July 12-29, 2001
Co-presented by the NEBRASKA FILM OFFICE


Special Screenings
The following entries are presented for this category.

Chain Camera
Directed by Kirby Dick
U.S.A., 2000
Run Time: 90 minutes

Chain Camera, the new, provocative film by Kirby Dick, takes its name from the format of a chain letter. Ten video cameras were passed around a Los Angeles high school, and 10 students documented their daily lives. After a week, those students handed over the cameras to another 10, and so on. The tapes were collected and edited, and the result is a candid portrait of 16 urban teens today. The population at John Marshall High School is very diverse, but many of the kids share similar concerns: Will they be accepted by their peers? How can they express themselves? What will the future bring? Because the cameras were given directly to the students without a film crew involved, they were free to film whatever they desired without worrying about censorship. They take the opportunity to strut their stuff, talking openly about sex, race, gender issues, drugs, and violence. Many of the students have difficult home lives; some live in single-parent households, some are children of immigrants with different values, while some must deal with their parents' substance abuse. These are kids who want to rebel and forge their own path. Their reactions are a compelling mixture of sadness, frustration, and humor. We see a lot of television shows and films about teenagers, but the kids in this film are not represented by those familiar images of young love, hot bodies, and teen angst. Chain Camera compassionately shows these kids' lives up close and personal with issues of alienation, sexuality, and responsibility as common threads of a future generation. - Lisa Viola

Green Dragon
Directed by Timothy Linh Bui
U.S.A., 2000
Run Time: 111 minutes

It should not be surprising that another superb melodrama has been created by the Bui brothers, in this case, written and directed by Timothy Linh Bui. (His brother Tony, who wrote and directed the Grand Jury Award-winning Three Seasons, produced and cowrote the story for this film.) It really is too much to expect that the spectacular craft, striking storytelling, and intense emotion generated by their first work could be repeated. However, it's a pleasure to confirm it has been, although this does not suggest that the two films are similar or in any way derivative of each other. What they share is a unique aesthetic, one that evokes a nostalgic beauty and reaffirms an incredibly lush and vivid visual sensibility. These qualities carry their storytelling into a magical realm. Green Dragon tells the tale of the first wave of Vietnamese refugees who were housed in camps across the southwestern deserts of the United States in 1975. It is really an amalgamation of different stories: of children watching and waiting for their mother to join them; of a camp cook, who paints in his spare time and befriends one young boy; of an ex-translator for the army, who, because of his bilingual skills, assumes a leadership role while he yearns for a lost love; and of the staff sergeant who rules over the camp, speaking through bullhorns and learning about humanity. With restraint and an artist's touch, Timothy Bui speaks volumes with silence and images. He has created memories that perhaps once were his own but will now remain with everyone who sees this film. - Geoffrey Gilmore

Southern Comfort
Directed by Kate Davis
U.S.A., 2000
Run Time: 90 minutes

With a natural beauty, quiet power, and a clear voice, Kate Davis has created what must be one of the most remarkable documentaries of our times about gender, family, and love relationships. Southern Comfort is a wonderfully humanistic portrait of transgendered life as it is lived deep inside Ku Klux Klan territory in the rural trailer community of Toccoa, Georgia. Robert Eads is a female-to-male transsexual suffering from ovarian cancer who faces sure death after 20 doctors have refused to treat him for his condition. Far away from Atlanta's city lights, Robert makes a life for himself and his family-his two families: his biological family of two parents, two sons by birth, and a darling three-year-old grandson; and his chosen family of two female-to-male transsexual sons, Maxwell and Cass. Robert is falling in love with Lola Cola, a sultry male-to-female transsexual, but as hard as he tries to resist, in the face of his impending death, the romance blooms beautifully in bittersweet irony. Kate Davis's compassionate verité style of filmmaking portrays the lives of Robert and his community in such an organic way that their exceptionally unique and challenging stories feel as natural as the changing of seasons. Questions of sexual orientation, operative transitioning, and discrimination are effortlessly explored as the subjects freely open up their lives to the camera. Raw, emotional, and provocative, Southern Comfort is a moving and illuminating examination of gender and the human spirit that will surely open minds as it opens hearts. - Shari Frilot

The Apostle
directed by Robert Duvall
U.S.A., 1997
Run Time: 134 minutes
Rating: Rated PG-13

Emotionally charged story of Sonny (Robert Duvall), an earnest, charismatic minister who finds his world crumbling around him when he discovers that his wife Jessie (Farrah Fawcett) is in love with Horace (Todd Allen), a younger minister. Sonny falls prey to violence and obsession and is forced to leave everything and everyone behind after he puts Horace in a coma.