 |
|
 |
|
| Home The Films Tickets Press Volunteers Extra Stuff Submissions Contact |
|
 |
|
 Award Winners Winners will be announced after they are presented at our Opening Gala on Friday, October 3, 2008. The Festival Program The complete Film Festival program, including schedules, venue maps, and additional information is available in printed form at various locations around Ellensburg. Download a PDF version of the complete program October 2 – 5, 2008 This Year's Films Include ... ........................................................................... Am1200 Haunted by recent events and on the run, a man finds himself the unwitting pawn of a possessed evangelical radio station and, like his unfortunate predecessor, must ask himself whether it is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. Official Selection at Starz Denver Film Festival, HP Lovecraft Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, Shockerfest Film Festival, Sacramento Horror Film Festival Amma The deep bond between a granddaughter and her elder are intrisically woven together in this animated short. Android 207 A stop-motion animated film about an android trapped inside of a large maze. Even 207, a sophisticated android, becomes overwhelmed with confusion and frustration as it struggles to navigate through the twisted maze of white walled corridors having no idea what fate awaits it around each and every corner. Official Selection at five film festivals including: Milwaukee Film Festival - AUDIENCE AWARD BEST FILM, Vancouver International Film Festival Animated Shorts program Ask Not Ask Not follows gay Americans in the United States military as they risk their lives for a country that criminalizes the act of “coming out.” Soldiers, including local Alan Steinman, co-founder of the Puget Sound chapter of the American Veterans for Equal Rights, tell their stories of how “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” affects them as they struggle to serve their country and maintain a double life. Official Selection at twenty film festivals including: San Francisco International Film Festival-GOLDEN GATE AWARD NOMIEE, The New York LGBT Film Festival, United Nations Association Film Festival, The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Film Festival Beyond The Call In an Indiana Jones meets Mother Teresa adventure, three eccentric middle-aged men, former soldiers and modern-day knights, deliver humanitarian aid directly into the hands of those who need it most. Independent aid duty calls them to the most beautiful and dangerous places on earth, the front lines of war. Brought to you by the filmmakers of Ghengis Blues, this award-winning film will inspire. Official selection at over 100 film festivals and winner of 35 awards including: Telluride MountainFilm Festival – GRAD JURY PRIZE, Santa Fe Film Festival – GRAND JURY PRIZE, VisionFest NYC Film Festival – BEST DOUMCNTARY, Fallbrook Film Festival – BEST DOCUMENTARY, Houston Internatinal Film Festival – REMI WINNER Bookie At a raucous soul R&B nightclub in 1963, crowds from all over Seattle gather for a chance at alcohol, wild music, and easy money. Amidst it all, a gambling bookie risks everything he has for a waitress down on her luck. Official Selection at sixteen film festivals including: Creative Nature William Morris’s glass creations have secured him a reputation in the field second only to his mentor Dale Chihuly. This engaging, beautifully captured portrait of the man and his work follows him not just to the studio, but to the natural world—paragliding, diving, rock climbing—that provides his greatest inspiration. Official Selection at six film festivals including: Seattle International Film Festival, Sun Valley Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival El Deseo (The Desire) Ana, a fifty years old woman falls into a depression when her husband leaves her. One day she decides to get out of this depression and starts to change from the outside to the inside. She awakens her desire and starts a process in which she rediscovers her new sexuality. Official Selection at Cannes Film Festival Familiar Voices First-hand accounts and expert analysis of the ongoing genocide in Darfur are powerfully demonstrated in this independently financed film. The story provides concrete, direct and accessible messages toward hope and enacting change. Official Selection at nine film festivals including: Boston International Film Festival – BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY, Sacramento Film Festival – BEST DOCUMENTARY, International Film Festival of South Africa Fantaisie in Bubblewrap A whimsical jaunt through the world of bubblewrap. Official Selection at thirteen festivals including : The Flats With an affinity for booze, debauchery, and raucous nights, Harper must decide whether or not to flee his jail sentence and leave his friends for good. His quandary becomes even more difficult when his best friends new girlfriend digs into his soul. Official Selection at ten film festivals including: Washington DC Independent