FilmProgram

AmericAn center

Freedom RidersRunning Time: 114 minutes

January 10, 2012

Freedom Riders is the powerful, harrowing and ultimately in-spirational story of six months in 1961 that changed the United States forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives—and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment—for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South. Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism.

From award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson (Wounded Knee, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, The Mur-der of Emmett Till), Freedom Riders features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the riders themselves, state

and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the rides first-hand. The documentary is based on Raymond Arsenault’s book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.

Director/ Producer/Writer: Stanley NelsonDirector/Editor: Sally RubinProducer: Laurens GrantExec. Producer: Mark SamelsCinematographer: Robert ShepardEditors: Lewis Erskine, Aljernon TunsilComposer: Tom Phillips

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Louder Than a BombRunning Time: 100 minutes

January 13, 2012

Louder Than a Bomb tells the story of four Chicago, Il-linois-based high school poetry teams, of diverse cultural backgrounds, as they prepare for and compete in the world’s largest youth slam. By turns hopeful and heartbreaking, the film captures the tempestuous lives of these unforgettable kids, exploring the ways writing shapes their world, and vice versa. Louder Than a Bomb is about language as a joyful release, irrepressibly talented teenagers obsessed with mak-ing words dance, and the communities they create along the way. While the topics they tackle are often deeply personal,

what they put into their poems—and what they get out of them—is universal: the defining work of finding one’s voice.

Directors/ Producers: Greg Jacobs, Jon SiskelCinematographer: Stephan MazurekEditor: John Farbrother

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We Still Live HereRunning Time: 56 minutes

January 31, 2012

We Still Live Here tells a remarkable story of cultural revival by the Wam-panoag Native American Indian community of Southeastern Massachu-setts. Their ancestors helped the first English settlers in America, and later lived to regret it. Now they are bringing their original language home again.

The story begins in 1994 when Jessie Little-Doe, an intrepid, 30-something Wampanoag social worker, began having recurring dreams: familiar-looking people from another time addressing her in an incomprehensible language. Jessie was perplexed and a little annoyed— why couldn’t they speak Eng-lish? Later, she realized they were speaking Wampanoag, a language no one had used for more than a century. These events sent her and members of the Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanaog communities on an odyssey that

would uncover hundreds of documents writ-ten in their language, lead Jessie to a master’s degree in linguistics at Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology, and result in something that had never been done by anyone in the US before—bringing a language alive again in an American Indian community after many generations with no Native speakers.

Director/Producer/Writer: Anne MakepeaceCinematographers: Stephen McCarthy, Allie HumenukEditors: Mary Lampson, Anne MakepeaceComposer: Joel Goodman

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AMERICAN CENTER 14 Tawwin Street, Dagon Township

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon PapersRunning Time: 92 minutes

February 3, 2012

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Pa-pers is the story of what happened when a former Pentagon insider, armed only with his conscience, steadfast determination and a file cabinet full of classified documents, decided to challenge an “Imperial” Presidency—not answerable to Congress, the press or the people—in order to help end the Vietnam War.

In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg shook America to its foundations when he smuggled a top-secret Pentagon study to The New York Times that showed how five Presidents consistently lied to the American people about the war in Vietnam that was killing millions and tearing America apart. Facing 115 years in prison on espionage and conspiracy charges, Ellsberg fought back. Ensuing events surrounding the so-called Pentagon Papers led directly to the break-in of the Democratic Party Headquarters at the Washington, DC-based Watergate Hotel, the cover-up and scandal that followed, the downfall of President Richard M. Nixon, and the end of the Vietnam War. Ellsberg’s relentless telling of truth to power, which exposed secret deeds, inspired Americans of all walks of life to forever question the previously unchallenged pronouncements of its leaders. The Most Dangerous Man in America tells the inside story of this pivotal event

that changed history and transformed our nation’s political discourse.

Directors/ Producers: Judith Ehrlich Rick GoldsmithExec. Producer: Jodie EvansCinematographer: Vicente FrancoEditors: Michael Chandler, Lawrence Lerew,Rick GoldsmithWriter: Lawrence Lerew, Rick GoldsmithJudith Ehrlich, Michael ChandlerComposer: Blake Leyh

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