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Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Camden International Film Festival Announces 2015 Festival Slate

Camden, Maine - The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) has announced the slate of feature and short films for its 11th edition, which will take place September 17-20, 2015 throughout Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. CIFF will present over 60 features and short films from across the globe, the country and the state, with filmmakers attending nearly every screening. This year’s program includes  more international titles than ever.

The Camden International Film Festival presents a snapshot of the cultural landscape through the year’s best nonfiction storytelling. The festival is recognized as one of the top documentary film festivals in the world and one of the 12 best small-town film festivals in the US. Highlights of this year’s program include Locarno titles Machine Gun or Typewriter, The Ground We Won and Locarno winner Olmo and the Seagull, fresh from TIFF: climate change doc This Changes Everything; and Points North alums Containment and Drawing the Tiger. In addition to the titles below, CIFF will screen a sidebar program of historic ethnographic films with support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a program celebrating the home movie archives of Charles Norman Shay in collaboration with Northeast Historic Film, and the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking Shorts List, whose titles will be announced at the festival next month.

"We couldn’t be more thrilled with this year’s festival program," says Ben Fowlie, Founder and Executive Director of the Camden International Film Festival. "This complex, diverse and engaging lineup is yet another reminder that the documentary form is both thriving and continuously evolving. We’re honored to share the vision and voices of this remarkable group of American and international filmmakers.”

The Camden International Film Festival will announce their Points North Documentary Forum lineup of films, speakers and panels on Thursday, August 27.

2015 CAMDEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL FEATURES
ABOVE AND BELOW
Nicolas Steiner | Switzerland, Germany | 2015
Far, far away and out of sight, that’s where April, Dave, Cindy, Rick and the Godfather are creating
life on their own terms. From the depths of the flood channels under Sin City, to a reclaimed military bunker in the middle of the dusty, heated Californian nowhere land to beyond the stratosphere where Mars now lives on earth. Each have been flung into periling circumstances. Through the hustle, pain, and laughter, we are whisked away to an unfamiliar world where we discover its inhabitants to be souls not unlike our very own.

ALL THINGS ABLAZE
Oleksandr Technyski, Aleksey Solodunov, Dmitry Stoykov | Ukraine | 2014
Ukraine. Winter 2013–2014. What does the fight for freedom look like when you observe it from the epicenter of the battle? What happens when the demand for freedom escalates into civil war and politics rule the game? An impassioned record of the Ukrainian uprising that challenges the usual biased political stances and tries to look at the very core of a complex and violent conflict.

BEST OF ENEMIES
Morgan Neville, Robert Gordon | United States | 2014
BEST OF ENEMIES is a behind-the-scenes account of the explosive 1968 televised debates between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William F. Buckley Jr. The film delves into the entangled biographies of these two great thinkers and luxuriates in the language and the theater of their debates, begging the question, "What has television done to the way we discuss politics in our democracy today?”

BREAKING A MONSTER
Luke Meyer | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
Chronicling the break-out year of the band Unlocking the Truth, the film follows 13-year-old members Alec Atkins, Malcolm Brickhouse, and Jarad Dawkins as they first encounter stardom and the music industry, transcending childhood to become the rock stars they always dreamed of being. The accelerated breakout of any band is an extremely narrow and specific period in time. BREAKING A MONSTER is the story of this rapid transformation.

CONTAINMENT
Peter Galison, Robb Moss | United States | 2015
Filmmakers in attendance! Points North Alum!
Can we contain some of the deadliest, most long-lasting substances ever produced? Left over from the Cold War are a hundred million gallons of radioactive sludge, covering vast radioactive lands. Governments around the world, desperate to protect future generations, have begun imagining society 10,000 years from now in order to create monuments that will speak across time. Part observational essay and part graphic novel--CONTAINMENT weaves between an uneasy present and an imaginative, troubled far future, exploring the idea that over millennia, nothing stays put.

