Inspirational Film Offered in Homes and on Mobile in Nationwide Launch from Alive Mind at Fiercelight.MyFilmblog.com

NEW YORK (MAY 4, 2009) - Beginning today, millions of people across the United States will be able to access the transformational documentary that captures the wave of Spiritual Activism exploding around the planet, and the powerful personalities who are igniting it on Video On Demand (VOD). Not yet available on DVD, Fierce Light is now accessible to viewers from the comfort of their homes or on the go at Fiercelight.MyFilmBlog.com. Available to all U.S households or mobile devices with a high-speed Internet connection, Fierce Light inspires viewers to embrace the transformational power of what Martin Luther King called "Love in Action," and what Gandhi called "Soul Force." Filmmaker Velcrow Ripper calls this uncompromisingly non-violent phenomenon Fierce Light-and attests that it is this very spirit that swept Barack Obama into the White House.

Velcrow Ripper, visionary filmmaker of Fierce Light said, "The philosophy that guides my work is the transformation of our world one person at a time. Fierce Light was created to empower people, to continue the change that is sweeping the world from Africa to Washington, from Mexico to Sri Lanka to South Central Los Angeles. By making my film available on demand, I hope to tap into the digital revolution that helped sweep Barack Obama into office."

When viewers purchase a ticket to watch Fierce Light On Demand at MyFilmBlog.com, the price of the ticket ($4.95) will be applicable to the purchase of the DVD when released later in 2009 by Alive Mind. Fierce Light will also be available at select theaters and community screenings across America before the DVD release.

About Fierce Light

Fierce Light reveals the power of what Alice Walker calls the 'Human Sunrise." This film reveals what is possible when human beings, faced with a world in crisis, rise to their absolute best. The film features such luminaries as Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Alice Walker; Buddhist peace-activist monk Thich Nhat Hanh; famed tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill; Hollywood celebrity turned spiritual activist Daryl Hannah; dharma punk, Noah Levine, and many more. Fierce Light shows how small changes made by individuals have the power to transform our world. When billions of people make small changes, this results in enormous change. This exciting transformation begins in the heart, when one person dares to care. Each and every person has a role to play in this profound shift in consciousness, a shift from the small 'me' to the great 'we.' This is the evolution of activism, and the evolution of spirituality - a revolution of the heart.

To read Velcrow Ripper's blog or to watch Fierce Light, visit Fiercelight.myfilmblog.com.

About Alive Mind:

Alive Mind releases high quality documentaries in the areas of enlightened consciousness, secular spirituality and cultural change. Alive Mind's recent DVD releases include FlicKeR, about the Beatnik artist and inventor of the Dreamachine; Tibetan Book of the Dead, narrated by Leonard Cohen; HAIR: Let the Sun Shine In about the generation-changing musical; and Through the Eastern Gate, a soul-provoking look into the deeper meaning of life.

Visit Alive Mind at www.alivemind.net. Sign-up for the newsletter and receive 10% off of your first purchase.

By Chris Knight, National Post

You might expect the director of programming at Toronto’s Hot Docs film festival to have a fixed notion of what is and isn’t a documentary, but Sean Farnel, now in his fourth year in the job, says it’s a moving target.

“I’m becoming less of a purist about the form as I see filmmakers doing impressive things,” Farnel says. “This is a case where the term ‘non-fiction’ is better than ‘reality’ — whatever that is. Documentary as a non-fiction form has become very fluid in the last 10 years ... You see docs consistently pushing the form in new directions.”

Two popular, form-pushing films released last year illustrate his point. Waltz with Bashir, by Ari Folman, recreates the Israeli filmmaker’s memories of the 1982 war with Lebanon through animation. Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg was part monologue, part travelogue and partly made up, though clearly even the imaginary parts of Manitoba’s capital are close to Maddin’s heart.

This year’s festival, which opens next Thursday with a screening of Jennifer Baichwal’s Act of God, includes a number of what Farnel calls “creative documentaries.”
Cooking History, about soldiers’ food during wartime, uses tableaux and elaborate reconstructions. Antoine, a Canadian film by Laura Bari, immerses the viewer in the universe of a blind five-year-old boy. Big River Man, which Farnel calls a “demi-documentary” in the festival’s program notes, “might be another example of walking the line between fiction and non-fiction to achieve what Werner Herzog would call poetic truth.”

While there’s never any shortage of good documentaries or appreciative audiences, Farnel believes Hot Docs offerings can appeal even to the multiplex crowd. “We have movies that are as funny as any broad comedy and as dramatic as any mainstream drama,” he says. “The reason our audiences have doubled in the last three years is that audiences that take that chance get hooked fast.”

Ultimately, he says, what he, his fellow programmers and attending filmmakers are looking for is the unexpected hit.

