studios were in a slump. Despite a flock of eager and talented young animators, innovation at the studio was held at bay by an old guard of conservative original-era executives. By the end of the 1990s, however, Disney had produced a string of bona fide hits from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? to The Lion King. What can account for this turnaround? Director Don Hahn is a 30-year Walt Disney Studios veteran, and his juicy behind-the-scenes tell-all of this transitional period is an encyclopedia of first-hand footage, drawings, and interviews detailing all the in-fights and ego trips, unequivocal failures and soaring successes, tragic lows and elating highs of the Disney renaissance.

First Feature Film.

Sponsored by Bingo Lewis.

86 Minutes     Digital    

Interests: New Directors, Documentary Views, Global Classroom, Animation, Art.

Ignacio Carrillo, a retired musician, journeys to return his supposedly cursed accordion to his old teacher. Along the way, he picks up a teenage boy who dreams of becoming a wandering musician like Ignacio. This touching odd-couple story mixes the evocative landscapes of Colombia with the magic of its music to tell a timeless tale.

Ignacio Carrillo, old and retired, has spent his life traveling through the villages of Northern Colombia playing traditional songs on his accordion, a legendary instrument that was said to be cursed because it had supposedly been won in a musical duel with the devil himself. When his wife suddenly dies, he bitterly vows to never play again and decides to make one last journey—to return the accordion to the man who gave it to him, his teacher and mentor. Setting out on his donkey, he is set upon by a young teenager with romantic dreams of becoming a nomadic minstrel like Ignacio. Reluctant to take him along, Ignacio relents, but in the course of their journey tries to convince him that the life of a minstrel can only lead to solitude and sadness. This touching odd-couple story mixes the evocative landscapes of Colombia with the magic of its music to tell a timeless tale.

Filmography: The Wandering Shadows (02).

This year’s Colombian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

117 Minutes    

Interests: Oscar Submissions, Narrative Feature, Global Classroom, Spanish Language, Latino, Music.