Immediate Affinity

2013 Audience Favorites!

Uncategorized by Elizabeth English

2013favoritelaurel_web

FEATURE NARRATIVE FILM

afishstoryA FISH STORY

Feature film, directed by Matt Birman, written & produced by Sam Roberts (USA & CANADA). After his sudden and tragic death, a devoted father’s search for heaven brings him back to his distraught family and his isolated lakeside wilderness fishing camp, for a few precious days, in the body of a wanted man.

dovidmeyerDOVID MEYER

Feature film, directed by Moshe Paul Mones (USA).  A proper British family advertises for a Mary Poppins-type of au pair for their children, but a 14 year-old Hasidic Israeli boy, an orphan from Jerusalem, shows up, to rattle the household’s lives in many miraculous ways.

SHORT NARRATIVE FILM

myshoesSABBAT EL AÏD (MY SHOES)

Short film, directed by Anis Lassoud (Tunisia). In a small countryside village, Ahmed is a 9 year old boy with a passion for running. Under the influence and with the help of Ba Zdig, the village idiot, he dreams of becoming an Olympic Champion. He not only runs for that reason, but also because he needs it, it is his vocation, for the simple pleasure of it and to attain a passionate weightlessness.

thepainterTHE PAINTER

Short film, directed by Nate Townsend (USA). Obsessed by events that changed his life decades ago, an amateur artist finally returns to the farm where it all began. One man’s journey in search of redemption, closure, and peace.

pumziPUMZI

Short film, directed by Wanuri Kahiu, (Kenya). Pumzi is a sci-fi film set in a futuristic Africa, 35 years after World War III, “The Water War.” The outside world is deemed extinct, and leaving one’s indoor community has been outlawed. Asha, who lives and works as a museum curator in one such community, risks it all for her belief that a greener life exists on the outside. An Africa First film.

FEATURE DOCUMENTARY FILM

wewerequietWE WERE QUIET ONCE

Feature documentary film, directed by Laura Beachy, Ryan Balton, & Cory Sage (USA).  Somerset, Pennsylvania, was a picture-perfect small, rural  farming town, where life embodied a quiet, pleasant innocence. That is, until September 11, 2001, when United Flight 93 crashed in Somerset’s sheltered countryside, claiming 40 innocent lives, and forever changing the people on the ground.

firstolympicsFIRST: THE OFFICIAL FILM OF THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC GAMES

Feature documentary film, directed by Caroline Rowland (UK). In the summer of 2012, the most talented young athletes from around the world responded to the call to compete in the London Olympic Games.

BAGHDAD DIARY

Feature documentary, directed by: Joseph Consentino & Sandra Consentino (USA). Beginning in March 2003, Iraqi taxi-driver Fadil Kadom’s video diary includes his family’s preparations for war, the days of bombs and missiles, and Baghdad’s ultimate fall. NBC News cameraman, Craig White, embedded with the US Army, brings the war into focus, live – from combat to the disintegration of Iraqi civil society.

SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM

doyourememberwhenDO YOU REMEMBER WHERE YOU WERE WHEN…

Short documentary film, directed by Matthew Alexander Levy (USA). Artfully edited to include archival images we will all recognize, “Do You Remember Where You Were When” is a film, by a talented young New York City filmmaker, about television’s unrecognized impact on creating a mythical and pervasive collective memory for us all.

ANIMATION FILM

thediverTHE DIVER

Animation film, directed by Damon Mohl (USA). The strange and poignant life of a plastic toy diver, as he lives out his days in remarkable landscapes and circumstances: thrown by a boy into a pond to sink or swim with fishes, left and forgotten in a dark toy box with other discarded toys, in this amazingly beautiful and yet familiar world. A startling realization sets in, on a deeper level, as we start to realize that this story may parallel some aspects of one’s own life.

ellaELLA (She)

Animation film, directed by Juan Montes de Oca, 19 minutes, (SPAIN). In Palma de Mallorca, through the eyes of a 5 year-old innocent kid, a lovely and moving story unfolds of life’s coincidences, miseries and joys, as the boy learns about an old man’s stories of his ill-fated life in New York, and his long-lost love.

MUSIC VIDEO

WAYS TO GO

Music video, directed by David Cho & Evan Urman (USA). A wild, fantastic  musical day in the boring life of a fictional Kim Jeng-un, as a young boy, and his only good day, ever.

DAWN

Music video, directed by Nick Dimitriadis (UK). An artist seeks inspiration for his next project, in this fabulous cinematic storytelling adventure. With his incredible adventures into the realm of the impossible and surreal, his quest will take him to some rather unusual places…