DEMOCRATS
Camila Nielsson| Denmark | 2014
Two political opponents are appointed to write Zimbabwe's new constitution, the ultimate test that can bring an end to President Mugabe's 30 years of autocratic rule. It can go either way: towards the birth of a constitutional democracy - or renewed repression. DEMOCRATS spends three years behind the scenes with these political rivals, and the result is a gripping story of a country’s attempt at the coveted political system of Democracy.

DRAWING THE TIGER
Amy Benson, Ramyata Limbu, Scott Squire | United States | 2015
Filmmakers in attendance! Points North Alum!
A family in Nepal living on less than a dollar a day wins the globalization jackpot: a charity scholarship for their daughter to go to school in the capital city. She promises to return, to free her family from poverty. But she does not return. DRAWING THE TIGER is an intimate portrait of the price one family pays for their golden opportunity.

ELEPHANT’S DREAM
Kristof Bilsen | Belgium | 2014
Filmmaker in attendance!
A poetic and compassionate insight into a country in transition, as seen through the microcosm of three state-owned institutions and its public sector workers in the third largest city in Africa, Kinshasa, a railway station, the central post-office and the only existing fire station. At times surreal, at times hopeful, this film will reveal a truly surprising perspective on lives lived beyond chaos.

FRAME BY FRAME
Alexandria Bombach, Mo Scarpelli | United States | 2015
Filmmakers in attendance!
After decades of war and an oppressive Taliban regime, four Afghan photojournalists face the realities of building a free press in a country left to stand on its own – reframing Afghanistan for the world and for themselves. Through intimate verite moments and never-before-seen archival footage, the film reveals a struggle in overcoming the odds to capture the truth.

FROM THIS DAY FORWARD
Sharon Shattuck | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
With her own wedding just around the corner, filmmaker Sharon Shattuck returns to her small Midwestern hometown to examine the mystery at the heart of her upbringing: How her transgender father Trisha and her straight-identified mother Marcia stayed together against all odds. FROM THIS DAY FORWARD is a moving portrayal of an American family coping with the most intimate of transformations.

GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF
Alex Gibney | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney turns his gaze to Scientology in GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF, based on the book by Pulitzer Prize winner Lawrence Wright. Gibney profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology, whose most prominent adherents include A-list Hollywood celebrities, shining a light on how the church cultivates true believers, detailing their experiences and what they are willing to do in the name of religion.

THE GROUND WE WON
Christopher Pryor | New Zealand | 2015
A verite study of manhood as observed through the rites and rituals of a rural New Zealand rugby club. With great bawdiness and backbone, a team made up of farmers strive to redeem themselves from a long run of bitter loses. In the face of the hefty demands of farming and fatherhood, the Saturday game becomes the focus of the men’s passions and the ground on which their worth is proved.

HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD
Jerry Rothwell | United Kingdom, Canada | 2015
In 1971, a group of friends sail into a nuclear test zone, and their protest captures the world’s imagination. Using never before seen archive that brings their extraordinary world to life, How To Change The World is the story of the pioneers who founded Greenpeace and defined the modern green movement.

I AM THE PEOPLE (JE SUIS LE PEUPLE)
Anna Roussillon | France | 2014
While tens of thousands of protested in Cairo, poor villagers in the country’s south followed the tense situation on Tahrir Square on their TV screens and in the newspapers. It is from their perspective this film captures the political changes in Egypt, from the toppling of President Mubarak to the election of Mohamed Morsi. The film reveals the villagers’ hopes and disappointments, and shows that despite the wild events, very little has changed in their lives.

IN TRANSIT
Albert Maysles, Lynn True, David Usui, Ben Wu | United States | 2015
Filmmakers in attendance!
Albert Maysles’ last film takes us aboard America’s busiest long-distance train route. The film unfolds as a series of interconnected vignettes, ranging from overheard conversations to moments of deep intimacy, in which passengers share their fears, hopes and dreams. To some, the train is flight and salvation, to others it is reckoning and loss. But for all, it is a place for personal reflection and connecting with others they may otherwise never know.

