As part of its 38th annual tour, the renowned international Black Maria Film Festival returns to Princeton for a program featuring five films about the human experience and issues of global importance. Festival Director Jane Steuerwald introduces the program featuring short documentary, experimental, narrative, and animated films.
FEATURED FILMS IN PROGRAM:
KOKA, THE BUTCHER
Documentary, 37 min.
by Bence Máté and Florian Schewe (Berlin, Germany)
Koka is a highly respected figure in the pigeon battling scene in Cairo, Egypt. His life revolves around his pigeons. Each year whole areas clash in contests to release and capture each other’s birds. As the face-off between warring factions unfolds, 30-year-old Koka faces unbearable social pressure to leave “pigeoneering” behind, so he can settle down and marry. A race against time begins in a peculiar world where pigeons are the foremost source of martial spirit and pride.
I’D NEVER BOTHER ANOTHER CHICKEN AGAIN
Experimental, 4 min.
by Helen Cho Anthos (Reseda, CA)
A man relives an intense child¬hood memory, illuminating his greatest regret.
DAWN
Narrative, 15 min.
by Jorn Threlfall (London, UK)
New Mexico, July of 1945 — when the paths of an old farmer and a young Navajo boy cross, the world will never be the same.
FAMILIAR TALE
Documentary, 20 min.
by Sumie Garcia & Santiago De la Paz (Mexico City, Mexico)
Yukio Saeki arrived in Mexico from his native Japan in 1955. He opened a photography store in the Santa Maria la Ribera neighborhood in Mexico City, which he named FotoSaeki. At 83 years old, he recalls life in Mexico, family, relationships with his Mexican customers, and remembers the echo of a hot Monday morning in Japan, as he walked across a field toward the ocean as an atomic bomb fell in his homeland.
INVERSE
Animation, 7 min.
by Ioanna Tsinividi and Harold Herbert (Athens, Greece)
Agastrophos, a Trojan hero, now a marble statue trapped on a tiny island, is focused on an upside-down beetle; its legs and arms are grasping the air in an attempt to flip over and save itself. If Agastrophos could simply give it a helping flick, it would “inverse” its destiny and find a second chance at life.