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Show r'X .1 UG' UVtAi ,3 .... U I , r j r ; . J r Iff ; - - -- - ?- - In "The World of Tomorrow," the wonders of the 1939 World's Itair are surveyed by (from left) Fair Corporation President Grover Whalen, Charlie McCarthy, Edgar Bergen and New York Mayor Fiorcllo LaGuardia. Film documentaries focus on turn-of-the-century Americana, gay movement, Solidarity Yossi Klein is seen (center) as a child in the film "Kaddish." The son of a Holocaust survivor, he was trained to be a protestor early, to let the horror happen again. T' .,',-' - ' f " -' i , ! - L I nuiiTll ill nmiMlin in liril-imil imiiiriiTiinum - i, iiiimiiih , i mr ir - rBirmnnii II 1 Lillie is one of the street people form the documentary "Streetwise" a picture of tarnished innocence as strange as the photo (Page Bl ) from "A Love in Germany." Only this is real. by Rick B rough Here are the films entered in the documentary segment of the independent inde-pendent film competition of the U.S. Film Festival. "America and Lewis Hine A young immigrant mother clutches her baby, along with an American flag. With this and 15,000 other photographs, Lewis Hine documented our country in the early 20th century. ' From 1904-09, he photographed .arrivals at Ellis Island. Later, he "helped to introduce federal regulations regula-tions of child labor with his pictures of mines and textile mills, where a child earned $1.20 for a lace collar that took 70 hours to make. Later, he was the official photographer for the construction of the Empire State building. The film shows us Harold McClain, the last surviving ironworker iron-worker for the building. The director is Nina Rosenblum, with Jason Robards as the voice of Hine and Maureen Stapleton as the voice of social activist Margeret Byington. Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community In the '40s a war musical called "You're in the Army Now" nervously acknowledges the existence exist-ence of homosexuals with a male chorus of soldiers in drag. (Off to the side, not costumed, is star Ronald Reagan! In the '50s, a gay woman in the military is pressured to inform on fellow lesbians, and promised an honorable discharge if she does. When she complies, she is instead ejected with an "undesirable discharge" dis-charge" rating reserved exclusively exclusive-ly for cases of "sexual perversion.''' In 1967, CBS Reports interviews a gay, hiding his identity behind a potted palm. With these and many other incidents, this documentary examines exam-ines the history of the homosexual movement before it emerged in 1969 after a confrontation with police at New York's Stonewall Inn. The film is directed by Greta Schiller and , Robert Rosenburg. The Business of America Paul and Maureen Trout once owned a swimming pool and a cabin. Now they have to work as, respectively, a security guard and a convenience-store clerk. While they believed free enterprise would help them, says this documentary, major corporations devoted their resources to acquisition instead of retrofitting American industry for the future. The film suggests laborers can guide their own futures with such measures as worker ownership and community-development banks. Far From Poland (Out of competition. ) Director Jill Godmilow wanted to make a film about Solidarity, but could not get a visa into the country. She was also dissatisfied with the canned film material sent to her by Solidarity. Her movie, thus, is both about Poland and her personal search to define the subject. In a film that questions the "truth" of documentaries, she re-enacts Polish incidents based on testimony, stages fictional scenes where she argues with an apolitical boyfriend, and uses other "distancing" "distanc-ing" devices. (The testimony of a Polish censor is underlaid with a laugh track!) The Gospel According to Al Green In the early 1970s, Al Green charted a career as a soul singer that rivaled Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding. But in 1973, Green was re-bom one night after a concert at Disney World. A year later, a woman scalded him with a potful of hot grits (after he rejected her proposal of marriage) and then killed herself. In 1976, he founded a church in Memphis and left show business to .preach full-time. Filmmaker Robert Mugge examines the life of a man who sings "You're the one I love, but He's the one I need." Hopi: songs of the Fourth World The Hopis believe that the world has been destroyed three times, but each time, the Hopis regenerated, like the corn that is the focus of their culture. The film examines the Hopi society that has existed in northern Arizona for a thousand years, where now women make traditional baskets in kitchens with modern appliances. Director Pat Ferraro made her film after gradually gaining the trust of the Hopis, who still remember the sensationalistic