After the Great Recession, American investors turned to China. It was the new gold rush, booming with double-digit growth. There was just one problem: Americans couldn’t directly invest in the market. A compelling new documentary, The China Hustle, outlines how investors got around the restriction—and what it describes as the massive fraud behind it... Read the rest of my film review here at Advisor.ca.
The "stars" of my Sundance-supported documentary, The Flying Stars, will celebrate the UN's Disability Day on December 3 by doing what they do best: play soccer. The Freetown Flying Stars will challenge their Bo regional counterparts in a rematch of the game they played in the documentary.
All the players are amputees, whose legs and arms were hacked off by rebel soldiers or claimed by landmines, during the Sierra Leone civil war of 1991-2002.
The amputees were innocent children or teenagers at the time, and their attackers themselves were children, brainwashed by the rebel army to commit horrific deeds. At the end of the war, the amputees banded together to play the country's number-one sport in order to support each other, but also show their countrymen that they could "stand on their own feet." The amputees also play to cope with their PTSD.
"This football match is to showcase how peaceful and united we are," says the Freetown club's manager, Mohamed "Census" Jalloh who appears in the film. "We want to preach peace."
Census, as his teammates call him, asks for any donations to help cover the costs of transporting the players and renting the soccer field ("the pitch"). You can safely donate hereby giving directly to the team or buying authentic Sierra Leonean wood carvings (above) or photographic portraits of the team by associate producer Fiona Aboud and the film's photographer, Johnny Vong. Similar items were auctioned off in a May 2016 fundraiser at the Gladstone Hotel in downtown Toronto.
The Flying Stars documentary is currently playing in Canada on the CBC's Documentary Channel and on the streaming service, kweli TV in the U.S.
For more information about The Flying Stars team and documentary, please visit here.
Americans can now see my documentary, The The Flying Stars, on kweli TV, a new streaming service offering the best in global black filmmaking. Even better, anyone in the States can try a free preview of kweli TV for seven days.
In this 65-minute theatrical cut, team captain Bornor (pictured in red above) of The Flying Stars amputee football club of Freetown, Sierra Leone is profiled along with his teammate, Census. As they pass and score on the soccer pitch, both Bornor and Census struggle to feed their families and come to grips with the post-traumatic stress (PTSD) they suffer from the decade-long civil war. That brutal conflict claimed 50,000 lives and left unknown thousands of children amputated, mostly by other children brainwashed by the rebel army.
The premiere of The FlyingStars on kweli TV brings the story of Census and Bornor to American screens after playing around the world, from Japan to the Middle East, at film festivals and TV networks including NHK and Al Jazeera. Co-directed by Ngardy Conteh George, The Flying Stars, enjoyed its world premiere at the 2014 Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM).
Since then, it has screened around at festivals and TV broadcasts, including Japan, the Middle East and Denmark. The Flying Stars was awarded Best Documentary at Atlanta's BronzeLens Film Festival in 2015. Domestically, The Flying Stars is currently playing on CBC's Documentary Channel.
The film was financed in part by the Sundance Documentary Fund. Both directors, Ngardy and I, are Sundance Documentary Fellows. In 2011, our film in development (then called Leone Stars) won the Telefilm Pitch This! competition at the Toronto International Film Festival and remains the only documentary to do so.
Learn more and follow the accomplishments of both the film and amputee football team at www.flyingstarsdoc.com
The crew of the Leone Stars documentary have just returned from a fruitful two-week shoot. They're chronicling the lives of amputee soccer players who've regained their dignity and purpose by playing The Beautiful Game of soccer. The crew was headed by co-director Ngardy Conteh, who worked in tandem with cinematographer Colin Akoon and production assistant Johnny Vong. I'm co-directing, writer and co-producer with producer Walter Forsyth. Read about their two-week shoot here.
The LEONE STARS documentary team has launched a fundraising campaign at Kickstarter.com to raise $20,000 to shoot a film about the amputee soccer team of Sierra Leone. Donate anywhere from $5 and $5,000 and receive books, t-shirts, photos and CDs in return.
This project has attracted some of the top film, music and photography talents in Canada and the United States: K'NAAN who has contributed his song, "Fire in Freetown," to this trailer you see; Hot Docs board member WALTER FORSYTH who produced the viral hit How to Be Alone and the feature doc CUBERS; New York photographer FIONA ABOUD, and journalist/filmmaker ALLAN TONG.
As Education Officer for SAVAC (The South Asian Visual Arts Centre), Allan conducted two workshops to discuss Sharlene Bamboat's film, Tapestry, at yesterday's Asian Heritage Month Symposium. The Toronto District School Board and Toronto Catholic District School Board organized the event at OISE all day yesterday. Classes of grades 9 through 11 discussed the challenges of maintaining and understanding their parents' traditions in multicultural Canada.
A middle-aged man in a loveless marriage meets a lonely teenager on the internet. That sounds like a cliche, but it isn't in this extraordinary film.
When we look for twist endings, we expect them in fictional films, not documentaries. Tallhotblond reminds me of Forbidden Lie$, which started with a common situation that ricochets in unexpected directions like a squash ball. Needless to say, I was hooked watching this suspenseful tale.
I'm not going to say much else out of fear of spoiling the story, but I can reveal that something bad happens in this tale of love, lust and the internet, and the villains and victims are not who you'd expect.
For more Hot Docs reviews, visit REEL 'N' ROCK, or sign up as a Follower to this blog.
I Want To Be A Desi 2 screens at the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival of Oregon in Portland on Saturday, April 24 at noon as part of the Life As We Know It program. The screening marks yet another west coast screening for the six-minute documentary, following successful festival appearances in San Diego and Vancouver. Full festival details and ticket orders at:
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Desi 2 plays at 2010 University of Toronto Film Festival
I Want To Be A Desi 2 plays on Saturday, March 13 at theUniversity of Toronto Film Festival. This short documentary questioning South Asian identity and the very meaning of the word "desi" appears in a one-hour program devoted to non-student shorts at 5:45 pm. All screenings at this fest are free and take place at Hart House just west of Queen's Park. Go to the second floor Music Room. Full schedule at: http://uoftfilmfest.ca/wp/. I Want To Be A Desi 2 continues a successful festival run across North America, following screenings in New York, Washington DC, Vancouver, San Diego and Peterborough. The film consists of research undertaken for the short comedy of the same name that will air on Bravo TV in the near future.
