Free movies at Quest for Global Healing Conference in Ubud

Quest for Global Healing is a conference that is going on right now in Ubud at the ARMA gallery. Starting tonight and the next few nights, there is a line up of cool movies being shown, completely free, all comers welcome.

GH (Quest for Global Healing) Conference
Film Series Program
MAY 4TH, 5TH, AND 6TH
8:00-10:00pm

Film Descriptions

THURSDAY MAY 4TH 2006

“What the Bleep!? – Down the Rabbit Hole”
Producer/Scrn., William Arntz,
Dir/Scrn., Betsy Chasse,
Dir/Scrn., Mark Vicente
The extended Director’s Cut of the international hit “What the BLEEP Do We Know!?” includes new scientific findings that supplement the original movie, and goes more deeply into the concepts explored. In “What the BLEEP – Down the Rabbit Hole,” interviews are lengthened and a full 95% of all interviews is never before seen footage exploring the links between quantum mechanics, neurobiology, human consciousness and day-to-day reality.

THE FLUTE PLAYER
Director/Producer, Jocelyn Glatzer
A one-hour documentary film about the life and work of Arn Chorn-Pond who was a guest speaker at the QGH Conference last year. If the Khmer Rouge had not taken over Cambodian in 1975, Arn Chorn-Pond probably would have carried on his family’s legacy and become an opera star. Instead, at the age of nine Arn was thrust into the darkness of Cambodia’s ghastly Killing Fields. For four long years Arn struggled to stay alive amidst torture, murder, and frontline combat. As his family and culture were destroyed, Arn’s musical talent kept him from perishing in a genocide that took the lives of 2 million Cambodians.
Now, after living in the U.S. for 20 years, Arn faces the dark shadows of his war-torn past as he fights to save Cambodia’s once outlawed traditional music from extinction. An extraordinary story of survival, The Flute Player is a testament to one man’s triumph over tragedy.

FRIDAY MAY 5TH 2006

Watts Up! Preview (6 min)
Director, Damani Baker
Executive Producer: Belvie Rooks
Watts, Up! Demaria’s Journey is a one-hour documentary, which focuses on the journey of a 17 year old named Demaria Perry. Demaria was born and raised in the Nickerson Gardens in Watts, a notoriously violent low-income tenement project, where the only thing that grows in its courtyard is the list of names, now hundreds strong, on a Memorial Wall for those who died as a result of gang violence. On a trip to Bali for the Quest for Global Healing Conference he meets Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut and the sixth man to walk on the moon. Watts Up! tells the story of their transformative meeting and the world they share.

RETURN
Director, Damani Baker
Executive Producers: Kamau Kokayi and Susan James
“Africa has something to offer. It has to do with the sustenance of life, not the destruction of it. It has to do with a healing and transformation of the individual psyche, linked to community and family. It has to do with restoring hope in the midst of a deepening state of hopelessness. RETURN chronicles the human journey of African American professionals as they reconnect to the cultures of their ancestry, and experience their own personal awakenings. After visiting South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, their lives back in New York will never be the same. RETURN invites you to experience their spiritual and physical transformation. Their findings are central to the integration of ancestral wisdom and global well being for all the members of the world community. RETURN reminds us that the complete story of human possibilities on this earth has yet to be told.

Shorts Program

SOMETHING OTHER THAT OTHER
Director, Jerry Henry, Andrea J. Chia (5 min)

Filmmakers Jerry Henry and Andrea Chia started to film a video diary on the day they found out that she was pregnant. As the parents of a multiracial child they examine racial identity in this experimental personal documentary. They filmed Quin‚s birth in an unconventional way – instead of using video, they decided to shoot it on Super 8mm and to shoot it frame-by-frame, like an animation. New parents Jerry and Andrea have endured their own share of discrimination growing up. They hope their newborn son can grow up identifying as something other than “other.”

Grasshopper
Director, Bob Sabiston (15:00)
An interview with Amrit J. Vadehra who specializes in words of wisdom.

Spoonful of Sugar
Director, Andrea Williams (17:00)
Losing your virginity takes on a whole new meaning when you’re a teen born with HIV.

A Conversation with Haris Sheila Sofian (6:00 min.)
An animated interview with Haris, a young Bosnian immigrant to the United States. Haris recounts his experiences of the Bosnian war and the tragedy it inflicted on his family. The film is illustrated with painting-on-glass animation.

Saadia: A Moroccan Woman in the Resistance
Director, Tarik Cherkaou (3:00 min)
A young woman who is fed-up with the injustice plaguing her country as a result of colonialism decides to take up arms and fight for independence.

Ame Noir
Director, Martine Chartrand (10:00 min.)
Paint-on- glass animated film. Travel on a whirlwind journey through many defining moments in African -American history, as seen through the eyes of a grandmother sharing her life story with her grandson.