“It’s easy to see where films like The Cove and Burma VJ that have won awards and are coming to the festival with a lot of momentum — it’s easy to see where they’re going to have a very good festival,” he says. “But I’m excited to see which of the films that we haven’t seen a lot of bubble up and cause conversation.” Farnel is shy about picking favourites, but when asked for some possible dark horses at this year’s festival, he rattles off some unusual fare that fascinated him: Outrage, Defamation, About Face, The Sound of Insects and The Way We Get By.

Still, he admits public reaction can startle him. “I was surprised that Taking Root won the audience award last year,” he says, referring to Lisa Merton and Alan Dater’s story of Kenyan political activist Wangari Maathai. “Not that it didn’t deserve to win, but it was such a small, modest film.”
As with so many of Toronto’s film festivals, viewers are a vital component to ultimate success. “These are all in a sense word-of-mouth films,” says Farnel. “These films are such great conversation starters and are such a social experience. I’m excited about what the audiences tell me.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Yes, it is true, Nik Sheehan and FLicKeR are coming to New York city to the Anthology Film Archive, June 13th.

See you there.

The enthusiasm of Nollywood Babylon is infectious. Focusing on the widely unknown (in the U.S., at least) Nigerian film industry, this documentary speeds its way through seventeen years of their film history. Starting in 1992, the video market in Lagos has provided financial opportunities for hundreds of actors and directors making thousands of films. Clocking in at about 2500 films a year, Nigeria has the third largest film industry (the first and second being the U.S. and India, respectively). Seeing the passion that these artists share for films showing the real experiences of Nigerians, and the love of Nollywood itself, is inspiring for independent filmmakers everywhere, struggling to get their little pictures made.

The star of the film, the Nollywoood director Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen (known as "Da Guv'nor in Lagos), had made 157 movies when "Nollywood Babylon" started filming. By now I'm sure that number has increased drastically as he directs two more during the four-month period the documentary crew was filming. Lancelot is a quirky, very serious, loveable character. Watching him scream at his grip in one scene and then comfort his actress after an emotionally draining performance, you can see just how much he cares about this business.

I only wish the film made an effort to slow down a bit more than its star. The directors, Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal estimated some 9000 cuts, and that seems to exclude the cuts made within the Nollywood film clips themselves. This MTV-style editing makes watching the film a little bit like wiping out under a giant wave. The new information hits you full speed, and you're left with a mouth full of sand and an unsatisfying feeling of accomplishment. Each Nollywood poster shown in a split second has a wealth of information just beyond our grasp and the effect is a bit nauseating. The style matches the subject, but in this case a moment of silence, or even a single extra second spent on each shot would be very much appreciated. Perhaps the responsibility is placed on the audience to sit up, pay attention, and do our own research later.

Read the original article by by Whitney Borup here. Sign-up for the Alive Mind newsletter to receive information about upcoming releases, screenings near you and special promotions.

From the April 1, 2009 press release announcing the Peabody Awards:

The Gates (HBO)
Maysles Films in association with HBO Documentary Films and CVJ
Filmmakers explored how the now-celebrated Central Park installation by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude came to be in this memoir of a creative process that survived a 24-year odyssey of bureaucratic hoop-jumping.

Congratulations, Antonio! Sign-up for the Alive Mind newsletter to receive information about upcoming releases, screenings near you and special promotions.

Theater of War is now available for download in computer HD

The Boston Globe

Theater of War
Backstage insights into art and ideology

''Theater of War'' follows a 2006 production of ''Mother Courage and Her Children'' that starred Meryl Streep. ''Theater of War'' follows a 2006 production of ''Mother Courage and Her Children'' that starred Meryl Streep. (MICHAL DANIEL)
By Wesley Morris
Globe Staff / March 27, 2009

In the summer of 2006, thousands of theatergoers, stargazers, and people who enjoy Marxist German classics braved impossible heat to attend a production of Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children" in Central Park. It was more hoopla than Brecht ordinarily receives, even by the standards of the New York stage. But this Public Theatre production was somewhat out of the ordinary. Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline were starring in a new translation by Tony Kushner, directed by George C. Wolfe with music by Jeanine Tesori. And it was free.

John W. Walter, a film editor and documentary maker, was around to film the show's rehearsals. But it wasn't just Streep's star that struck him. It was Brecht's. "Theater of War," Walter's invigorating film, asserts the value of Brecht - and the power of art - for our troubled times.

The film combines backstage footage, interviews with Kushner, Wolfe, Tesori, and Streep, and conversations with two professors, one of whom worked alongside Brecht, the other who teaches his work. What comes of all this is both a film of ideas (call it "Everyday Brecht") and a modest journey into the dramatist's life. More than once the two merge into living philosophy.

