Campus News
Holocaust Film Opens Second Annual Santa Cruz Documentary Film Festival October 1-7
SANTA CRUZ, CA–An extraordinary documentary account of the trial of convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann will open the second annual Santa Cruz Documentary Film and Video Festival on Sunday, October 1. The two-hour film, The Specialist, is a highly acclaimed work directed by Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan. The 1961 trial, which was filmed in […]
SANTA CRUZ, CA–An extraordinary documentary account of the trial of convicted Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann will open the second annual Santa Cruz Documentary Film and Video Festival on Sunday, October 1.
The two-hour film, The Specialist, is a highly acclaimed work directed by Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan. The 1961 trial, which was filmed in its entirety at the request of the Israeli government, was immediately recognized as an event of great historical significance. Eichmann, who organized the deportation of millions to death camps during World War II, was convicted of crimes against the Jewish people and crimes against humanity. He was hanged in 1962.
Sivan edited hundreds of hours of unreleased footage to create The Specialist, which takes place entirely in the Jerusalem courtroom where Eichmann, who escaped the Nuremberg trials, was on trial for more than eight months. The result is a powerful film in which Eichmann asserts that he was simply following orders.
"Eichmann provided much of his own defense, portraying himself as a government bureaucrat who was simply following orders in an extreme situation. The film raises important questions about individual responsibility," said film festival cofounder Hugh Raffles, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
The Specialist is one of 18 films being screened during the festival, which runs October 1-7. Each night features films that relate to a specific theme, including Crimes and Punishment on opening night. Other themes are Making Babies, In the Face of Globalization, Roma ("gypsies") in Cinema, Transgender Identities, Stories of Travel, and Remembering Vietnam. Several directors will attend the festival to discuss their films with local audiences.
Cosponsored by the UCSC Anthropology Department, the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History, Sasquatch Computer, and KUSP Radio, the event features outstanding films that are unavailable to general audiences. Shows begin nightly at 7 p.m. Admission is $3 per night; festival passes are available for $15. Tickets and passes are available at the door or in advance from the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium at 307 Church Street, or from the Santa Cruz City Museum of Natural History at 1305 East Cliff Drive.
Screenings take place at the UCSC Media Theater and at Louden Nelson Community Center, 301 Center Street, Santa Cruz. Schedule information and short descriptions of each film are available below. A full schedule is on the web at www.meadfilmfest.org. For more information, call the museum at (831) 420-6115. Please note: The presenters advise discretion in bringing children under age 12 to the screenings.
In addition to The Specialist, opening night features Zyklon Portrait, an amazing 13-minute film about Zyklon B, the crystal that produces the deadly gas used in Nazi concentration camps. "Stylistically, it combines a factual description of what Zyklon B is and how it works, with home movies taken by the filmmaker’s parents of her grandparents, who were killed at Auschwitz," said festival cofounder Sharon Simpson. "It’s a very powerful juxtaposition of scientific information and the personal narrative of the filmmaker’s mother. The third element is the use of abstract, handpainted images that add a dreamlike quality. It is a perfect piece of filmmaking."
The festival continues October 2 with two films about making babies, including The Child the Stork Brought Home, an intimate film that follows an infertile couple and surrogate mother from embryo transfer through the birth of a baby girl. Director Gillian Goslinga-Roy, a doctoral student in the UCSC history of consciousness program, will lead a discussion after the showing.
On October 7, the theme is Remembering Vietnam, and all three directors whose films are being shown will attend the festival. Directors John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson have created a powerful antiwar film in Riding the Tiger, a short, experimental film that presents a chronology of the war and a visual essay that combines newsreel footage and the recollections of Vietnamese farmers, soldiers, villagers, and American journalists. Also attending that evening will be Mickey Grant, director of The Cu Chi Tunnels, an hour-long documentary about the elaborate network of underground tunnels built by the people of Cu Chi province in North Vietnam. Grant obtained rare archival film taken in the tunnels during the war and combined it with present-day interviews with the survivors of the tunnels, some of whom express powerful anti- American sentiments.
The festival is made possible in part by generous support from the Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival; the Santa Cruz Museum Association; George Ow and Gail Michaelis-Ow; Liz Sandoval and David Lewis; and the UCSC Division of Social Sciences, the UCSC Institute for Humanities Research, the Neufeld-Levin Holocaust Endowed Chair at UCSC, and the UCSC Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community.
The UCSC Media Theater is located in the Theater Arts Center at UCSC. To get to the theater, take the UCSC west entrance off Empire Grade at Heller Drive. After the fourth stop sign, turn right onto Meyer Drive; free parking is available in the Performing Arts parking lot.
Note to film reviewers: Review copies are available. Please call Jennifer McNulty in the UCSC Public Information Office at (831) 459-4399 or send e- mail to [jmcnulty@cats.ucsc.edu][1] to request a copy.
SANTA CRUZ DOCUMENTARY FILM & VIDEO FESTIVAL 2000
Including selections from the Margaret Mead Traveling Film & Video Festival
Sunday, October 1: CRIMES AND PUNISHMENT
UCSC Media Theater
Zyklon Portrait (dir. Elida Schogt. 1999. 13 min.). Zyklon B is a crystal that produces the deadly gas used in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. In this short film, impressionistic imagery, family photographs, and home movies are hauntingly set against a narrative that alternates between familial intimacy and the voice of authority.
The Specialist: Portrait of a Modern Criminal (dir. Eyal Sivan. 1999. 128 min.). In 1961, American filmmaker Leo T. Hurwitz was invited by the Israeli government to document in its entirety the 350-hour trial of Adolf Eichmann, who was responsible for the transport of "racial deportees" to the Nazi death camps between 1941 and 1945. Director Sivan uses his unprecedented access to this unreleased footage to craft a riveting, vérité- style courtroom drama.
