Mountainfilm Blog

The 2009 Oscar nominations were announced early this morning, and we are happy to see a few familiar faces in the line-up. Mountainfilm alumni stacked the documentary feature category, with three films that screened at Mountainfilm 2009 in the running: Burma VJ, The Cove and Food, Inc.

There are also a few more films on the larger list that we're looking to play in May, 2010. We won't tell you which ones just yet!

If you didn't get a chance to see any of these films at at a Mountainfilm screening or elsewhere, you'll probably get more opportunities now that they've been honored with Oscar nods. Check out the trailers, below:

Burma VJ

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2VNqC4xxAU[/youtube]

The Cove

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KRD8e20fBo[/youtube]

Food, Inc.

A new doc in the works, Cool It, "aims to quiet the global-warming alarm bells that Mr. Guggenheim and his narrator, Al Gore, set ringing," according to the New York Times. Read the full article here.

Bill Nathan, the freed slave who attended Mountainfilm in 2008 was the subject of a piece by Dan Harris of ABC News the other night. If you look closely, you can see a photo of him with author and activist Ben Skinner in Telluride at Mountainfilm when they won the Moving Mountains Prize. Extreme Measures to Save Extraordinary Man.

Naomi Klein, whose book The Shock Doctrine talks about disaster capitalism, spoke for Democracy Now last week about what needs to be done in Haiti. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsGDP-yfduo[/youtube] Her comments starting at 3:30 have a lot of impact. We cannot use this disaster in Haiti as a smoke screen for support of our corporate culture in the United States. Grants, not loans, will help this already impoverished and now devastated country.

Bill Nathan, who appeared at Mountainfilm 2008, narrowly escaped death in Haiti this past week. Bill was part of the modern day slavery program at the Opera House, speaking about his experiences along with anti-slavery activist and author Ben Skinner. Bill played bongos to close out the show, which was awfully cathartic and life-affirming.

This is another update from our board member Ruth Bender who was in Haiti when the earthquake occurred: 1/14/2010 I awake to another blue sky, and two UN vehicles in our drive. Is there news? No, nothing. No updates on aid coming in, or anyone going out. Pistare Pistare is a phrase that keeps going through my mind . If you have trekked in Nepal will know what I am talking about. Slowly Slowly. Everything happens slowly here, and it will continue to move that way. It is both a cultural norm and the current physical reality. Life works differently here. And infrastructure, or lack thereof, predicates the slow pace of building, rebuilding, responding. I have taken to keeping a bottle of water nearby. But not for drinking. Every time I think the ground is shaking, my eyes jump to the bottle to see if the water is sloshing. Each time, it seems, it is in my imagination. There have been some ongoing aftershocks. A few big ones during the night, but I slept through them. A couple during the day as well, but not nearly as many as there are in my imagination.

The following note was sent by the organization Free the Slaves, the recipient of our inaugural Moving Mountains Prize in 2007. Dear Friends, The catastrophic earthquake that struck Haiti this week will further devastate one of the world's poorest nations. The disaster leaves thousands of families more vulnerable to slavery. Support from people like you has allowed Free the Slaves to work closely with two grassroots groups that fight the entrenched system of child slavery on the ground in Haiti. One group, Limye Lavi, is based near the earthquake epicenter in Jacmel. The second group, KOFAVIV, is based in Port-au-Prince. Many of its members live in the impoverished neighborhoods that now lay in ruins. I know that all of us are thinking about the people of Haiti as the nation recovers. Beyond the immediate humanitarian efforts now underway, Haitians will require sustained support to ensure that the progress they have made in combating slavery is not lost.