Please click here to see the photo gallery of our films
as presented by Robert Kelly
Festival of Films & Faith
Port Jefferson Documentary Series
Spring 2012
• Monday, March 12, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED
Guest Speaker: Anthony Baxter, Director
Theatre Three, 412 Main Street, Port Jefferson, NY
TICKETS AT THE DOOR: $5
American billionaire Donald Trump has bought up hundreds of acres on the northeast coast of Scotland, best known to movie-lovers as the setting for the 1983 classic film LOCAL HERO. And like the American oil tycoon played by Burt Lancaster in that film, he needs to buy out a few more locals to make the deal come true. In a land swimming with golf courses, Trump is going to build two more – along with a 450-room hotel and 1,500 luxury homes. The trouble is, the land he has purchased occupies one of Europe’s most environmentally sensitive stretches of coast, described by one leading scientist as Scotland’s Amazon rain forest. And the handful of local residents don’t want it destroyed.
After the Scottish Government overturns its own environmental laws to give Trump the green light, the stage is set for an extraordinary summer of discontent, as the bulldozers spring into action. Water and power are cut off, land disputes erupt, and some residents have thousands of tons of earth piled up next to their homes. Complaints go ignored by the police, who instead arrest the film’s director, Anthony Baxter. Local exasperation comes to a surreal head as the now “Dr” Trump scoops up an honorary doctorate from a local university, even as his tractors turn wild, untouched dunes into fairways.
In turns funny, inspiring and heartbreaking, YOU’VE BEEN TRUMPED captures the cultural divide between the glamorous, jet-setting and media-savvy entrepreneur and a deeply rooted Scottish community, while offering a rare, unfiltered glimpse of The Donald at work.
• Monday, March 26, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
HELL AND BACK AGAIN
Guest Speaker: Geraldine Kaplan, LCSW
member of the PTSD team
at the Northport VA Hospital
Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University
TICKETS AT THE DOOR: $5 – SUNY Undergrad Students free
Co-sponsored by the Charles B. Wang Center
**********NOMINATED FOR A 2012 ACADEMY AWARD**********
HELL AND BACK AGAIN is a highly acclaimed film, garnering this year’s Grand Jury prize and Cinematography prize at the Sundance Film Festival as well as a nomination for a 2012 Academy Award.
From his embed with the US Marines Echo Company in Afghanistan, photojournalist and filmmaker Danfung Dennis reveals the devastating impact a Taliban machine-gun has on the life of 25-year-old Sergeant Nathan Harris. The film seamlessly transitions from stunning war reportage to an intimate, visceral portrait of one man’s personal struggle at home in North Carolina, where Harris confronts the physical and emotional difficulties of re-adjusting to civilian life with the love and support of his wife, Ashley. Masterfully contrasting the intensity of the frontline with the unsettling normalcy of home, HELL AND BACK AGAIN lays bare the true cost of war.
In immense physical pain, Sergeant Harris grows addicted to his medication. His agony deepens as he attempts to reconcile the gulf between his experience of war and the terrifying normalcy of life at home. The two realities seamlessly intertwine to communicate both the extraordinary drama of war and, for a generation of soldiers, the no less shocking experience of returning home.
- Monday, April 9, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
DOLPHIN BOY
Guest Speakers: Judith Manassan-Romon, Producer
Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University
TICKETS AT THE DOOR: $5 – SUNY Undergrad Students free
Co-sponsored by the Charles B. Wang Center
Directors Dani Menkin, Yonatan Nir , and Producer Judith Manassan-Romon spent four years documenting the journey of Morad, a teenager from a Arab village in northern Israel, who disconnects himself from society following a violent attack by boys in his village. As a last resort before permanent institutionalization, Morad is taken by his devoted father to be treated with dolphin therapy in Eilat. This documentary is about the devastating havoc that violence can wreak upon the human soul. This is a true story about the healing power of nature. DOLPHIN BOY won the prize for the Best Documentary at the Israeli Academy Awards.
• Monday, April 16, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
SHOLEM ALEICHEM:
DANCING IN THE DARKNESS
Guest Speakers: Joseph Dorman, Director
Theatre Three, 412 Main Street, Port Jefferson, NY
TICKETS AT THE DOOR: $5
Co-sponsored by Temple Beth Emeth of Mt. Sinai, NY
Sholem Aleichem: Dancing in the Darkness, a film written and directed by Joseph Dorman, is much more than a biography of the writer, Sholem Aleichem. It is a rich, and vivid look at19th century Eastern European Jewry in the Ukraine, seen through the eyes of Sholem Aleichem. In his documentary, Dorman’s archival photographs and movie clips conjure up the vitality and texture of the rural Jewish market towns known as shtetls. Through perceptive interviews with some of the best Yiddish minds of today, including author Bel Kaufman, Sholem Aleichem’s 100- year- old granddaughter, we gain perspective on Sholem Aleichem as a writer and a humorist.
