These titles will be free to view during the festival, Sept. 21 to Oct. 4, 2020
Since 2012 the Global Peace Film Festival has been expanding our programming and connecting with more people by curating work filmmakers have generously made available for free and hosting those films on the GPFF website. This year we continue that programming below while adding opportunities to interact with filmmakers by asking questions using this form. Don’t forget to check out filmmaker chats, panels and extras here. Tell us if you’ve been inspired to take action here.
A Universal Prayer for Peace
Director: Eva Millauer
Producer: Eva Millauer
My great artistic passion is to find endless ways to express that there is only oneness at heart. All of life is one. I am here to make that tangible through artistic expression not to convince anyone, and experimental film is a wonderful medium for that.
2015/16 I started to experiment with films that invite people into immersion with a deeper sense of self than we often allow. One of those films was chosen to be represented in Women Cinemakers Magazine in 2018. (https://issuu.com/women.cine.makers_review/docs/special.edition/30).
The idea to make a film that is co-creational and allows participants to express themselves through their own unique response to the poem “A Universal Prayer for Peace” which I wrote in 2015 fascinated me deeply. The opportunity emerged finally in Summer 2019 supported by the beautiful spoken word artist Muneera Pilgrim.
‘At First They Don’t Believe’: Surviving the Khmer Rouge
Directors: Paul Cooke, Duong Keo, Rachel Killean. Peter Manning
Producers: Paul Cooke, Duong Keo, Rachel Killean. Peter Manning
“At first they don’t believe” tells the stories of two women who survived the violence of the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Sieng Chantei and Leay Kimchhean. How have these women tried to confront their past traumas? What has the country done to help? How have they tried to make sense of their treatment by a paranoid regime that abused thousands of people like the two we meet in the film? And what does the younger generation make of their story? Building on the work of Changing the Story in Cambodia, a four year research project, and learning from, and with, the innovative work of Cambodian civil society organisations, the film illustrates the importance of young people learning about and acknowledging the stories of survivors. …
BLINK
Director: James Bianchi
Producer: James Bianchi
As climate change ravages the planet, a father journeys with his son through a lifetime of memories, in an effort to preserve the last reminders of a place that no longer exists.
Coastal Requiem
Director: Diane Tuft
Producer: Diane Tuft
Coastal Requiem investigates the plight of displacement due to climate change amongst five coastal communities around the globe. Weaving Diane Tuft’s photography and haikus with deeply personal interviews, the short film portrays the global climate refugee crisis due to rising sea levels.
Constant Dripping Hollows Out The Stone
Director: Johanna Mägin
Producer: Katharina Karlsen Hessen
With plastic pollution quickly becoming one of the largest environmental challenges facing our planet, the way we manage this type of waste is more relevant than ever. As the Vietnamese people move towards a cleaner, greener future, we meet some who are doing their part to keep plastic away from the beaches — and out of the landfills.
Feeding Survivors
Directors: Isaac Brown
Producers: Stacey Goldring, Sabrina Habib
Jewish Family and Community Services in collaboration with Feeding North Florida have been caring for over 100 Holocaust survivors in NE Florida. This Short documentary provides an overview of their partnership.
Fighting for Environmental Justice: the Health Crisis at the US-Mexico Border
Director: Ilan Jinich
Producer: Ilan Jinich
The film documents how the San Ysidro border community is threatened by air pollution stemming from traffic at the US-Mexico border port of entry. The documentary highlights community efforts to mitigate this environmental injustice following a major federal expansion of the border crossing last year.
The Curious Scroll
Director: Andrew Purchin
Producer: Andrew Purchin
How to not hate the hater?
A curious painter in Santa Cruz, California gets strangers to make art on a scroll, creating room for conversations across political differences. The art, stories and thoughts that emerge are personal, direct and sometimes profound. In 2020, this painter plans to travel to swing states and make art with people on the Curious Scroll to help us be more curious and compassionate towards the people we disagree with.