documentarians of the early 20th century. The film is narrated by folksinger Ronnie Gilbert. In Heaven There is No Beer When Minnesota governor Rudy Perpich appeared at a polka festival, a torch-bearer accidentally set him on fire. The crowd put out the fire with beer. (What else?) The polka scene is a happy, little-noticed sub-culture that gathers in conventions conven-tions across the country. Participants are known by their T-shirts that say "Wanna Hop? Ask Me!" Director Les Blank is known for films like "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe." Jack Kerouac's America (Out of competition.) To many people the Beat Generation meant only one person Jack Kerouac, who allegedly wrote his novel "On the Road" in three weeks while on as "sympathetic," and who died from drink in 1969 at age 47. In this docu-drama, Jack Coulter plays 'Kerouac. The film is directed by John Andonelli. Kaddish Zoltan Klein was a Hungarian Jew who escaped from the Nazis in World War n. Emigrating to Brooklyn, he brought up his son Yossi to be always watchful of a second Holocaust. Instead of playing, little Yossi planned escape routes through the sewers in case the Reich rose again. Like other Holocaust children, he became a "professional demonstrator." demon-strator." And eventually he suffered a nervous breakdown. Director Steve Brand, whose own parents escaped Nazi Europe, worked five years on this film about a young Jew's conflicting feelings about his heritage. herit-age. Seventeen PBS, with sponsorship from Xerox, intended to make a six-part series about Muncie, Indiana, updating the "Middletown" book of viie 1920s, by sociologists Robert and Helen Lynd,- that studied the same town. It became a five-part series when PBS objected to the raw language in "Seventeen," the segment seg-ment about the town's teenagers, , and that program was excised. In this work by Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines, the teens are bored, confused and belligerent. Strategic Trust: The Making of a Nuclear-Free Palau Palau is one of the Pacific Trust islands given to the U.S. after Worid War II under a U.N. Charter. In the process of working toward independence, inde-pendence, the populace voted overwhelmingly in 1979 for a constitution that banned the testing, usage, storage and dumping of nuclear material. (They remembered the testing at Bikini A toll.) Since then, says this film by director James Heddle, the U.S. has stalled independence in an effort to get rid of the nuclear-free provision. Reagan's Rea-gan's ambassador to Palau calls the movie "propaganda." You decide. Streetwise After writing a Time Magazine article on the street kids of Seattle, Cheryl McCall decided the story had to be told through film also. Here you'll meet characters like Patti and Munchkin, who conduct an oddly innocent love affair in a life where survival means theft, drugs and prostitution; Kim, who flees a middle-class home because she doesn't feel loved; and a mother who rebuffs her child with "Don't bug me, I'm drinking." The 90-minute film was condensed from 26 hours of sound recording and 56 hours of film. It was directed by Martin Bell. The Times of Harvey Milk Festival insiders call this a must-see item. Director Robert Epstein traces the career of Harvey Milk, the camera-store owner from San Francisco's Castro District who became the first openly-gay elected official in the country. It also traces the career of conservative Dan W hite (looking in this film like "Batman in a J.C. Penney suit," said a critic). We follow their conflicts, White's shooting of Milk and Mayor George Moscone; a trial where the jury excluded homosexuals but included residents of White's voting district; and the infamous "Twinkie defense." de-fense." The Work I've Done When you define yourself by the work you do, what happens when you stop working? Director Kenneth Fink tries to answer the question by looking at three retirees: John Kollock admits he was so restless after retirement that he painted his cellar three times; Freddy Jones, a black man who sings arias, says his retirement party makes him feel like "I'm at my own funeral;" and Native American Thess Campbell has his retirement forms rudely shoved at him the day he leaves. And on a lighter note, a couple discuss how they found sex at 70. (She seduced him with a pair of martinis. ) TheWorldof Tomorrow The 1939 World's Fair was built, ironically, on the ash heap in Queens immortalized in "The Great Gats-by." Gats-by." In some ways, it over-estimated the future, looking forward to sleek cities without slums and in other ways, underestimated it (no mention of men on the moon.) And the rumblings of war weren't considered. consider-ed. Jason Robards narrates, in the character of a 50-year-old who visited the fair as a youngster. The film was directed by Tom Johnson and ljinco Rird. |