Category Archives: film

Elaine McMillion Sheldon: KING COAL & Josh Margolin: THELMA

This is our final Radio Goes to the Movies series before the 2024 Mendocino Film Festival, in which we feature two films that are screening today in the Matheson. First we speak with Elaine McMillion Sheldon about her film, KING COAL, and in the 2nd segment, we speak with Josh Margolin about his film, THELMA, which begins at 25:16.

You might think, oh I don’t want to see a film about coal, but this is a very artistic, lyrical tapestry of a place and people. KING COAL meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created. This is a spectacularly beautiful and deeply moving immersion into Central Appalachia, where coal is not just a resource, but a way of life.While deeply situated in the communities under the reign of King Coal, where Elaine McMillion Sheldon has lived and worked her entire life, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing the ways in which all are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, myth, and imagination. Emerging from the long shadows of the coal mines, KING COAL untangles the pain from the beauty, and illuminates the innately human capacity for change.We spoke with her via Skype on May 28th, 2024.

Inspired by a real-life experience of director Josh Margolin’s own grandmother, THELMA puts a clever spin on movies like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, shining the spotlight on an elderly grandmother as an unlikely action hero. With infectious humor, Margolin employs the familiar tropes of the action genre in hilarious, age-appropriate ways to tackle aging with agency. In the first leading film role of her 70-year career, Squibb portrays the strong-willed Thelma with grit and determination, demonstrating that she is more than capable of taking care of business — despite what her daughter Gail (Parker Posey), son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg), or grandson Danny might believe.

This edition ends with excerpts from Congressman Jamie Raskin’s (D-MD) New York Times piece from Nay 29, 2024 headlined, How to Force Justices Alito and Thomas to Recuse Themselves in the Jan. 6 Cases https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/29/opinion/alito-thomas-recuse-trump-jan-6.html

The Supreme Court Is Going Off the Rails. It’s About to Get So Much Worse. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/supreme-court-going-off-the-rails-amicus-end-of-term-june.html

Yael Bridge THE BIG SCARY “S” WORD & Lois Lipman FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO

This edition of Radio Goes to the Movies features two films that are screening at the Mendocino Film Festival, THE BIG SCARY ‘S’ WORD and FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO.

In our first segment, we spoke with Yael Bridge, who produced the award winning, Left on Purpose, and Saving Capitalism, starring former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, which was nominated for an Emmy Award in Business and Economics. She was also the director of productions at Inequality Media, making viral videos that tackle complex political issues and gained over 100 million views in 2016. She lives in Oakland, where she works as a filmmaker and film educator. Her film, THE BIG SCARY ‘S’ WORD, which she directed and produced is screening on Sunday June 2nd, at the Matheson.

In our second segment, we spoke with Lois Lipman about her film, FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO, which tells the story that the blockbuster film, Oppenheimer, leaves out – about the nuclear victims of the first nuclear detonation in history, who lived in the villages around the Trinity test site. They were not warned, evacuated, nor informed after the explosion of any danger, much less protected from the fallout. The interview with Lois begins at 27:30.

For many years Lois Lipman researched, developed, and field produced films for 60 Minutes worldwide —from India, Gaza, Guantanamo Bay to Paris and Saint Petersburg. Her films won numerous awards including an Emmy and a Peabody. Til Death Do Us Part: Dowry Deaths in India won Best Documentary of the Year from American Women in Television and Radio, and lead to the first arrests and convictions for this crime against women in India.
After Lois left 60 Minutes, she worked internationally for the BBC, Channel 4 – UK, and PBS. After teaching at the University of Maryland, Lois returned to her home in New Mexico, where she committed to making FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO, a film that exposes the injustices suffered, and continuing to be suffered, for almost 8 decades by New Mexican Downwinders. It screens on Sunday, June 2, at 10:30a.m. at The Coast Cinemas.

Special thanks to Paul Pino for permission to include his anthem, “It Ain’t Over Til We Win,” from FIRST WE BOMBED NEW MEXICO.

Mike Johnson Urged to Advance Bipartisan Bill For Nuclear Test Victims https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-johnson-nuclear-test-victims_n_66462dcee4b098d9bd48f148

Maureen Gosling: The 9 Lives of Barbara Dane/ Sabrine Keane & Kate Dumke: Preconceived

It’s the merry month of May, and that means it’s time for our “Radio Goes to the Movies” editions of Forthright Radio. For the past 16 years, we have devoted our programs in the month before the Mendocino Film Festival to featuring interviews with filmmakers whose films are screening the first week in June at the Festival. Today, we feature two interviews. Our first is with Maureen Gosling about her wonderful film, THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE.

