June 4, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Filmmakers  Annie Eastman / Diane Markow in attendance for Q&A!

75 min, USA, 2012

Website: http://www.bayofallsaints.com/

Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature, 2012 SXSW Film Festival

In Bahia, Brazil, generations of impoverished families live in palafitas, shacks built on stilts over the ocean bay. When the government threatens to reclaim the bay in the name of ecological restoration, hundreds of families are about to lose their homes.

Bay of All Saints is a lyrical portrait of three single-mothers living in the water slums during this crisis. Their individual stories of poverty unfold through visits from Norato, their big-hearted refrigerator repairman, born and raised in the palafitas. As these women rise to fight for their future, they begin to see the bay in a whole new light.

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The screening of Bay of All Saints will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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June 18th, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Filmmakers Tyler Hughen, Kalil Hudson, Alex Jablonski in attendance for Q&A!

Details: 80 min, USA, 2012

Website: http://lowandclear.com/

Emerging Visions Audience Award, 2012 SXSW Film Festival

During a winter flyfishing trip to Canada, two old friends, J.T. Van Zandt and Alex “Xenie” Hall, learn they’ve have grown apart in more ways than one.  J.T., the thoughtful even-keeled son of a songwriting legend believes there’s more to fishing than catching fish.  Short-tempered Xenie, a “firewood salesman,” sees it differently and fishes like it’s a race against the clock.  Their different approaches to fishing and life emerge and clash on the snowy river banks and damp hotel rooms of British Columbia in this true story of a friendship stretched to the breaking point.

An exploration of life in the disappearing wilderness of the West, Low & Clear unfolds with moments of humor and pathos, success and failure, as J.T. and Xenie find themselves on a fishing trip that could be their last.

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The screening of Low & Clear will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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July 2nd, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge  – New England Premiere!

Filmmakers Mikel Cee Karlsson, Frederik Egerstrand will participate in a Q&A via Skype!

74 min, Sweden, 2011

Website: http://www.josegonzalezthefilm.com

“What does the writing process of Swedish folk artist José González look like? A voyeuristic security camera in his soundproof recording studio reveals the painstaking routine, loneliness, boredom and silence that eventually give root to the whimsical sound of his much anticipated second album, In Our Nature. What does he think about while he’s brushing his teeth? Sitting on his tour bus? Eating his breakfast? Playful animation depicts González’ inner monologue and esoteric musings on Darwinism, the sun, his existence and the challenges of writing. One can’t help but be mesmerized by the understated yet powerful sound that emanates from the lone guitarist on stage. With intimacy and insight, Mikel Cee Karlsson and Fredrik Egerstrand capture a portrait of a humble and contemplative musical mind.”

– Lynne Crocker, Hot Docs

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The screening of The Extraordinary Ordinary Life of Jose Gonzalez will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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July 16th, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge  – New England Premiere!

Filmmakers Bill and Turner Ross in attendance for a Q&A !

80 min, USA, 2012

Website: rossbros.net

Tchoupitoulas is a story of the New Orleans night. It is a visually exhilarating and aurally immersive record of one night in the many lives of a thriving nocturnal populace. Three young boys act as our wide-eyed conduits to a parade of entertainers and revelers as they dance through the lamp lit streets and doorways of the Crescent City. From dusk to dawn, from Rampart to the river, we explore the lives and locales of one of the world’s most unique cities. In moments, vignettes, performances, and exchanges, Tchoupitoulas is a kaleidoscopic odyssey into another side of New Orleans.

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The screening of Tchoupitoulas will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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July 30, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

POV’s 25th Anniversary Celebration!

Filmmakers Jennifer Fox / Simon Kilmurry in attendance for Q&A!

100 min, USA, GERMANY, FINLAND, NETHERLANDS, 2011

Website: http://myreincarnationfilm.com/

Filmed over twenty years by acclaimed documentarian Jennifer Fox (Flying:  Confessions of a Free Woman), My Reincarnation chronicles the epic story of the high Tibetan Buddhist Master, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, and his western-born son, Yeshi. The film follows Namkhai Norbu’s rise to greatness as a Buddhist teacher in the West, while his son, Yeshi, recognized at birth as the reincarnation of a famous spiritual master, breaks away from his father’s tradition to embrace the modern world. Can the father convince his son to keep the family’s threatened spiritual legacy alive? Never before has a high Tibetan Master allowed such complete access to his private life and it is doubtful that another ever will. With her signature intimate entry to both family and icons including the Dalai Lama, Fox expertly distills a decades-long drama into a universal story about love, transformation, and destiny.

