Overview
The American Film Showcase (AFS) is a U.S. Department of State cultural diplomacy initiative. The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs supports the showcase through a competitive grant award to the renowned University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts (SCA). AFS gives U.S. embassies the opportunity to bring award-winning American documentaries, feature films, and animated shorts to audiences around the world to offer views of contemporary American society and culture as seen by independent American filmmakers. The program offers foreign publics the opportunity to hear about an American perspective on key issues in the U.S.-Indonesia bilateral relationship. As private citizens, these filmmakers share their personal and professional thoughts, expertise, and ideas. They do not speak on behalf of the U.S. Government; rather, they provide a broader and richer viewpoint and can engage in an active dialogue with their Indonesian counterparts.
Two AFS experts, Richard Pearce and Freida Mock will lead interactive discussion, workshop and master classes related to American films, with a specific emphasis on cinematography, documentary, film production, the film industry, and film research and development. The program will screen thirty six AFS films with three main films: Brooklyn Castle, G-Dog (directed by Ms. Mock) and Inocente. The speaking programs are structured for the speakers to make an initial 20-minute presentation, followed by a question and answer session and discussion on wide variety of topics including “Ethics in Filmmaking”, “How to shoot intimate interviews”, “Starting a Career in Filmmaking”, “How to Use Social Media to Market Your Work”, “Getting The Shot – Cinematography” and other topics related to the filmmaking process. The discussions will also highlights social issues i.e. women and girl’s empowerment, youth empowerment and diversity and civil society.
Schedule
- Film Screenings and Discussions at American Corners
February 3-March 31
In Medan, Padang, Jakarta, Bandung, Semarang, Yogyakarta, Malang, Surabaya, Pontianak, Makassar, Ambon and Padang - Film Screenings and Discussions at U.S. Embassy’sInformation Resource Center (IRC)
Date Time Agenda Monday, February 3, 2014 13:30 45365 (90’) Tuesday, February 4, 2014 – No screening Wednesday, February 5, 2014 13:30 Lives Worth Living (54’) Thursday, February 6, 2014 14:00 Page One: Inside the New York Times (92’) Friday, February 7, 2014 9:00 G-Dog (92’) and discussion with the Director Freida Mock Saturday, February 8, 2014 – No screening Sunday, February 9, 2014 – No screening Monday, February 10, 2014 13:30 Mondays at Racine (40’) Tuesday, February 11, 2014 13:30 Trash Dance (68’) Wednesday, February 12, 2014 13:30 Zero Percent (104’) Thursday, February 13, 2014 14:00 Closing: Inocente (40’) Friday, February 14, 2014 – No screening - Film Screenings and Discussions at @america
Date Time Agenda Monday, February 3, 2014 – No screening Tuesday, February 4, 2014 – No screening Wednesday, February 5, 2014 – No screening Thursday, February 6, 2014 19:00 Press Conference,
G-Dog (92’), and discussion with Indonesian FilmmakersFriday, February 7, 2014 14:00 Off the Rez (86’)
Talk show with Masany GultomSaturday, February 8, 2014 16:00 Inocente (40’) Sunday, February 9, 2014 – No screening Monday, February 10, 2014 – No screening Tuesday, February 11, 2014 14:00 Dark Girls (72’) Wednesday, February 12, 2014 14:00 Deaf Jam (70’)
Talk Show with Asma NadiaThursday, February 13, 2014 14:00 Don’t Stop Believing (113’) Friday, February 14, 2014 14:00 The Loving Story (77’) - Workshops and discussions with Richard Pearce and Freida Mock
February 3-14 in the following cities:
Surabaya: 3-4
Jakarta: 5-7
Pontianak: 8-11
Medan: 12-14
Main films, video, and trailers
- G-Dog
Director: Freida Lee Mock
Year: 2012
Running Time: 92 minutes
Trailer:
Synopsis:
This is the story of a remarkable odd couple. There’s Father Greg Boyle, a white Jesuit priest who’s spent some 25 years in the toughest part of East LA, and then there’s the tough, street-smart, and amazingly sweet young people – all former gang members – whom G-Dog loves and helps, and who love him in turn. For Father Greg’s remedy for what he calls “a global sense of failure” for kids at-risk is radical and simple: boundless, restorative love. His unstoppable compassion has turned around the lives of thousands of Latino, Asian and African American gang members. G-Dog works by a powerful idea: “Nothing Stops a Bullet like a Job.” Over the years his Homeboy Industries in LA has become an international model for rebuilding and redirecting the lives of gang members. Kids come in off the street, rival gang members – 12,000 a year – looking for a way out of gang life. Homeboy, located in a gang-neutral area of downtown LA on the edge of Chinatown, takes them in, providing free job training, tattoo removal, counseling, yoga, fatherhood- and substance abuse classes. If they stick with it, the kids get jobs baking, cooking, serving, printing t-shirts and cleaning in the Homeboy businesses – a café, retail store, catering service, a silk screen shop – to learn the soft and hard skills to move on. In 18 months the homies are ready to go into the world to make a positive difference. For Homeboy has an astonishing success rate – 70% turn their back on gang life, compared to a recidivism rate of 70% of other such programs. Homeboy is the one place in the ‘hood that turns lives around: swapping violence for community and building for the first time a sense of the future. We see it happen in G-Dog. - Brooklyn Castle
Director: Katie Dellamaggiore
Year: 2012
Running Time: 101 minutes
Trailer:
Synopsis:
Brooklyn Castle tells the stories of five members of the chess team at a below-the-poverty-line inner city junior high school that has won more national championships than any other in the country. The film follows the challenges these kids face in their personal lives as well as on the chessboard, and is as much about the sting of their losses as it is about the anticipation of their victories. - Inocente