Monday, October 2: MAKING BABIES
Louden Nelson Community Center
And Baby Makes Two (dir. Judy Katz and Oren Rudavsky. 1999. 59 min.). Over the course of two years, the directors followed eight single women in a New York City support group who were determined to have children on their own, without husbands or lovers. The film captures their joys and disappointments as they pursue international adoption and alternative insemination.
The Child the Stork Brought Home (dir.Gillian Goslinga-Roy. 2000. 60 min.). An unflinching examination of the dynamics of a California surrogacy contract, this intimate film follows an infertile couple and surrogate mother from embryo transfer through the birth of a baby girl and its emotional aftermath, and shows the ethical and emotional complexity of this most controversial of reproductive arrangements.
Tuesday, October 3: IN THE FACE OF GLOBALIZATION
Louden Nelson Community Center
Why Cybraceros? (dir. Alex Rivera. 1998. 5 min.). This short film imagines a future where everyone telecommutes in a fantasy scheme in which the United States imports Mexican labor while the workers themselves stay home south of the border.
Performing the Border (dir. Ursula Biemann. 1999. 42 min.). In this experimental video essay, Mexican women living and working in the border town of Ciudad Juarez talk about their experiences at the low-wage end of the high-tech industry.
The Cow Jumped Over the Moon (dir. Christopher Walker. 1999. 52 min.). This film shows how U.S. government agencies provide crucial information to the nomadic Fulani of Mali about where to move their herds during severe drought. The implications of this technology are discussed by scientists, herdsmen, and an environmental advocate.
Showdown in Seattle: Five Days That Shook the WTO (Collaborative production. 2000. 60 min.). Produced on location during the WTO meeting in Seattle and simultaneously satellitecast across North America, this innovative film shows how collaboration between media artists and other social activists is producing new forms of social protest and new media practices.
Wednesday, October 4: ROMA ("gypsies") IN CINEMA
Louden Nelson Community Center
Black and White in Color (dir. Mira Erdevicki-Charap. 1999. 59 min.) follows Vera Bila, an internationally renowned Romani singer who has achieved fame by blending traditional Romani and popular musical trends. Moving from the townships of eastern Slovakia to the Paris Opera House, this unsentimental portrait contrasts Bila’s day-to-day hardships with her celebrated public life.
American Gypsy: A Stranger in Everybody’s Land (dir. Jasmine Dellal. 1999. 80 min.) centers around the civil rights battles of Jimmy Marks, an outspoken leader of America’s 1 million Roma. Combining extraordinary archival film with contemporary footage, this is a stunning work that offers convincing and sensitive insight into everyday Roma life in the U.S.
Thursday, October 5: TRANSGENDER IDENTITIES
Louden Nelson Community Center
Woubi Chéri (dir. Phillip Brooks and Laurent Bocahut. 1998. 62 min.). Told through portraits of its witty and thoughtful protagonists, this film celebrates the gender pioneers who are demanding the right to a distinct African homosexuality, including Barbara, a magnetic transsexual from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, who says: "The third millennium will be about a mix of modern and traditional, different ways of life and sex."
Paradise Bent (dir. Heather Croall. 1999. 51 min.) suggests there is a truly Samoan way of seeing the world when it comes to gender. This engrossing film looks at the Samoan fa’afafines: boys who are raised as girls and have an important place in domestic life. Today, the growing influence of Western ideas of gender and the arrival of the drag scene threaten the accepted role of the fa’afafine. These tensions are played out through the personal story of Cindy, focusing on her everyday life and her relationship with a representative of the Australian High Commission.
Friday, October 6: STORIES OF TRAVEL
ouden Nelson Community Center
Papapapá (dir. Alex Rivera. 1997. 27 min.). Filmmaker Alex Rivera likens his father to a potato in this exuberantly creative film that mixes animation, home movies, and celebrity interviews to show the common destinies of people and vegetables.
For Here or To-Go? (dir. Bann Roy. 1998. 24 min.) deftly and with great sensitivity examines the dilemmas of South Asian professionals in southern California as they struggle to reconcile their new lives with the expectations of family and friends in India.
A Portrait of Mr. Pink (dir. Helena Appio. 1998. 15 min.) presents the inspirational Mr. Pink, who left Jamaica for Britain in the 1950s and who shares with us his music, wisdom, and the extraordinary house he created in southeast London.
Battu’s Bioscope (dir. Andrzej Fidyk. 1999. 58 min.). With an old Soviet projector, two assistants, a few white cloth sheets, and untold miles of celluloid film, Mr. Battu moves out of the projection booth and onto the road, taking "Bollywood" films made by India’s film industry to villagers across his native country. Fidyk’s beautifully shot film is moving and unsettling.
Saturday, October 7: REMEMBERING VIETNAM
UCSC Media Theater
Riding the Tiger (dir. John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson. 1999. 34 min.) presents multiple disembodied voices–farmers, soldiers, villagers, American journalists–reflecting on their experiences during the war. Their recollections are set against shocking archival footage and numbing contemporary images, presenting both a chronology and a visual essay that evoke the horrors and futility of the U.S. war in Vietnam.
The Cu Chi Tunnels (dir. Mickey Grant. 2000. 60 min.) takes us into the elaborate network of underground tunnels built by the people of Cu Chi province in North Vietnam. Viet Cong documentary cameramen and women worked alongside guerillas to produce extraordinary footage of love, life, and death in the tunnels. Grant has produced a spellbinding work in which this rare archival film is "echoed" by present-day interviews with the survivors of the tunnels.