Happiness?
Director: Raul Frederic Engelke
Producers: Raul Engelke, Leon Brinkmann
Two lives, one day. On the one hand Amanuel, a simple street seller in Addis Ababa, who lives on the edge of surviving. On the other Sarah, a successful managing director in Berlin, with a family and wealth. Amanuel is confronted with various everyday situations throughout the day. He also watches something that touches him deeply. Sarah has a stressful working day and has to deal with problems in the company. In the evening she gets into a fight with her husband. Her daughter Emily can’t stand the sight of them fighting and runs out into the woods. In the middle of the forest, both worlds unite in a magical way.
Keep Saray Home
Director: Brian Redondo
Producers: Brian Redondo, Bethany Li, Kevin Lam
ICE doesn’t just separate families at the border. In the outskirts of Boston, three families face the impending threat of deportation. But as refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam, they know they’ll have to fight together to stay together.
Into the Dark
Director: Michael O. Snyder
Producer: Michael O. Snyder, Eli Kintisch
Battling subzero temperatures and forty-foot seas, a team of scientists embark on a perilous winter expedition into the darkest regions of the Arctic. Their mission: to understand how trace amounts of light may be radically altering the mysterious world of the polar night. What they discover has implications for the global climate and the future of the Arctic.
Little Nations
Director: Maria Allred
Producers: Maria Allred, Alex Brescanu, Wes Roundtree
Little Nations follows a momentous piece of mail as it travels through the hands and into the worlds of children from a rich array of cultures that constitute North Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood. Coming to a poignant climax it illustrates the true, multi-cultural spirit of America.
The Butterfly Effect
Director: Kate Boylan-Ascione
Producer: Gracelyn Abel
As deforestation and climate change disturb Belize’s critical rainy season, one organization works to educate children both locally and abroad about the importance of preserving the rainforest, using an unexpected icon: butterflies!
The Simple Path
Director: Charles Moore
Producers: Charles Moore, James Madio, Lee Will
“The Simple Path” follows the decision making of Nevaeh, an elder care nurse who struggles emotionally when one of her long-term elderly female patients, Helen, no longer has the financial ability to support the costs associated with the care facility for which she works.
Wake
Director: Breeana Hinton
Producer: Breeana Hinton
Wake is a 3D animated short film that explores the impact and struggle of police brutality, discrimination, and racial injustice on a young African American woman. A young black woman tries to escape racial injustice in her world by falling into a dream. The dream she wakes in reflects the same realities of the world she tried to escape. She comes to the realization, once she wakes, that she must “Stay Woke” to the reality of the world where discrimination and discriminant policing are still occurring.
Reclaiming The Negative
Director: Mike Beech
Producer: Jiwon Lee
Since the end of the Korean War in 1953, roughly 31,000 North Koreans have defected from their home country to South Korea. In 2018, photographer Tim Franco began shooting a series of large format portraits using an unusual technique for a book detailing some of their experiences.
Surfing Corona
Director: Julie Bayer Salzman
Producer: Julie Bayer Salzman
SURFING CORONA is a love letter to all of humanity, as we are, here and now, in the midst of a global pandemic. In the film, neuroscientists, psychologists, yogis, educators and every day people share strategies for how we can transform our anxiety into hope, find meaning in trauma, and ignite the joy and compassion inherent in each of us. As Jon Kabat-Zinn says “We cannot fight the waves, but we can learn how to surf.”
Shining a Light: EJF’s Investigation into the Devastating Impacts of Illegal Saiko Fishing
Director: Environmental Justice Foundation
Producer: Environmental Justice Foundation
Along Ghana’s 330 mile coastline, the ocean provides food and income for millions of people. In the last half-century, industrial vessels have flocked to these waters, trawling the sea for fish to export overseas. Now an illegal practice, known locally as saiko, is pushing Ghana’s fisheries to the brink. “Shining a Light” documents the Environmental Justice Foundation’s investigation into this ecological and human tragedy.