• Monday, April 23, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
PELOTERO
Guest Speaker: Jonathan Paley, Ross Finkel
or Trevor Martin, Co-directors
Theatre Three, 412 Main Street, Port Jefferson, NY
TICKETS AT THE DOOR: $5
The central question behind Pelotero was a simple one: Why are the Dominicans so good at baseball? The tiny island nation is consistently overrepresented in the Major Leagues, and, as America’s pastime continues to globalize, every year brings a fresh crop of young Dominican peloteros to the top levels of the game. The Dominican system is one of stark contradictions. It’s institutionalized yet independent; a free market, yet frequently manipulated. It is a system where integrity and corruption are interchangeable tactics in the pursuit of the countries top players. Indeed, the forces that make Dominican players so successful are the same forces that make the Dominican system so dangerous for MLB. Most importantly, for all these reasons, or perhaps in spite of them, the Dominican system is extremely effective.
Pelotero sheds light on some of the most pressing issues regarding the export of Dominican baseball players to the US: age and identity fraud, exploitation, and the opaque role Major League Baseball plays in determining the fates of young players and their families. However, at heart, the film is a story about two gifted young men with a shared dream, doing their best to navigate a mercenary world with the hopes, fears and burdens of their entire families riding on their success or failure. Our guest speaker will be one of the co-directors.
• Monday, April 30, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
HOW TO DIE IN OREGON
Guest Speaker: Fran Schindler
FINAL EXIT Speaker’s Bureau
Theatre Three, 412 Main Street, Port Jefferson, NY
TICKETS AT THE DOOR: $5
In 1994, Oregon became the first state to legalize physician-assisted suicide. As a result, any individual whom two physicians diagnose as having less than six months to live can lawfully request a fatal dose of barbiturate to end his or her life. Since 1994, more than 500 Oregonians have taken their mortality into their own hands. In How to Die in Oregon, filmmaker Peter Richardson gently enters the lives of the terminally ill as they consider whether – and when – to end their lives by lethal overdose. Richardson examines both sides of this complex, emotionally charged issue. What emerges is a life-affirming, staggeringly powerful portrait of what it means to die with dignity. How to Die in Oregon, filmmaker Peter Richardson's second feature documentary, was the winner of the 2011 Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival.
Call the Arts Council at 631.473.5220
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All Tickets are $5.00 (except where noted)
The Port Jefferson Documentary Series began in 2005 and runs two series a year. We are excited to be starting our 14th series, spring 2012, and we are proud to present the six films described below. All of our films are critically acclaimed, award winners and feature exceptional guest speakers.
See you at the movies on March 12, 2012!
The Film Board: Lyn Boland, Arnie Katz, Honey Katz, Phyllis Ross,
Lorie Rothstein, Barbara Sverd
Festival of Films & Faith
All screenings at
Theatre Three, 412 Main Street, Port Jefferson, NY
Tuesday, April 17, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
A BETTER LIFE
Rated PG13 / 2011
Starring Demian Bichir who is currently nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor. A touching performance as Galindo, an illegal immigrant gardener living in East Los Angeles, struggles to remain employed but undetected by immigration authorities while keeping his son from gangs and providing him with opportunities Galindo never had.
Moderator - Dr. Arnold Katz
Panelists - Rabbi Stephen Karol, Rev. Brenda Ford and Rev. David Mantz
Tuesday, April 24, 2012 @ 7:00 PM
OF GODS AND MEN
Rated PG13 / 2010
A true story of eight heroic Christian monks in 1996 living in a monastery perched in the mountains of Algeria, serving and living in harmony with their Muslim neighbors. Threatened by civil war and the violence of insurgents, they struggle together with the terrible decisions they face in a film one reviewer calls "a luminous, transcendent experience."
Moderator - Rev. Dr. Richard Graugh
Panelists - Fr. Francis Lasrado, Margaret Pols, Rev. Peter Jansson and Dr. Arnold Katz
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
IN A BETTER WORLD
Rated R / 2010
A powerful experience, winner of an Academy Award Oscar as Best Foreign Language Film and dozens of awards world-wide. Anton is a doctor who commutes between his home in Denmark and his work at an African refugee camp. In these two different worlds he and his family are faced with conflict that leads them to choices between revenge and forgiveness.
Moderator - Rabbi Stephen Karol
Panelists - Rev. Dr. Richard Graugh, William Hall and Rabbi David Altman
SPONSORING ORGANIZATIONS: First Presbyterian Church of Port Jefferson, Temple Isaiah of Stony Brook, Infant Jesus Roman Catholic Church of Port Jefferson, First United Methodist Church of Port Jefferson, Protestant Campus Ministry at Stony Brook University, Little Portion Friary of Mount Sinai and Mastic Beach Hebrew Center.