Much of the playwright's biography is explained by Tufts University's Jay Cantor, who discusses how Marxism presented Brecht the intellectual rigging for his political anger. The film applies the basic revelations of Marxism (work is tyranny, labor effaces personality, that sort of thing) to the Public's production itself. Initially there is reason to fear. Jeremy Lydic, who oversaw the props and wrote his thesis on "Mother Courage," and Marina Draghici, who managed the costumes, do their jobs while Cantor explains that our work is who we are.

It's not drudgery we see, though, but a kind of personal pride in craft. Eventually Cantor, who has allowed himself to stare down the Marxist rabbit hole and seems the glummer for it, moves on to the productive uses of Marxism, which, under these circumstances, have more to do with the effectiveness of collective action. That, after all, is how art is usually made.

Brecht wrote "Mother Courage" as an antiwar jeremiad, and the play's enduring strength is the ugly reach of its moral quagmire. Mother Courage runs a profitable mobile canteen for soldiers that she continues to haul even after the war has cost her her three children. Death is tragic, but so, in a sense, is this woman's will to live. Walter sees in the Central Park production a parallel to contemporary military conflicts. American troops were spending another year in Iraq, and Israel had just invaded Lebanon.

"Theater of War" is perfectly Brechtian in form - "action and commentary on the action," as someone points out. Much of the most stirring commentary comes from Streep, who objects to the general idea of filming rehearsals (process looks like "bad acting," she says), but appears to go with the Brechtian flow, letting us sees flubs, sweat, and tears.

Walter juxtaposes her grueling, almost deranged performance with footage of the legendary performance by Brecht's wife, Helene Weigel, who appears to be twice as formidable while doing half the work. These backstage scenes explore the Brechtian urge to create and rebel. But the movie wonders whether creation is an adequately confrontational act. What is the value of art in times of strife? Should people be sitting in the theater or rioting in the streets? Walter's film reminds us that once there was a man whose work made no distinction between the two.

Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movienation.
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

By Maggie Overfelt, CNNMoney.com contributing writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The news this week that Blockbuster Video has hired advisors to explore "restructuring" options, which analysts say could include a bankruptcy filing, is bittersweet to the movie rental business's remaining indie stores.

They're likely to outlive the corporate Goliath that once crushed scores of smaller retailers beneath its blue-and-yellow onslaught of identical chain stores. But the same forces that seem to have doomed Blockbuster (BBI, Fortune 500) - mail-order DVDs and streaming online video - may kill off the entire industry.

John Koch, the founder of Cinema Revolution in Minneapolis, is fighting on all fronts to keep his business going. Sales started softening in the middle of last year, when high gas prices kept people from making the drive out to his store. To compensate, he moved to a new location in Minneapolis, with a higher rent but also a more diverse and artistic community. Koch hopes his new neighbors will better appreciate his selection of foreign and cult films; he also provides a haven for local filmmakers who need a venue to screen their movies.

Read the article at cnn.money.

New York, NY - March 12, 2009 - Lorber HT Digital has acquired the U.S. theatrical rights and public performance rights to the acclaimed documentary NOLLYWOOD BABYLON, co-directed by Ben Addelman and Samir Mallal, on the heels of the film's U.S. premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival as part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition. The deal was negotiated by Christina Rogers for the National Film Board and by Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon for Lorber HT Digital.

Lorber HT Digital will open NOLLYWOOD BABYLON theatrically at select venues in the second quarter of this year, and will also make it available to educational and cultural institutions. After the initial theatrical release, Lorber HT Digital will release the DVD to the consumer market on its Alive Mind label later in 2009.

Industry pioneer Richard Lorber, founder of Lorber HT Digital, comments on the acquisition, "NOLLYWOOD BABYLON celebrates the power of film to transform a culture and an industry. The explosion of Nigerian cinema over the last two decades is the reclaiming of African story-telling and culture by and for Africans. Nigeria is the new cultural center of Africa and Nollywood is the epicenter."

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times calls the film, "...an irresistible treatise on the Nigerian film industry..."

About The Film

NOLLYWOOD BABYLON chronicles the wild world of "Nollywood," a term coined in the early ‘90s to describe the world's fastest-growing national cinema, surpassed only by its Indian counterpart. The film delves first-hand into Nigeria's explosive homegrown movie industry, where Jesus and voodoo vie for screen time. Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen, known in Lagos as "Da Governor," is one of the most influential men in Nollywood. Undeterred by miniscule budgets, Da Governor is one of a cadre of resourceful filmmakers creating a garish, imaginative, and wildly popular form of B-movie that has frenzied fans begging for more. Among the bustling stalls of Lagos's Idumato market, films are sold, and budding stars are born. Creating stories that explore the growing battle between traditional mysticism and modern culture, good versus evil, witchcraft and Christianity, Nollywood auteurs have mastered a down-and-dirty, straight-to-video production formula that has become the industry standard in a country plagued by poverty. This burgeoning Nigerian film industry is tapping a national identity where proud Africans are telling their own stories to a public hungry to see their lives on screen. Peppered with outrageously juicy movie clips and buoyed by a rousing score fusing Afropop and traditional sounds, NOLLYWOOD BABYLON celebrates the distinctive power of Nigerian cinema as it marvels in the magic of movies.

