Celebrating Indomitable Spirit
Festival director David Holbrooke’s thoughts & insight
Mieraf, the 11 year old Ethiopian girl that Rick Hodes (Making the Crooked Straight) treated with money from the Moving Mountain Prize, has returned home to Ghana with a straightened spine. Her surgery and recovery was a particular ordeal but as you can see from the picture below (Mieraf is second from the left in the front row), she is well and smiling.–David
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With the climate conference Cop15 happening, it seemed a likely place for the Yes Men to to pull something off. Canada took the hit on this one, which seemed to trump many of their other efforts in its elaborateness.
With the UN Climate Summit unfolding in Copenhagen, there is an unusual amount of news out there on climate change. If you want to dig in to it, check out the website, Solve Climate, which provides daily climate news and analysis.
A new report from the Global Carbon Project has just been released saying that we are heading towards six degrees Celsius of global warming. With the Copenhagen conference on climate change fast approaching, the report has been released to put some pressure on negotiators.
The U.S. seems to be unwilling to come to the table with concrete proposals, and have said that the Copenhagen talks, which were supposed to be definitive, are now just setting the table for future talks. This feet-dragging has frustrated a lot of Obama supporters, including Mountainfilm 2009 guest, Bill McKibben, who wrote in Mother Jones recently that Obama was “unwilling to lead” on climate change. The Obama Administration has been regulating as much as they can but they still need 67 votes to ratify any treaty that would come out of Copenhagen and that seems awfully unlikely at this point.
Yet Copenhagen moves forward – to what end, it’s hard to tell at this point but
Good Magazine has a fairly effective guide to what is happening and how to follow it all.
–David
I’m always curious to see what docs are nominated for an Academy Award. The first step is making the short list (from a list of 89 that were eligible) before the actual nominees are announced February 2. We played four of them at Mountainfilm in 2009 and strongly considered some of the others.–David
“The Beaches of Agnes,” Agnès Varda, director (Cine-Tamaris)
“Burma VJ,” Anders Østergaard, director (Magic Hour Films)
“The Cove,” Louie Psihoyos, director (Oceanic Preservation Society)
“Every Little Step,” James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo, directors (Endgame Entertainment)
“Facing Ali,” Pete McCormack, director (Network Films Inc.)
“Food, Inc.,” Robert Kenner, director (Robert Kenner Films)
“Garbage Dreams,” Mai Iskander, director (Iskander Films, Inc.)
“Living in Emergency: Stories of Doctors Without Borders,” Mark N. Hopkins, director (Red Floor Pictures LLC)
“The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, directors (Kovno Communications)
“Mugabe and the White African,” Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey, directors (Arturi Films Limited)
“Sergio,” Greg Barker, director (Passion Pictures and Silverbridge Productions)
“Soundtrack for a Revolution,” Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman, directors (Freedom Song Productions)
“Under Our Skin,” Andy Abrahams Wilson, director (Open Eye Pictures)
“Valentino The Last Emperor,” Matt Tyrnauer, director (Acolyte Films)
“Which Way Home,” Rebecca Cammisa, director (Mr. Mudd)
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