KINGS OF NOWHERE
Betzabé García | Mexico | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
Three families live in a village partially submerged by water in Northwestern Mexico: Pani and Paula do not want to close their tortilleria and spend their spare time rescuing the town from ruins; Miro and his parents dream of leaving but can’t; Yoya and Jaimito live in fear but have everything they need.

MACHINE GUN OR TYPEWRITER
Travis Wilkerson | United States  | 2015
A haunted man desperately searches for his lost love through an illegal pirate radio broadcast. Punk-agit-noir

MERU
Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi | United States | 2015
In the high-stakes game of big-wall climbing, the Shark’s Fin on Mount Meru may be the ultimate prize. Sitting at the headwaters of the sacred Ganges River in Northern India, the Shark’s Fin has seen more failed attempts by elite climbing teams over the past 30 years than any other ascent in the Himalayas. MERU is the story of a journey —one of friendship, sacrifice, hope and obsession.

OF THE NORTH
Dominic Gagnon | Canada | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
In this new film that, like its predecessor, draws on amateur films posted on YouTube, Dominic Gagnon shows the descendants of Nanook in the process of making “their own” cinema. He creates an anti-exotic Vertovian “Kino-Eye”, which reveals trashy and unbridled acculturation and takes apart the existing clichés about the Inuit, too often confined to the borders of the contemporary world.

OLMO AND THE SEAGULL
Petra Costa, Lea Glob | Denmark, Brazil, Portugal, France | 2014
Producer in attendance!
A journey through the labyrinth of a woman’s mind, OLMO AND THE SEAGULL tells the story of Olivia, a free-spirited stage actress and her boyfriend, Serge discover she is pregnant. Olivia’s desire for freedom and success clashes with the limits imposed by her own body and the baby growing inside her. The months of her pregnancy unfold as a rite of passage, forcing the actress to confront her deepest fears. She looks in the mirror and sees both female characters of The Seagull - Arkadina, the aging actress, and Nina, the actress who falls into madness - as unsettling reflections of herself.

PEACE OFFICER
Scott Christopherson, Brad Barber | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
PEACE OFFICER is a feature documentary about the increasingly militarized state of American police as told through the story of William “Dub” Lawrence, a former sheriff who established and trained his rural state’s first SWAT team only to see that same unit kill his son-in-law in a controversial standoff 30 years later.

THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER
Chad Gracia | Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States | 2015
While researching a secret Soviet antenna at Chernobyl, which interrupted global radio communications from 1976 - 1989, Fedor Alexandrovich discovers a dark conspiracy. When he is invited to address the crowds in Kiev's Revolution Square during height of the protests, he must decide whether to risk his life by revealing the secrets he uncovers.

SAILING A SINK SEA
Olivia Wyatt | United States | 2015
Filmmakmer in attendance!
An experiential documentary exploring the culture of the Moken people of Burma and Thailand. The Moken are a seafaring community and one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in Asia, traditionally spending eight months out of the year in thatch-roofed wooden boats. Wholly reliant upon the sea, their entire belief system revolves around water. This film beautifully weaves a visual and aural tapestry of Moken mythologies and present-day practices.

TELL SPRING NOT TO COME THIS YEAR
Saeed Taji Farouky, Michael McEvoy | United Kingdom | 2015
TELL SPRING NOT TO COME THIS YEAR follows one unit of the Afghan National Army during their first year of deployment in Helmand without NATO support. It is an intimate film about the human side of combat, told from a largely unheard and misrepresented perspective, that explores the deep personal motivations, desires and struggles of fighting men on the frontline. This is the war in Afghanistan, through the eyes of the Afghans who live it.