Director: Sean Fine and Andrea Nix-Fine
Year: 2012
Running Time: 40 minutes
Trailer:
Synopsis:
Inocente is an intensely personal and vibrant coming of age documentary about a young artist’s fierce determination to never surrender to the bleakness of her surroundings. At 15, Inocente refuses to let her dream of becoming an artist be caged by her life as an undocumented immigrant forced to live homeless for the last nine years. Color is her personal revolution and its extraordinary sweep on her canvases creates a world that looks nothing like her own dark past – a past punctuated by a father deported for domestic abuse, an alcoholic and defeated mother of four who once took her daughter by the hand to jump off a bridge together, an endless shuffle year after year through the city’s overcrowded homeless shelters and the constant threat of deportation. Despite this history, Inocente’s eyes envision a world transformed…where buildings drip in yellow and orange, where pink and turquoise planets twinkle with rescued dreams, and one-eyed childlike creatures play amongst loved babies and purple clouds. Inocente’s family history is slowly revealed through her paintings. Told entirely in her own words, we come to Inocente’s story as she realizes her life is at a turning point, and for the first time, she decides to take control of her own destiny. Irreverent, flawed and funny, she’s now channeling her irrepressible personality into a future she controls. Her talent has finally been noticed, and if she can create a body of work in time, she has an opportunity to put on her first art show. Meanwhile, her family life is at a tense impasse — if she legally emancipates herself from her mother to strike out on her own, she’ll risk placing her brothers in foster care, but to stay is unbearable. Neither sentimental nor sensational, Inocente will immerse you in the very real, day-to-day existence of a young girl who is battling a war that we never see. This film will usher you into the secret life she returns to at the end of every day, where she navigates the instability, despair, and neglect of a situation she must endure through no fault of her own. The challenges are staggering, but the hope in Inocente’s story proves that her circumstances not define her — her dreams do.
Full synopsis: English (1.29 MB) | Bahasa Indonesia (129 KB)
Profile
Freida Mock is an Academy Award and Emmy Award – winning filmmaker, a director, writer and producer of feature length and short form theatrical documentary films. These include the Oscar winner Maya Lin: A Strong Vision, a feature film about the designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Mock’s other Oscar nominated films include: Rose Kennedy, a Life to Remember; SING! about one of the best U.S. children’s chorus; Never Give UP, about the holocaust survivor and conductor Dr. Herbert Zipper; and To Live or Let Die, a story that explores the ethics in neonatal intensive care. Her recent films are: Wrestling With Angels: Playwright Tony Kushner; Return with Honor, presented by Tom Hanks and Playtone; the feature documentary Sing China! filmed in China prior to the Beijing Olympics and featuring the world-renowned LA Children’s Chorus and Lt. Watada, shortlisted for the 2010 Oscars, about the first military officer to refuse to deploy to Iraq and to speak out about the war’s illegality.
Mock is currently in production on a feature documentary film Anita – Speaking Truth to Power, about the life and times of Anita Hill. Mock was the first Governor elected to the new Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and served as Governor and Chair for five years. She is presently co-chair of the DGA Awards Documentary selection Committee. Mock received a B.A. from UC Berkeley where she did graduate work in history and law. She is a partner in the Los Angeles – based Sanders & Mock Productions and co-founder of the nonprofit American Film Foundation that specializes in producing films on the arts, sciences and the humanities.
Richard Pearce made his feature film directorial debut with the period drama Heartland, which earned the Golden Bear (grand prize) at the Berlin Film Festival and opened the New York Film Festival’s first look at American Independents in 1981. Other films of Pearce’s include Country, The Long Walk Home, Leap of Faith, No Mercy, and A Family Thing. For television, Pearce earned an Emmy nomination for his work on the ABC mini-series The Final Days, an examination of the last days of the Nixon presidency.
His film for HBO, Witness Protection, starring Tom Sizemore and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, was nominated for a Golden Globe. Other television projects include the pilots for Fox’s Party of Five and ABC’s Nothing Sacred (which won a Peabody Award), and the three-hour television musical South Pacific for ABC/Disney. Pearce began his professional career in the late 1960s as a cinematographer, and in that regard his credits include three Oscar-winning documentaries, Woodstock, Marjoe, and Interviews with My Lai Veterans. His final documentary project before moving into directing feature films was the acclaimed Vietnam War feature documentary Hearts and Minds directed by Peter Davis.
Pearce was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, and earned his undergraduate degree in English Literature at Yale, where he met renowned documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker. He then moved to New York City to work with Pennebaker and Richard Leacock on several documentaries. While in New York he attended New York University’s Film School and earned an M.A. in Political Economics from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research.