Film Festival – SPECIAL JURY MENTION, NY Independent Film Festival – BEST SCORE and BEST ACTRESS Full Battle Rattle Deep within the Mojave Desert, the United States army has erected a cluster of fake Iraqi villages where American soldiers spend three weeks training before deployment. Valued at over a billion dollars, this simulation employs thousands of role-players and a team of specialists who choreograph their every move. In a town that’s all too fake, the war remains all too real. Good Food In the fields and orchards of the Pacific Northwest, something remarkable is happening. For decades small family farmers have been disappearing, but now they are making a comeback. This lively tour of various Washington state farms and ranches that have adopted healthier organic methods in raising their products offers several lucid arguments in favor of smaller, more efficient farms, and purchasing locally grown crops. Official Selection at Seattle International Film Festival and United Nations Association Film Festival The Greening of Southie The Macallen was designed to be Boston’s first green residential high-rise, a break from the past, and an example for the future. But as construction begins, most every laborer on site is doubtful at best. A clear-eyed film less about architecture than an examination of the hard work involved in going green. Official Selection at thirteen film festivals including: Pinceton Environmental Film Festival, Rhode Island Film Festival, Seattle International Film Festival, Independent Film Festival of Boston Hot Dog This is the third in the DOG series. In this episode our plucky hero joins the fire company to save the world from house fires and gain the affection he so richly deserves. Typically, the results never turn out the way he planned. Official Selection at forty-six film festivals including: ASIFA-East Film Festival – 1ST PRIZE, Maui Film Festival – BEST ANIMATION, Int'l Cartoons and Comics Festival – BEST CHARACTER, Seattle International Film Festival, London International Animation Film Festival Humboldt County At the edge of the continent is a region of California known as Humboldt County. It is there that Peter Hadley, a promising yet disillusioned medical student failed by his professor, stumbles upon a remote community of counterculture marijuana farmers and a warmly embracing, yet eccentric family. It is a story of the human soul in search of happiness, and the unexpected places we can sometimes call home. Ichthys The main character is a mature man. He appears in a restaurant which interior resembles sacred building. He is the only client there and is greeted by the waiter with cherub’s face. The waiter takes the order and leaves. The client waits for his return… Official Selection at seven film festivals including: Cracow Film Festival – BEST ANIMATETD SHORT, Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival – GRAND JURY PRIZE, Ottowa International Film Festival – SPECIAL JURY AWARD Jimmy Carter Man From Plains Following the path of Mr. Carter's recent controversial book tour for Palestine Peace Not Apartheid, Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme reveals a complex individual who, with the gusto and determination of a youngster, crisscrosses the country to get his message across, even as that message creates a media onslaught in which his credibility and judgment are called into question. Official Selection at many film festivals including: Venice Film Festival – INTERNATIONAL CRITICS JURY AWARD and HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD BEST FEATURE and THE COLLATERAL AWARD BEST BIOGRAPHY Lapsus Lapsus depicts a devout Catholic nun’s hilarious encounter with the dark side of the film frame. Oh my God! Official Selection at seven film festivals including: Sundance Film Festival Animation Spotlight, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Anima Mundi Sao Paulo Film Festival – BEST SHORT FILM L’efant Perdue (The Lost Child) Convinced she is being stalked, Elisabeth turns the tables on her spy...but when the balance of power tips, so do their roles. Who is the perpetrator? Who is the victim? Official Selection at Bronx International Film Festival – BEST FILM, Rome International Film Festival, Raindance Film Festival, Rome International Film Festival 2008 Live Action Shorts program Losing The Elephants It is estimated that by the early 2050s there will no longer be a viable population of Asian Elephants left. Visit Thailand’s Elephant Nature Park, and witness Lek Chailert’s efforts to save one of the planet’s largest and most intelligent mammals as Asia’s population explodes and the animal’s habitat is destroyed. Official Selection at Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Man on Wire On August 7th 1974, a young Frenchman named Philippe Petit stepped out on a wire illegally rigged between New York's twin towers, then the world’s tallest buildings. After nearly an hour dancing on the wire, he was arrested, taken for psychological evaluation, and brought to jail before he was finally released.