Maureen Gosling, director and editor of THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE – the folk, blues and jazz singer, international social justice activist and recording star, wife, mother of three, feminist, record producer, unwavering maverick and general good troublemaker on the road when she was 90 years old. She is turning 97 on Sunday, May 12th! THE 9 LIVES OF BARBARA DANE is an underground history of a singer-agitator, whose unbending principles guide her through notoriety, obscurity, and finally, music legend.

In the second segment, an interview with Sabrine Keane and Kate Dumke, directors of the documentary, PRECONCEIVED, which investigates the question: Where does someone turn these days when facing an unplanned pregnancy? It’s an insightful look into the rise of crisis pregnancy centers proliferating across the United States, and explores the complex role of deception, finances, faith, and privacy…

Barbara Dane’s songs, which end this edition, Working People’s Blues and Resistance Hymn, are included courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recording, with special thanks to Will Griffin for permission to do so.

Articles pertinent to these interviews:

Texas man asks court for permission to investigate former partner’s out-of-state abortion https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2024/05/03/texas-man-asks-court-for-permission-to-investigate-former-partners-out-of-state-abortion/

Dallas church opens pregnancy center with abortion resources https://www.dallasnews.com/business/health-care/2024/04/29/dallas-church-opens-pregnancy-center-with-abortion-resources/

Study Links Abortion Restrictions and Intimate Partner Homicide https://www.commondreams.org/news/abortion-bans-kill-women?utm_source=Common+Dreams&utm_campaign=73db0d213b-Top+News%3A+Wed.+5%2F8%2F24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-3b949b3e19-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

Josh Berman: FULL CIRCLE

On Wednesday January 17th, 2024 at the Ellen Theater, The Bozeman Film Society, in collaboration with Eagle Mount, presents an outstanding documentary, FULL CIRCLE. It explores the question, “faced with a traumatic injury that renders you permanently disabled; how would you reinvent yourself?”

It interweaves the stories of two people who not only survived devastating spinal cord injuries, but became inspirations to those who learn of their personal renewal and triumphs. In 2014, 22 year old Trevor Kennison‘s life was forever altered by a broken back. Barry Corbet, an intrepid skier, mountaineer, explorer, filmmaker, and Jackson Hole legend, broke his back in a helicopter crash in 1968. Frustrated by a pre-ADA culture that did not accept or
support the disabled, Barry reinvented himself, becoming a seminal leader in the disability community.
As you will hear in this interview with the film’s director, writer, and cinematographer, Josh Berman, FULL CIRCLE follows Trevor on a path towards post-traumatic growth in parallel with Barry, 50 years later.
Their stories mirror each other, connected through time and space by common locations and motifs; injuries in the Colorado back country, rehab at Denver’s Craig Hospital, fame in Jackson Hole; but also, through their shared resilience and refusal to let their passion for life be limited by their injuries.

FULL CIRCLE is an unblinking examination of the challenges of Spinal Cord Injury, and a celebration of the growth that such tragedy can catalyze.

A guest panel will follow the screening including Adaptive Athletes Drew Asaro, Liz Ann Kudrna, and Beth Barclay Livington.

You can find out more here: https://fullcirclefilm.co/

For more information about the Bozeman Film Society or tickets: https://www.bozemanfilmsociety.org/

Molly Conners: Butcher’s Crossing

On Wed., October 25, The Bozeman Film Society will be screening Butcher’s Crossing, which was filmed in just 19 days entirely in Montana, mostly on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Glacier National Park and Nevada City in Madison County were also locations. We spoke with producer, Molly Conners, about Butcher’s Crossing and producing it here in Montana.

Molly Conners is founder and CEO of Phiphen, an independently owned film, television, and digital media company focused on producing creative, smart productions for a global audience. Her films have been Emmy nominated, and she has produced or executive produced 35 feature films over the last 15 years that have earned a total of 4 Academy Awards and 11 Academy Award nominations. Some of Molly’s notable credits include the 2014 Academy Award-winner BIRDMAN, the 2009 Academy Award-nominated FROZEN RIVER, as well as the films: KILLER JOE, THE IMMIGRANT, JOE, and RULES DON’T APPLY.

