Save These Dates! October 14th, 15th, 16th 2011

2011-09-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

The Trenton International Film Festival continues to showcase great cinema from around the globe. This year's festival runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday: October 14, 15, and 16. All films will have English subtitles.

Individual tickets $10 (all shows)
Buy 3 or more tickets and each ticket is $7.50 (25% discount)
Click to here to purchase tickets online

High School and College Students who bring proper I.D. can see films for FREE!

Friday October 14th

7:30pm KINYARWANDA (100 min. 2011, Rwanda-USA) Directed by Alrick Brown. Winner Audience Award World Dramatic Feature at Sundance 2011. During the Rwandan genocide, when neighbors killed neighbors and friends betrayed friends, some crossed lines of hatred to protect each other. KINYARWANDA is based on true accounts from survivors who took refuge at the Grand Mosque of Kigali and the madrassa of Nyanza. It recounts how the Imams opened the doors of the mosques to give refuge to the Tutsi and those Hutu who refused to participate in the killing.

Saturday October 15th

1pm TODOS TUS MUERTOS (88 min. 2011, Colombia) Directed by Carlos Moreno. In this eerie and fantastically shot tragicomic satire, an ordinary farmer's morning routine is interrupted when he makes a grim discovery in the middle of his cornfield—a huge pile of dead bodies. Aghast, he reports the mysterious massacre on what happens to be Election Day. When the small-town mayor and police lieutenant take notice, fearful of unleashing a public scandal, they stall and intimidate the farmer and his family. Meanwhile, the sun beats down, and the eerie corpses remain, refusing to be ignored.

3pm TRANSFER (93 min. 2010, Germany) Directed by Damir Lukacevic. An elderly couple, forever in love, decide to have their consciousness "transferred" to the bodies of two young healthy African people. The parallel lives of the elderly couple and their African hosts is a haunting story of love and friendship.

7:00pm CHANCE (91 min. 2009, Panama) Directed by Abner Benaim. This is the answer film to The Help. Two maids decide to take fate into their own hands in order to get their back pay, and the consequences are hilarious in this wonderful film from Central America. Viva la revolution!

Sunday October 16th

1pm THE LIGHT THIEF (80 min. 2010, Kyrgyzstan) Directed by Aktan Arym Kubat. In this colorful modern-day parable of good and evil, a humble village electrician devotes his compassion and ingenuity to destitute neighbors in a wind-swept valley of Kyrgyzstan. Played with wry humanity by writer-director Aktan Arym Kubat, the trusting Mr. Light strikes a suspect bargain with a rich developer running for local office, as unemployment threatens the survival of the community. Stoking a dream to supply wind-generated electricity to the whole valley, the modest visionary comes up against an increasingly dark cloud of corruption in this affecting tale of solidarity and ordinary decency amid the injustices and hardships of a changing world.

3pm SCHEHERAZADE:TELL ME A STORY (135 min. 2009, Egypt) Directed by Yousry Nasrallah. Cairo, today. Hebba, a television show host, presents a successful political talk show on a privately owned network. Karim, her husband, is deputy editor in chief of a government-owned newspaper. His ambition is to become editor in chief. He is led to believe by the party leaders, that his wife’s constant meddling with opposition politics could put his promotion in danger. Using his boyish charm and sexual prowess, he convinces Hebba to stay away from politics, and devote her program to social issues for which the government cannot be held responsible. She starts a series of talk shows around issues involving women. She listens to the stories of resilient, strong women, who, like Scheherazade in “A Thousand and One Nights”, tell their stories to stay alive. Hebba knows, of course, that women’s issues are political. But she could not imagine up to which extent. Gradually, she finds herself walking in a minefield of abuse, sexual, religious, social and political repression that lead to the break-up of her marriage. From storyteller, Hebba herself becomes a story.

5:30 pm A USEFUL LIFE (65 min. 2010, Uruguay) Directed by Federico Veiroj. After twenty-five years, Cinemateca Uruguaya’s most devoted employee, Jorge (real-life Uruguayan critic Jorge Jellinek), still finds his inspiration in caring for the films and audiences that grace the seats and screen of his beloved arthouse cinema. But when dwindling attendance and diminishing support force the theater to close its doors, Jorge is sent into a world he knows only through the lens of art—and suddenly forced to discover a new passion that transcends his once-celluloid reality. Stylishly framed in black-and-white with brilliantly understated performances, Federico Veiroj’s sly and loving homage to the soul of cinema is a universally appealing gem and knowing charmer about life after the movies.

A USEFUL LIFE (LA VIDA UTIL) from The Global Film Initiative on Vimeo.

Trenton International Film Festival 2011

Save These Dates! October 14th, 15th, 16th 2011