by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

2011 was another great year for movies. For me, it started in January at the annual Sundance Film Festival with a full slate of must-see films, and kept that momentum for the next eleven months. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to write about all my favorite films or film festivals as they were happening; so as we move forward into 2012, I want to take a look back at five of my favorite documentaries that screened at the San Francisco Bay Area’s top three Fall film festivals: Mill Valley Film Festival, San Francisco’s DocFest, and San Francisco International South Asian Film Festival.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Charlie Barker is a guy who has it all – almost. He has a beautiful successful wife, a large New York City apartment, a loyal best friend, and a once-promising acting career that he is hoping to restart. The current lull in his professional life seems temporary; he is just waiting to be cast in the next big thing.

But the next big thing turns out to be a young woman freshly arrived in the Big Apple. Clea (played by Heather Gordon) sets her sights on Charlie (Stephen Barker Turner), and soon the two are involved in an affair. Charlie’s wife Stella (Daphne Zuniga) inevitably discovers the affair, and Charlie then finds himself alone and broke.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

For almost a year I have been experiencing insufferable allergies. Many doctors’ appointments and medications later, I still wake up in the morning with my skin inflamed and my eyes swollen shut. By the time I watched Farmageddon:The Unseen War on American Farms, I was ready to try just about anything.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Before 9/11 Shannen Rossmiller was a judge, wife, and mother of three living in Montana. That fateful September day became the impetus for her to become a counter-intelligence expert focused on infiltrating jihadists’ networks. Rossmiller’s memoir The Unexpected Patriot, written with Sue Carswell and published by Palgrave Macmillan, details this journey.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

After watching the new documentary Crime After Crime at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, I was angry. I felt an intense call to action – to tell everyone I know that they must see the 93-minute film as soon as possible. The injustices documented on screen are unbelievable and the dramatic twists put fictional crime drama to shame, as the story is too sensational for even Law & Order.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Life, Above All tells the story of 12-year-old Chanda who takes responsibility for her family after her baby sister dies and her mother falls ill. Fueled by rumors, the rural village outside Johannesburg quickly ostracizes the family suspecting that Chanda’s mother has AIDS. The mother flees the village to live out her last days in a deprivation that may shock viewers.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

If you could take a pill that would let you live for another 500 years, would you do it? Director Mark Wexler poses this question in his new documentary How to Live Forever. The film is a thought-provoking and notably lighthearted exploration of what it means to be alive in a world where people are living longer than ever before.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

In today’s technologically connected world, there are few places completely absent from the 24 hours a day 7 days a week international news cycle. One of those places is Burma, now known as Myanmar. For more than 47 years the Southeast Asian nation has been isolated from the rest of the world with few foreigners or journalists reporting from the ground. The brutal military dictatorship has ruled with an iron fist, fighting a bloody civil war against the country’s ethnic minorities. Aside from singular and infrequent news reports the world receives little information about the innumerable human rights atrocities committed by Burma’s military dictatorship.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

March 10 is the opening day of the 29th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. From now until March 20, Bay Area residents can attend a varied selection of film screenings, discussions, interactive events, and musical performances at venues in San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose, California. I was particularly impressed with the selection of documentaries screening at the festival. The eight films in the documentary category each express a unique and global point of view that will definitely lead to thought provoking, and possibly heated, post-screening discussions.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

At the opening day press conference, Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford proclaimed, “I love all of the films at this festival!” Eleven days of films later, I cannot agree more. This was a banner year for the annual Sundance Film Festival. There were great films and large audiences hungry to see something new and exciting. The presence of female directors was unprecedented. Previous Sundance darlings returned with their latest work while other directors made their festival debuts. I often found myself torn – schedule-wise – between seeing a film by a favorite director or venturing off into uncharted territory with a new face everyone was talking about.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Rarely does a film come along that floors you in its perfection and then continues to resonate for months after that first viewing. I saw the German film When We Leave at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, where it won best film in the world narrative feature competition. When I entered the theater at Tribeca, I had no expectations about the movie. But two hours later I could not stop thinking and talking about what I had just watched. Writer, Director, and Producer Feo Aladag flawlessly couples the humanistic and thriller elements of filmmaking to create a cinematic force that makes you care about the characters while sitting on the edge of your seat fearful of what will happen next.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Tiny Furniture is poised to be 2010’s indie darling. The film is a charming coming of age story for a generation unsure of how to apply their education and execute their aspirations beyond the ubiquity of social networking.

The film opens with Aura, played by writer and director Lena Dunham, returning home to her family’s enviable Tribeca loft after graduating from college in Ohio. Aura aspires to make films, but her current professional resume is comprised of YouTube videos, the most famous of which captures her wearing a bikini and bathing in a campus fountain.

At home, Aura’s post-college malaise is exacerbated by her overachieving younger sister Nadine and accomplished photographer mother Siri. The film’s title refers to miniatures her mother photographs. Nadine and Siri are played by Dunham’s real life sister, Grace Dunham, and mother, fine art photographer Laurie Simmons. Neither had ever acted onscreen before, yet their deadpan performances are far from amateurish.