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The screening of My Reincarnation will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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August 13th, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Filmmakers Dara Kell & Christopher Nizza in attendance for Q&A!

90 min, South Africa, 2011

Website: http://dearmandela.com/

Best Documentary, Durban International Film Festival 2011

When their shantytowns are threatened with mass eviction, three ‘young lions’ of South Africa’s new generation rise from the shacks and take their government to the highest court in the land, putting the promises of democracy to the test.

When the South African government promises to ‘eradicate the slums’ and begins evicting shack dwellers far outside the city, three young friends who live in Durban’s vast shantytowns refuse to be moved. Dear Mandela follows their journey from their shacks to the highest court in the land as they invoke Nelson Mandela’s example and become leaders in a growing social movement. By turns inspiring, devastating and funny, the film offers a new perspective on the role that young people can play in political change and is a fascinating portrait of South Africa coming of age.

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The screening of Dear Mandela will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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August 27th, 8pm at the Brattle Theatre, Cambridge

Director Michael Collins and producer Marty Syjuco in attendance for Q&A!

95 min, USA / UK, 2011

Website: http://www.pacodocu.com/

Audience Award, 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

Audience Award, 2011 Sheffield Doc / Fest

Activist Award, Traverse City Film Festival

Set amidst old world vestiges of colonialism, classism and backdoor politics in the Philippines, Give Up Tomorrow rivetingly exposes a Kafkaesque contemporary world of corruption and injustice. In a murder case that ends a nation’s use of capital punishment, but fails to free an innocent man, two grieving mothers personify the chasms – both nightmarish in scope – that divide two families and, by extension, a nation.

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The screening of Give Up Tomorrow will be preceded by an episode from Alex Jablonski’s Sparrow Songs, a project in which the filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and exhibited one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

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This summer, the DocYard is proud to present a selection of seven films from Sparrow Songs, a series of documentary shorts.  One selection from the series will be screened before each feature-length documentary program.

Sparrow Songs is a project in which filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten made and released one short documentary a month, every month, for one year.

They began in October 2009 and finished in October 2010. In the months between they covered a variety of subjects from Porn Star Karaoke – about a night when adult industry performers and fans get together to sing – to stories about a traveling circus, a late-night donut shop and a portrait of a home for the developmentally disabled.

As disparate as the topics may be, the shorts are all united in their humanity and gentleness, with the subjects consistently revealing truths about their lives and worldviews with an honesty that is rare in documentary film.

Filmmaker Magazine described the films as “poetic essays that capture the essences of specific places, people, and moments, and that then, without pretension, build these observances into larger statements about love, truth, community, and the ways we are choosing to live our lives.”

For more information, please visit the Sparrow Songs website or refer to its press release.

The seven shorts selected to be screened during the DocYard’s 2012 Summer Series are:

(Note:  Please stay tuned for specific screening dates for each episode.)

 Episode 2: Unemployed 

A look at the physical, emotional and psychological toll of unemployment in one neighborhood in East Los Angeles.

Episode 3: Porn Star Karaoke 

Every week porn performers, fans and others from the adult industry get together at a bar in the San Fernando Valley to sing karaoke.

Episode 5: The Donut Shop 

A night in a donut shop where no one eats donuts.

Episode 6: L’Arche 

A community of people of faith living and worshipping alongside developmentally handicapped adults together they experience the burden and joy of what they feel God is asking of them.

Episode 8: El Circo

For 105 years the Ramos family has operated a business unlike any other – a traveling circus.

Episode 10: The Farm 

For every 25 players on a minor league team, maybe one will ever play in the majors – potential, ambition and pressure during two days with the Lancaster Jethawks.

Episode 11: The Campaign

Star Parker, a Tea Party Republican is running for Congress. With seven weeks before the election, her campaign holds their first town hall.

April 16 – 8pm

Brattle Theatre

Directed by Gemma Atwal

Official Website

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SCENES OF A CRIME explores a nearly 10-hour interrogation that culminates in a disputed confession, and an intense, high-profile murder trial in New York state. Police video-recordings allow directors Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock to unravel the complicated psychological dynamic between detectives and their suspect during the long interrogation.

Detectives, prosecutors, witnesses, jurors and the suspect himself offer conflicting accounts of exactly what happened in this mysterious and disturbing true-crime documentary.

April 2 – 8pm

Brattle Theatre

Directed by Blue Hadaegh and Grover Babcock

Official Website

whitesp