Petit’s extraordinary adventure to life through the testimony of Philippe himself, and some of the co-conspirators who helped him create the unique and magnificent spectacle that became known as “the artistic crime of the century.” Official Selection at over 100 film festivals including: Sundance Film Festival – WINNER WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY GRAND JURY PRIZE and AUDIENCE AWARD, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival – SPECIAL JURY AWARD and AUDIENCE AWARD, Los Angeles Film Festival – INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE AWARD, Edinburgh International Film Festival – STANDARD LIFE AUDIANCE AWARD My Effortless Brilliance This funny and moving ode to the complexities of broken friendships finds former buddies Eric and Dylan spending an uncomfortable weekend together in a cabin in eastern Washington. They work through their differences by splitting logs, matching wits, and eventually embarking on a booze-fueled search for danger in the woods. Official Selection at seven film festivals including: Seattle International Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Independent Film Festival of Boston Partes Usadas (Used Parts) A 14-year old Mexican boy, Ivan, learns to steal car parts in order to help finance his uncle’s scheme to transport the two of them to the United States. Enlisting his best friend, Efrain, to help with the robberies, Ivan embarks on a wild and dangerous adventure, where his success will propel him toward a heartbreaking loss of innocence. Official Selection at three film festivals including: Montreal World Film Festival – GLAUBER ROCHA AWARD BEST LATIN AMERICAN FILM Peaches Central Washington filmmaker Abe Silvestri’s latest piece is a tale about a man on the run, his habit, and a wrong turn onto a dead end road. Pickin’ and Trimmin’ At a rural North Carolina barbershop, the atmosphere is laid back, the conversation free, and the music is a cut above the rest. An engaging, genuine slice of old-time Americana. Official Selection at five film festivals including: Woodstock Film Festival and Mountainfilm Festival Red Gold Filmmakers Ben Knight and Travis Rummel spent more than two months in Bristol Bay, where conservation of the two largest remaining sockeye salmon runs on the planet comes into direct conflict with a proposed gold and silver mine with deposits worth an estimated $600 billion. They document the tension between native fishermen who oppose the mine and officials who claim they will build a “clean” mine that will leave the salmon’s habitat untouched. Official Selection at MountainFilm Festival – DIRECTORS AWARD and AUDIENCE AWARD Shikashika Filmed in the Peruvian Andes, one family must journey afoot to the glacial apron of a mountain where they cut enormous blocks of ice with an axe and bare hands all for the making of a colorful shaved ice sold in the valley far below. Official Selection at eight film festivals including: MountainFilm Festival – BEST CULTURAL SHORT FILM, True/False Documentary Film Festival, One Reel Film Festival The Strange Hunger Theodore becomes an unlikely hero when sounds of distant screaming in the cold North Sea urge him out into unknown dangers. Official Selection at Seattle International Film Festival and Gig Harbor Film Festival Teat Beat of Sex This is a series of one-minute animated episodes that talk about sex exclusively from woman's point of view. There is a mistaken assumption out there that women are too shy to talk about sex, or they have nothing exciting to say about the topic. So wrong! Women are as sex-obsessed and opinionated as men, so lets hear what they have to spill! Official Selection at over 50 film festivals and winner of 12 awards indluding: ASIFA-East Film Festival – EXCELLENCE IN WRITING/HUMOR, First Sundays Film Festival - JURY AWARD, FunFest Film Festival – BEST FLIM, 46th Ann Arbor Film Festival – ELIEEN MAITLAND AWARD, The Best International Animation of FIAE 2007, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Woodstock Film Festival Trouble the Water Official Selection at Sundance Film Festival – GRAD JURY PRIZE BEST DOCUMENTARY, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival – GRAND JURY AWARD Unlikely Weapon In 1968, in 1/500th of a second, Eddie Adams photographed a Saigon police chief, General Nygoc Loan, shooting a vietcong guerilla at point-blank range. Some say the photograph signaled the beginning of end of the war in Vietnam. The photo brought fame and a Pulitzer, but Eddie remained haunted by the man he villified. He said, 'Two lives were destroyed that day, the victim's and the general.' In truth, some may consider that the instant destroyed the lives of three. Official Selection at eleven film festivals including: Avignon Film Festival – BEST DOCUMENTARY, England Inernational Film Festival, Glasgow Film Festival Voor Een Paar Knikkers Meer (For a Few More Marbles) Four ten-year-olds are driven from the playground by some brutes. This is how they prevail.... Official Selection at over 100 film festivals including: New Strand Film Festival – INTERNATIONAL FILMMAKER AWARD, Almost Famous Film Festival, OUTSTANDING STORY and OUTSTANDING DIRECTION, Open Screen International Short Film Festival – BEST FILM, Danville International Film Festival – BEST FORWIGN SHORT What About Me? This trippy collage of music, image, song and self-actualization draws together characters from more than 50 locations around the world. Featuring Noam Chomsky, Michael Stipe, Michael Franti, Stephen Fry, Speed Levitch, Neale Donald Walsh, Tim Robbins, K.D. Lang, Baaba Maal, Bob Geldof, Lila Downs, and Maxi Jazz, among others. Official Selection at Filmstock International Film Festival, Red Rock Film Festival, CMJ NY Film Festival A Wink and a Smile Seattle’s own Miss Indigo Blue and her Academy of Burlesque provide instruction in the art of striptease. Follow ten beginners as they shed more than just clothes. They strip off self-doubt, emotional hang-ups, and stereotypes in order to strut enticingly across the stage, confident they’ve earned the right to have every eye on them. Official Selection at Seattle International Film Festival and Port Townsend Film Festival |