Unsure of how to proceed in life, Aura gets a job as a day hostess at a neighborhood bistro. While answering the reservation line in an empty restaurant, Aura falls for the attractive yet callous sous chef Keith (David Call). A bit desperate for male attention, Aura invites Jed (Alex Karpovsky), a visiting creative type whose work she admires on YouTube, to stay at the loft while her mother and sister are away visiting colleges. These misguided romantic endeavors are encouraged by Aura’s best friend Charlotte (Jemima Kirke), a bad influence who likes a good time.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Made in Dagenham is a feminist manifesto arriving in theaters just in time for the holidays. The historical fiction film dramatically captures the struggles of female machinists working at an out-dated Ford factory in 1960s England who demand pay comparable to their male counterparts. The women go on strike until their demands are met, thus starting an international revolution for equal pay.

Sally Hawkins plays Rita O’Grady, a working class mother who puts in long hours sewing upholstery for new Ford cars. During a visit by union organizer Albert (Bob Hoskins), Rita is recruited to attend an upcoming meeting at Ford’s corporate offices. Shady union head Monty (Kenneth Cranham) tells Rita and her coworker Connie (Geraldine James) to keep quiet and act agreeable to whatever he says. Once at Ford’s offices, Rita becomes enraged when the machinists’ work is described as “unskilled” by Ford’s arrogant executives.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

On Tuesday you may think that you are going to the polls to choose your next elected official, but the upsetting reality of many congressional and state elections is that incumbent politicians have manipulated district boundaries to decide the outcome of elections before any votes are cast. During every election we experience the effects of gerrymandering, and yet outside of high school civics class, the term “gerrymander” is not commonly used or understood by most voters.

To Gerrymander: To divide (a territorial unit) into election districts to give one political party an electoral majority in a large number of districts while concentrating the voting strength of the opposition in as few districts as possible.

The new film Gerrymandering clearly explains its namesake while documenting how racial, partisan, and incumbency gerrymandering are responsible for the state of our democracy. Director Jeff Reichert approaches his subject matter with a sense of urgency, as the United States will once again redistrict in April 2011 based on the results of the 2010 census.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

Israeli director Yael Hersonski examines the lost footage in her 89 minute directorial debut, A Film Unfinished. Interweaving footage with diary entries by Ghetto inhabitants, an account of filming by a German cameraman, and reflections by Warsaw Ghetto survivors now viewing the footage, Hersonski brings a new perspective to the authenticity of Nazi propaganda films. Scenes were staged to create a life of happiness and abundance that concealed the suffering of the Ghetto’s 440,000 residents. Imagined encounters include a staged dinner party with guests who were, in reality, on the verge of starvation. The perversity of the Third Reich’s obsessive documentation of human suffering, intensified by the revelation of cinematic manipulation, stays with you long after leaving the theater.

by Jessica Mosby
-USA-

The Chinese have ruled Tibet since 1959. For Tibetan refugees living around the world, the dream of returning to a free Tibet continues to define their existence in exile.

The new documentary film The Sun Behind the Clouds captures the plight of Tibetan refugees and their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, with a very personal approach. Filmmaker Tenzing Sonam, who also narrates the film, was born to Tibetan refugee parents living in Darjeeling, India. He and his filmmaking partner and wife, Ritu Sarin, approach their subject matter with insiders’ knowledge.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Nash traveled the world filming the effects of climate change. The footage is startling as a human face is put on the world’s worst natural disasters. The heart of the film is Nash’s interviews with victims of natural disasters. In Bangladesh, “ground zero” for climate change, Nash interviews victims of 2007’s Cyclone Sidr, which killed over 10,000 people and cost $450 million in damages. The victims’ testimony is heart-breaking as they describe losing their families and homes.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

The most emotionally and politically-charged documentary of the year is about a surprisingly original subject: the domestic pets that were lost or left behind in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Mine artfully portrays the class discrimination, utter chaos, and distress that surround one of the worst disasters to occur in the United States in recent history. At the heart of the film are the helpless pets that were forced to fend for themselves and then, after surviving Katrina, were not reunited with their owners.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Rebel was the theme of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The message was everywhere: On screen before every film; on the front cover of the film schedule, which read “This Is Your Guide to Cinematic Rebellion”; and in the originality and creativity of almost every film selected by Sundance Institute President and Founder Robert Redford and Festival Director John Cooper for this year’s festival. Rebellion meant great films, particularly documentaries.

In addition to established competitive categories (U.S. Documentary, U.S. Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and Shorts) and non-competitive categories (Premieres, Spotlight, New Frontier, and Park City at Midnight), there was a new category for low-budget independent films appropriately titled Next. In every category, there were films whose themes seem particularly relevant for our time – films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the recession and resulting unemployment, political revolutions, the search for environmental alternatives, and the incredible resilience of people when faced with extreme adversity.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. is living the dream. After discovering his love of letterpress, Kennedy left his comfortable corporate job and devoted his life to his art. Today the self-described “humble negro printer” lives in rural Alabama and sells his socially relevant and politically charged letterpress posters for $15 each.

by Jessica Mosby
- USA -

The most striking element of the new documentary Tapestries of Hope is not the hell that the young rape survivors profiled have lived through, but their unbreakable spirit. The film is a vibrant international call to action and a breathtaking portrait of hope in the face of overwhelming odds.