Her latest film, Butcher’s Creek, is based on the seminal 1960 novel of the same name by John Edward Williams, with a screenplay co-written by director, Gabe Polsky. An epic frontier adventure, Butcher’s Crossing, is a riveting commentary on human nature, ambition, masculinity, and man’s relationship to his natural environment. Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage stars in this tragedy about the last of the buffalo hunters in the Old West. Young greenhorn, Will Andrews, played by Fred Hechinger, has left his undergraduate life at Harvard to find adventure in the wild west. He teams up with Cage’s character, buffalo hunter, Miller, a taciturn frontiersman offering a hunt of an unprecedented number of buffalo for their pelts in a secluded valley in the Colorado Rockies. Their crew must survive an arduous journey, where the harsh elements will test everyone’s resolve, leaving their sanity on a knife’s edge.

We spoke with Molly Conners on October 13, 2023 via Skype.

Ian Garrett GROUNDWORKS

GROUNDWORKS travels from traditional acorn gathering spots to the studios where the “Groundworks” performance was rehearsed before being shared at sunrise on Alcatraz—nearly 50 years after the Indians of All Tribes occupied the island and brought attention to Native American rights. Originally initiated by contemporary dance company Dancing Earth Creations, the “Groundworks” project was designed to amplify the oft-forgotten Native presence everywhere in the Americas.

Groundworks weaves together four artists’ stories and their contemporary ways of sharing traditional Indigenous knowledge. By exploring their creative practices, it highlights these Native artists’ contemporary relationships to the Pomo, Ohlone, Tongva, and Wappo/Onastatis territories, languages and traditions. Their efforts to “re-story” the land through creative reclamation are important facets of the Land Back movement.

Bernadette Smith is a Pomo singer, musician, and playwright from the Point Arena Manchester Band of Pomo Indians. She is an activist leader involved with Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and brought her whole family to Standing Rock to protect water rights. She is currently working on reclaiming land traditionally used by her tribe for their acorn harvest, and on protecting the source of those acorns—the tan oak—from hack-and-squirt clearing to make way for managed redwoods.

Profiled in the documentary are Ras K’dee, Pomo, a musician with ties to multiple bands in Sonoma and Mendocino Counties; Bernadette Smith, singer and dancer from the Manchester-Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians; Kanyon Sayers-Roods, a multidisciplinary Ohlone artist from Indian Canyon, a sovereign Indian Nation outside of Hollister, California; and L. Frank, a Tongva-Acjachemen artist, tribal scholar, canoe builder, and language advocate.

We spoke with director, producer, writer and cinematographer, Ian Garrett, about his film, GROUNDWORKS, via Skype on May 16, 2023.

GROUNDWORKS will be screening at the Mendocino FilmFestival on June 4 at 3pm in the Festival Tent. A special program with Coastal Pomo dancers will open the program and a panel discussion will follow.

The Pirate Radio Broadcaster Who Occupied Alcatraz and Terrified the FBI https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-pirate-radio-broadcaster-who-occupied-alcatraz-and-terrified-the-fbi?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Red Natural History https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_topic/red_natural_history/?link_id=3&can_id=26389c9ba4e6ef1db60b08fdce8085f1&source=email-duplicate-me-4-section-template-2&email_referrer=email_1839282&email_subject=red-natural-history-a-growing-movement-of-scientists-and-scholars

Maria Niro – THE ART OF UN-WAR: KRZYSZTOF WODICZKO

Maria Niro is a New York City-based artist and award-winning filmmaker whose work has been broadcasted on television and screened in theatres, festivals, and museums worldwide. She is a member of New Day Films, a filmmaker-run distribution company providing social issue documentaries to educators founded by American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker, activist, and feminist Julia Reichert in 1971.

She serves on the advisory board of More Art, a nonprofit organization that supports collaborations between professional artists and communities to create public art and educational programs that inspire social justice.

As the National Gallery of Art put it for the East Coast Premiere of The Art of Un-War:

“Internationally renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has dedicated his work and life to denouncing militarization and war. Maria Niro’s recent documentary The Art of Un-War follows Wodiczko’s trajectory from his birth in Warsaw during World War II, to his expulsion from Poland by the communist regime, to today. Combining sculptural elements and technology, Wodiczko’s projects often function as interventions in public spaces, disrupting the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression. Since the 1980s, his deft, site-specific projections of images onto the facades of office and government buildings have grown to incorporate recordings of personal stories told by war veterans, refugees, and immigrants, projected directly onto war memorials, often animating the busts of revered historic leaders. Niro documents many of his major works, including The Homeless Vehicle Project (1988–1989), created in collaboration with homeless communities in Montreal, Philadelphia, and New York City; The Hiroshima Projection (1999), projected onto the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima, Japan; and the as-yet-unrealized project of transforming Paris’ monument to war, the Arc de Triomphe, into a temporary site for peace activism.”