2009 Academy Award Nominee
for Best Documentary Feature
The Garden
Monday, February 23
7:00 PM
The Oriental Theater
4335 West 44th Ave, Denver
Tickets: $10

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.

The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers:

Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public?

And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”

To Die in Jerusalem
Wednesday, January 28
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 donation and/or 1 hour volunteer

After two 17-year old girls - one an Israeli, the other a Palestinian suicide bomber - die in a Jerusalem market, their mothers confront each other, revealing a microcosm of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the complexity of reconciliation. Through the personal stories of the two families’ losses and by contrasting the lives and deaths of these two teenage girls, TO DIE IN JERUSALEM offers a personal human perspective that is all too often eclipsed by the political issues.

ArgusFest Short Films
Thursday, January 29
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver

ArgusFest typically screens feature length films but over the years I’ve collected some really incredible short films. Tonight is dedicated to sharing those films. Most are documentary but there are a few fiction included as well.

FILMS:

American Outrage
Two grandmothers, Carrie Dann and Mary Dann, have been at the forefront of the Western Shoshone Nation’s struggle for land rights and sovereignty for nearly forty years. American Outrage documents their fight against the U.S. government’s unlawful attempts to take over traditional Shoshone land in Nevada, part of 60 millions acres guaranteed to them in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Over the years the Dann sisters have endured steady harassment from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and they have squared off against international gold mining corporations and the nuclear industry.

Speak Truth to Power
Speak Truth To Power seeks to promote a more just and peaceful world by galvanizing public support for international human rights through cultural, educational, and web-based programs.

Popaganda
A film about the culture-jamming and billboard-liberation antics of Ron English.

The Chinese Wall
A short film about perception and judgement.

A Conversation with Harris
Animated short about a young boy immigrating to America from war-torn Bosnia

Ravens
A father who’s son was killed in war returns the medal awarded to his son.

Voice of a Prophet
An interview with Rick Rescorla, head of security for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, filmed in his office on the 44th floor of the World Trade Center in 1998. A retired Army colonel and veteran of three wars, Rescorla was killed in the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, during which he saved the lives of thousands of WTC employees at the cost of his own life.

A Girl Like Me
Interviews with a variety of black girls in high school concerning the standards of beauty imposed on today’s black girls and how this affects their self-image.

Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness
A film about women’s right to choice.

Copwatch
Activists take to the streets with video cameras to monitor the Police.

The War of 33: Letters from Beirut
An intimate, personal and powerful telling of the story of the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Fridays at the Farm
Feeling disconnected from their food, a filmmaker and his family decide to join a community supported organic farm.

ArgusFest Short Films
Thursday, January 22
7:30 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver

ArgusFest typically screens feature length films but over the years I’ve collected some really incredible short films. Tonight is dedicated to sharing those films. Most are documentary but there are a few fiction included as well.

Queer Youth Film Festival
Thursday, January 22
5:30 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver

Boulder Pride is proud to present the final work of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer youth who participated in our professional filmmaking program! Please join us at the beautiful Mercury Cafe as we showcase and celebrate their work, and kickoff the exciting Colorado Queer Youth Summit! Please support queer youth in our community.

T.V.’s Promised Land
Wednesday, January 21
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 donation and/or 1 hour volunteer

Disney’s Aladdin, Indiana Jones.., Warner Brothers’ cartoons of crazed Middle Eastern villains, international terrorists… These are America’s pop culture depictions of Arabs and Muslims. With T.V.’s Promised Land, director Nicholas Dembowski creates a clever montage of found footage from Hollywood movies, cable news networks, European news broadcasts, American Westerns, etc. The accumulated evidence powerfully asserts that Western media has long demonized a catch-all “Arab/Muslim world” via selective coverage and dehumanizing imagery that boosts the “good vs. evil” rhetoric of politicians and pundits like George W. Bush, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Bill O’Reilly. By offering no narration or other commentary of its own, T.V.’s Promised Land lets news outlets, Hollywood and politicians incriminate themselves.

Death of a Nation
The Timor Conspiracy
Thursday, January 15
7:00 PM
Mercury Cafe
2199 California St, Denver
$5 donation and/or 1 hour volunteer

“A far away country - a people of whom we know nothing.”

This was how British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain described Czechoslovakia when the Nazis invaded Prague in the 1930s.

From 1975, the same could be said of East Timor.

Timor is located at the easternmost end of the Indonesian archipelago and lies 300 miles north of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean.

The western part of the island, formerly a Dutch colony, became part of Indonesia upon independence in 1945. East Timor, a Portuguese colony since the sixteenth century, remained under Portuguese rule and decolonisation began only after the revolution in Portugal of 1974.

A power struggle between political parties within East Timor erupted into civil war in the summer of 1975.

In September of that year, Indonesian troops invaded East Timor, supposedly to thwart this ‘Communist uprising’.

In 1993, John Pilger and David Munro entered East Timor where 18 years earlier, a team of journalists, including Australian Greg Shackleton, were murdered by the Indonesian army for daring to question the validity of the invasion.

Pilger uncovered the shocking complicity of the US and Great Britain governments in the ensuing genocide - the same governments who were willing to go to war with Saddam Hussein for his invasion of Kuwait, but who stood aside as Indonesia broke the exact same UN regulations to rape and pillage East Timor using Western arms.

‘Death of a Nation: the Timor Conspiracy’ is credited with alerting much of the world to the horror of the Indonesian occupation, and the complicity of Western governments. East Timor finally gained its independence in 2000

CheckPoint
Wednesday, January 14
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 donation andor 1 hour volunteer

Over three million Palestinians live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which has been under Israeli military authority since 1967. Israeli director Yoav Shamir documents the impact of the enforced boundaries known as “checkpoints” on the Israeli border guards drafted to monitor them and the Palestinian citizens who must pass through them daily. Shot in a cinema verite style, a style of documentary filmmaking that stresses unbiased realism, the film shows these anonymous, one-time encounters between both sides and the lasting political, social and cultural effects. CHECKPOINT gives a chilling look at the destructive impact on both societies.

Here is a video I filmed of Ramzy Baroud, the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. Ramzy passionately speaks about the humanitarian crisis affecting 1.4 million Palestinians caused by Israel’s blockade of the Gaza strip keeping food, medical supplies, fuel and other necessities from entering. I filmed this in Boulder, Colorado on April 28, 2008. As of the writing of this post Israel was still blockading Gaza with increasing strickness turning away a convoy carrying medicine and causing the UN to close aid centers.

Ramzy Baroud: The Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza from Jason Bosch on Vimeo.

Gaza Strip
Wednesday, January 7
7:00 PM
Hooked on Colfax
3215 E. Colfax Ave, Denver
$5 donation andor 1 hour volunteer

In January of 2001, American director James Longley traveled to the Gaza Strip. His plan was to stay for two weeks to collect preliminary material for a documentary film on the Palestinian Intifada. It was during his stay that Ariel Sharon was elected as Israeli Prime Minister. As violence erupted around him, Longley threw away his return ticket and filmed for the next three months, acquiring nearly 75 hours of footage. Gaza Strip, his first feature documentary, is an extraordinary and painful journey into the lives of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip struggling with the day-to-day trials of the Israeli occupation. Filmed in verité style and without narration, Gaza Strip at last gives voice to a population largely ignored by mainstream media.