Two Hands
Director, Fabio Wuytack (5:50 min.)
Palestine has four heart surgeons. Mohammed Tamim is one of them. He went to Belgium in 2003 to specialize in pediatric surgery. The second Intifada made him a war surgeon.

SATURDAY MAY 6TH

Osama
Director, Siddiq Barmak
Executive Producer, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
Producers; Julia Fraser, Julie LeBrocquy, Makoto Ueda
Inspired by a true story, a tale that centers on three generations of women, deeply affected by the advent of the Taliban’s rule in their land. Golbahari, a 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother lose their jobs when this new regime closes the hospital where they work. As the Taliban has already begun to take over Afghanistan, the country’s women find themselves forbidden to leave their houses without a ‘legal companion’ – specifically, a boy or a man. With both her husband and brother dead, there is no one left to support the family – and without being able to leave the house, this mother is left with nowhere to turn. Feeling that she has no other choice, the mother – along with the grandmother- disguises her daughter, Golbahari, as a boy. Now called Osama, the girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity.

Herbie Hancock: Possibilities
Directors, Jon Fine & Doug Biro
Producers: Alex Gibney, Doug Biro, Alan J Mintz, Joana Vicente, Jason Kliot
INTERNATIONAL PREMERE at QGH

POSSIBILITIES is an intimate documentary about Herbie Hancock and his in-studio collaborations with a dozen formidable pop recording artists, collaborations that explore the unexpected, like jazz improvisations.
The film is also about how Herbie’s unique worldview shapes a creative environment that encourages artists to step outside the velvet prison of easy expectations. “The hip stuff,” Herbie tells Trey Anastasio, in a scene from the film, “is outside the comfort zone.”
POSSIBILITIES follows Herbie over a year and a half collaborating with musical icons Carlos Santana, Sting, Angelique Kidjo, Annie Lennox and Paul Simon, young superstars Christina Aguilera, John Mayer, Trey Anastasio and Jonny Lang and newcomers Joss Stone, Raul Midon, Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan
The film also puts Herbie’s latest work in the context of his extraordinary musical career, and includes rarely seen archival footage of Herbie with the Miles Davis Quintet in 1962; Herbie leading his Headhunters with their hit tune, “Chameleon”; Herbie’s classic video for “Rockit”; and never-before-seen duets of Herbie and Wayne Shorter playing for peace in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2005 on the 60th anniversary of the atomic explosions.

Post Conference Additions:
TUESDAY MAY 9th, 2006

Healing Words: The Hospital
Director: James Cavenaugh
Producer: Victoria Chaban
What art is in medicine? What medicine in art? Does poetry heal? These questions have guided The Healing Words Project to homes and hospitals across the nation, investigating the ancient link between poetry and healing.
Part One documents a hospital imbued with the beauty and hope of art. Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida was founded by Pediatrician, Dr. John Graham-Pole in 1982. Their experiment of mixing medical treatment with the arts has become a closely watched model for the future of healthcare. Please join us to discover poetry at work, in hospital, at the bedside, in the halls, by patients and physicians alike. See the arts of the spirit become the medicine of the body.

Bali: Hope in Paradise
Director/Producer: Jane Walters
Executive Producers: Gary Hayes, Michael Gibson, Mohd Zaidi bin Saleh
Bali: Hope in Paradise is the story of Asriana Kebon, a Balinese princess, whose
mother is Australian, and who, at the age of just 21 she has championed the cause
of widows of Balinese victims and their children, raising money and building a training and education center for their future. Balinese widows tell their stories of heartbreak, struggle and hope. In a Hindu mass cremation, we follow one family’s emotional journey as they farewell their breadwinner. Being Balinese, their spiritual healing is as important as their physical welfare. We are taken on a pilgrimage to some of Bali’s most significant and beautiful temples. Hope in Paradise truly is a story of hope. The story of a world-class citizen on a tiny beautiful island who has made a difference.

WEDNESDAY MAY 10TH 2006
A Visit to Bali – a Portrait of the 1930’s
Executive Producer: Deborah Gabinetti
Director: Nick Clark
Line Producer: Rury Yuniar

The project is a joint production based on the collaboration between Bali Film Commission (BFC) and the South East Film & Video Archive (SEFVA) at University of Brighton, UK that revolves around the recently discovered color footage of Bali material of 1937-39 documenting the beginnings of Travel to Bali and the effect Balinese Dance had on the early visitors. Shot by Swedish Diplomat TH Wistrand (stationed in Tokyo, Japan 1936-39), this amazing 16mm Kodachrome color film shows a fascinating glimpse into the true Bali that existed at the time. Pioneering anthropologists Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and Jane Belo, Walter Spies the painter, Colin McPhee the musicologist and Antonin Artaud the famous theatre revolutionary, exemplify early enthusiasm of Balinese culture. The 1930’s Western visitors’ creative talents and fascination with the culture served to spread the worldwide interest in the region people still come to see today.