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U.S. press missed a lot in Gaza according to the article in SF Chronicle:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visits Israel and the West Bank this week, giving the U.S. media another opportunity to tell the story of the 22-day war between the Israeli military and Hamas in Gaza in December and January. To San Francisco-based Middle Eastern media watcher Jalal Ghazi and other analysts, few Americans saw as many of the devastating images from Gaza as the rest of the world did.

Ghazi did. He is an associate producer for "Mosaic," a Peabody Award-winning daily aggregation of Middle Eastern news programs produced by San Francisco's Link TV. "Mosaic" culls broadcasts from 36 stations in 22 countries in the region.

Related: Alive Mind Acquires U.S. Rights to Palestinian-Israeli Hit Comedy Series «Arab Labor»

Theater of War is now available for Download to Own to screen in HD

Streep and Kevin Kline featured in documentary on the Tony Kushner-adapted Brecht masterwork

New York, NY – March 4, 2009 – Richard Lorber’s documentary label Alive Mind has acquired the U.S. theatrical, public performance and home video rights to the acclaimed documentary THEATER OF WAR, directed by John Walter (How to Draw a Bunny – Winner, Special Jury Prize, Sundance Film Festival). Featuring Meryl Streep as the unforgettable Mother Courage, this 2008 documentary was based on the New York Shakespeare Festival production of Bertolt Brecht’s "Mother Courage and Her Children” in Central Park. THEATER OF WAR displays yet another facet to the brilliance of Streep, recently honored at the Oscars where she was cited for an unprecedented 15 nominations and two wins. The deal was negotiated by Sheri Levine and Michael Thornton of Forward Entertainment, Jack Turner of White Buffalo productions, and by Richard Lorber and Elizabeth Sheldon of Lorber HT Digital, for release under its Alive Mind banner.

Alive Mind will now advance the theatrical and festival roll-out of THEATER OF WAR which was recently showcased at New York’s Film Forum to stellar reviews, including that of Mahohla Dargis of the New York Times who called it an “…inspired, inspiring essayistic documentary.” The company has set bookings next month at the Coolidge Corner in Boston with other dates at the Walker in Minneapolis, Facets in Chicago, the Loft Cinema in Tucson, the Wexner Center in Columbus, the Kimball Theatre in Williamsburg, and many more to be announced soon. In addition, Alive Mind will offer public performance copies of the DVD for sale to cultural institutions, universities and libraries under its Alive Mind Education label, and will release the DVD to the consumer market next year.

Richard Lorber, commented, “In the gifted vision of John Walter, Brecht’s work via Tony Kushner takes on a new power, hugely amplified by Streep and Kline, a way of looking at the world through the creation of art and at a work of art from the inside out.”

John Walter adds, “The Alive Mind team has quickly demonstrated that they have an unique and intelligent way of bringing a film to its audience and we are excited to be working with them on THEATER OF WAR.”


About the Film

Filmmaker John Walter artfully captures Meryl Streep groping for – and then seizing – the character in her unforgettable portrayal of Mother Courage in Tony Kushner’s adaptation of the Bertold Brecht masterpiece “Mother Courage and Her Children,” which was presented by The Public Theater/NY Shakespeare Festival in Central Park in the summer of 2006. As Manohla Dargis in the Times observerd, “filmmaker John Walter jumps from art to history and politics and back again, from the theater of the streets to the theater of the stage, without pause. That makes the movie… tough to summarize, which is part of its appeal.” Though this film could easily have been crafted into a star vehicle for Streep and Kevin Kline, Walter instead digs deeply into Brecht’s motives and politics, unearthing the playwright’s famed and famously clever testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee – the day after which he fled from the United States. THEATER OF WAR is about theater and war, capitalism and Marxism, the postwar anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s, and one literary genius’s ability to make art from them all.

About Alive Mind

Alive Mind releases documentary programming in the areas of enlightened consciousness and cultural transformation. Alive Mind was launched by industry pioneer Richard Lorber as a specialty distribution arm of his company, Lorber HT Digital. The company seeks to provide its audience with intellectually provocative work from leading filmmakers that delivers the “aha” response of a transformative experience. Current releases include the documentary film on the generation changing stage sensation Hair: Let the Sun Shine In; Academy Award winning director Jessica Yu’s Protagonist; and the internationally acclaimed FLicKeR about Brion Gysin, visionary artist and beat generation inventor of the “Dreamachine.” Upcoming releases include Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles’ landmark documentary, THE GATES, and others to be announced soon.

Related at Indie Wire