(T)ERROR
Lyric R. Cabral, David Felix Sutcliffe | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
(T)ERROR is the first documentary to place filmmakers on the ground during an active FBI counterterrorism sting operation. Through the perspective of "Shariff", a 63-year-old Black revolutionary turned informant, viewers get an unfettered glimpse of the government's counterterrorism tactics and the murky justifications behind them, illuminating the fragile relationships between individual and surveillance state in modern America. Who is watching the watchers?

THANK YOU FOR PLAYING
David Osit, Malika Zouhali-Worrall | United States | 2015
Filmmakers in attendance!
Ryan Green’s five-year-old son Joel has terminal cancer. Ryan, an indie video game developer, is building an unusually poetic video game to document his experiences raising a dying child, and to honor Joel while he is still alive. THANK YOU FOR PLAYING follows the creation and growing success of Ryan’s game, as his son's health continues to decline.

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING
Avi Lewis | Canada, United States | 2015
Directed by journalist and filmmaker Avi Lewis (THE TAKE) and produced in conjunction with Naomi Klein's bestselling book of the same name, this urgent dispatch on climate change contends that the greatest crisis we have ever faced also offers us the opportunity to address and correct the inhumane systems that have created it.

THOSE WHO FEEL THE FIRE BURNING
Morgan Knibbe | Netherlands | 2014
The astonishing family story of Toto, and his sisters, Ana and Andreea. During their mother's imprisonment, Toto passionately learns dancing, reading and writing, while his sisters try to keep the family together in a world that has long forgotten what the innocence of childhood should be. What happens when we discover that we can get more from life than our parents have to offer?

TOTO AND HIS SISTERS
Alexander Nanau | Romania, Hungary, Germany | 2014
The astonishing family story of Toto, and his sisters, Ana and Andreea. During their mother's imprisonment, Toto passionately learns dancing, reading and writing, while his sisters try to keep the family together in a world that has long forgotten what the innocence of childhood should be. What happens when we discover that we can get more from life than our parents have to offer?

T-REX
Drea Cooper, Zackary Canepari | United States  | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
17-year old Claressa “T-Rex” Shields from Flint, Michigan dreams of being the first woman in history to win the gold medal in Olympic boxing. To succeed, she will need to stand her ground both inside and outside of the ring. She protects her family at any cost, even when their instability and addictions threaten to derail her dream. But Claressa is fierce and determined. She desperately wants to take her family to a better, safer place and winning a gold medal could be her only chance.

UNCERTAIN
Anna Sandilands, Ewan McNicol | United States | 2015
Filmmakers in attendance!
A cinematic and disarmingly funny portrait of Uncertain, Texas, a 94-resident town on the brink of extinction. The town sits on the edge of a vast, swampy lake that is being choked by an aquatic weed, upsetting the natural balance and the town’s only source of livelihood. A place so tucked away “you’ve got to be lost to find it", three Uncertain men make their own bids for survival looking to find a more certain future.

UNTITLED Work-in-Progress Screening
Ian Cheney | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
Ian Cheney’s new work-in-progress explores the terraforming of Mars and waterways of New York City. As scientists unlock strategies for warming and colonizing the frigid red planet, waterfront dwellers of America’s largest city grapple with the legacies of pollution and the specter of rising seas here on Earth. Blending science fiction themes with atmospheric soundscapes and cinematography, the film features gritty portraits of waterfolk alongside interviews with sci-fi authors, inventors and self-proclaimed space farmers. Filmed in New York City, Greenland, Iceland, Chile, Thailand, The Netherlands, Italy and Germany, the documentary immerses viewers in a world of canals, glaciers, oysters and extremophiles, drawing on macrophotography, astrophotography, underwater footage and NASA archival imagery.

WESTERN
Bill Ross, Turner Ross | United States | 2015
Filmmaker in attendance!
In Eagle Pass, Texas, where the U.S. and Mexico meet along the Rio Grande, a cattleman and the mayor face the dawn of a new reality. In the matter of a few turbulent months, the specter of cartel violence begins to loom from upriver, leading to an indefinite border closure and its rippling consequences on the home front. The film navigates the mythic terrain of the American West, capturing human moments, dramatic stories, and the lived experience of border life.

2015 CAMDEN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL SHORT FILMS

70-SOME YEARS
Riley Hooper | United States | 2015
AMERICAN RENAISSANCE
Jarred Alterman, Ryan Scafuro | United States | 2015

BODY TEAM 12
David Darg | United States | 2015

CLAUDE LANZMANN: SPECTRES OF THE SHOAH
Adam Benzine | United Kingdom | 2015

CHOP MY MONEY
Theo Anthony | United States | 2014

DENALI
Ben Knight | United States | 2015

DIVER
Chris Gelfand, Caroline Losneck | United States | 2015
Dirigo Short! Made in Maine!

ERIC, WINTER TO SPRING
Danya Abt | United States | 2014

THE FACE OF UKRAINE: CASTING OSKANA BAIUL
Kitty Green | Australia | 2015

FARM
Christoph Gelfand | United States | 2015
Dirigo Short! Made in Maine!

HERETIX: UP AND RUNNING
Francis Decky | United States | 2015
Dirigo Short! Made in Maine!

HOTEL 22
Elizabeth Lo | United States | 2014

THE LAND
Erin Davis | United States | 2015

THE LAST BARN DANCE
Ted Richardson, Jason Arthurs | United States | 2015

LAST PYRAMID
Dave Schachter | United States | 2015
Dirigo Short! Made in Maine!

LETTER TO SUBI
Genevieve Carmel | United States | 2015

LUCHADORA
River Finlay | United States, Mexico | 2014

THE MANY SAD FATES OF MR. TOLEDANO
Joshua Seftel | United States | 2015

MY GAL ROSEMARIE
Jason Tippet | United States | 2015

NEW MISSION
Christopher Giamo | United States | 2014

OBJECT
Paulina Skibinska | Poland | 2015

OF THE UNKNOWN
Eva Weber | United Kingdom | 2014

PINK BOY
Eric Rockey | United States | 2015

THE REAGAN SHORTS
Pacho Velez | United States | 2015
Points North Alum!

SEEDING FEAR
Craig Jackson | United States | 2015

SPEARHUNTER
Luke Poling, Adam Roffman | United States | 2014

TERRITORY
Eleanor Mortimer | United Kingdom | 2015

THINGS
Ben Rivers | United Kingdom | 2015

About the Camden International Film Festival:
About the Camden International Film Festival and Points North Documentary Forum
Founded in 2005 and recognized as one of the top documentary film festivals in the world, the Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) brings the finest non-fiction cinema to the rugged coast of Maine, showcasing over 80 documentary feature and short films from around the globe each fall. Additional year-round programming includes the CIFF Selects screening series and the Engagement Summit, a unique program that connects Maine-based nonprofit leaders with documentary films and filmmakers to develop community-based social action campaigns designed to engage communities.

The Points North Documentary Forum provides emerging documentarians with opportunities for professional development and creative inspiration. and an opportunity to discover  new voices in documentary media who are pushing the boundaries of the form and re-imagining the role of nonfiction storytelling in society. Programs include the year-round Points North Fellowship, masterclasses, workshops  and international short form pitch opportunities such as The New York Times' Op Docs Pitch (2013) and, most recently, the  AJ+ Pitch (2014). Past industry participants in the Forum include HBO, A&E, BBC, Participant Media, Al Jazeera America, Discovery, PBS, Ford Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, Sundance Institute, Vimeo and Kickstarter.

The 2015 Camden International Film Festival and Points North Documentary Forum will take place September 17 - 20 in Camden, Rockport and Rockland, Maine. The Camden International Film Festival is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, CNN Films and Vimeo.

Passes to the 2015 CIFF and Points North are now available for purchase at www.camdenfilmfest.org

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