If This Is Heaven, Then Give Me Hell: Escaping the FLDS [Short]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP_zfHErQG4

Behind the ankle-length pastel dresses, up-dos, and long-sleeves of polygamy hides a pervasive system of abuse, oppression, and control. I escaped the FLDS [Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints] recently, but thousands still remain trapped by lifelong indoctrination, lies, and dogma. If This is Heaven, Then Give Me Hell is the first step in my efforts to shine a light into those dark corners and illuminate to the public gaze the crimes being committed against humanity. I will be a voice for the voiceless and hopefully bring about change and freedom – stopping the destruction of families and abuse of the innocent. – Filmmaker Brenda Nicholson, Activist and Former Member of FLDS

A University of Utah “Humanities in Focus” Film

Humanities in Focus is a yearlong course at the University of Utah that connects undergraduate honors students with community members from marginalized populations to produce groundbreaking documentary films. Led by Jeff Metcalf and Craig Wirth, the program builds community, fosters a commitment to social justice, and allows all involved to develop confidence and a range of skills.

The College of Humanities provides this opportunity at no cost to its highly qualified and capable participants, which means it relies on the generosity of individuals and foundations to make this program possible.

Support the Humanities in Focus program

https://umarket.utah.edu/ugive/index.php?gift_id=71&special=Humanities%20in%20Focus%20HU16838-40165

ICARUS

http://www.icarus.film/

Academy Award Winner, Best Documentary Feature; produced by FiReFilms Ambassador Geralyn White Dreyfous

The ruthless worlds of international sports and politics rarely collide as spectacularly on screen as they do in Bryan Fogel’s thriller that is sure to set off convulsions of controversy.

While investigating the furtive world of illegal doping in sports, Fogel connects with renegade Russian scientist Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov – a pillar of his country’s “anti-doping” program. Over dozens of Skype calls, urine samples, and badly administered hormone injections, Fogel and Rodchenkov grow closer, despite shocking allegations that place Rodchenkov at the center of Russia’s state-sponsored Olympic doping program. When the truth is more complex than imagined, and accusations of illegalities run to Russia’s highest chains of command, the two realize they hold the power to reveal the biggest international sports scandal in living memory.

Exemplifying the special bond between filmmaker and subject, this is a vital portrait of the sacrifice some people will make to stand up for truth. Icarus places you at the heart of an international game of cat and mouse, where a miscalculation can cost you your life.

However Long

https://www.jennymackenziefilms.com/current-projects/however-long

However Long is an intimate portrait of women living with metastatic (stage four) breast cancer, and the unique support group that connects them all. As these women process challenging questions about living with an incurable disease, themes like resiliency, hope, and ferocious honesty emerge. However Long addresses the question that all human beings need to ask themselves: How do you want to live the rest of your life?

Happening: A Clean Energy Revolution

https://happeningthemovie.com/

Most Americans understand and accept the reality of climate change. Nonetheless, many of us feel uncertain about what we, as individuals, can do. For many of us, solutions to climate change seem out of reach, out of scale, and fatally entwined in partisan politics.

Meanwhile, the clean-energy revolution is quietly underway. Electricity generated from wind and solar is increasingly more affordable than electricity generated from fossil fuels, and the growth curve for the generation and storage of renewable energy now resembles the exponential curves seen with the advent of radio, TV, and the internet. But can we meet all of our our energy needs with renewable energy? How would we do that? And, most important, will we do that? Happening chronicles my quest to answer these questions.

During the journey of making Happening, I met many inspiring citizens, business leaders, and politicians leading the clean-energy revolution, but the most significant journey involved my own heart and mind. At the start of Happening, I was feeling pretty cynical about the value of political engagement. Three years later, I have witnessed first-hand the enduring value of politically engaged citizenry.

In spite of the turbulent political divides we are currently enduring, I feel more hopeful today than ever about our ability as Americans to combat climate change, and I am excited to share this with audiences so that they may feel this way as well. – James Redford

Donate: https://redfordcenter.org/donate

Ghost, Come Closer [Short]

https://vimeo.com/146727962

A fly fisherman glimpses his own death in the river that gives him solace. Facing the possibility of death following a cancer diagnosis, the American writer Jeff Metcalf finds solace in fly fishing the waters near his northern Utah home. Centered around Metcalf’s recollection of a particular trip to the river when he felt profoundly responsible for the life – and death – of a fish at the end of his line, Ghost, Come Closer is a lyrical meditation on uncertainty, patience, and the places where we find meaning and comfort.

Generation Wealth

http://www.generation-wealth.com/

Lauren Greenfield’s Generation Wealth is an extraordinary visual history of our growing obsession with wealth. Weaving two and a half decades of work into an epic narrative, Greenfield has created a revelatory cultural documentation of wealth for viewers to explore through a retrospective film, book, and exhibition.

Through riveting first-person interviews, Greenfield’s journey starts in Los Angeles and spreads across America and beyond, as she documents how we export the values of materialism, celebrity culture, and social status to every corner of the globe. We embark on this journey with Greenfield as she travels the world – from Los Angeles to Moscow, Dubai to China – bearing witness to the global boom-and-bust economy and documenting its complicated consequences.

We hear the stories of students, single parents, and families overwhelmed by crushing debt, yet determined to purchase luxury houses, cars, and clothing. We visit the homes and observe the rituals of the international elite – from Bel-Air to Monaco, Russia to China. We gain intimate access into the lives of those that rose to extraordinary wealth and then lost “big” during the global economic crash of 2008. And we encounter the A-list celebrities we follow on reality TV and social media, the same influencers who shape our consumer desires and sense of self.

Provoking serious reflection, Generation Wealth is not about the rich, but about the desire to be wealthy, at any cost.

GE FOCUS FORWARD: Short Films, Big Ideas
(featured 11/10/2016)

https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/

FOCUS FORWARD / Short Films, Big Ideas is an award-winning series of 30 three-minute stories about innovators – people who are reshaping the world through act or invention – directed by the world’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers. The films have been viewed in 150 countries and screened to audiences on all seven continents. The following have been featured by FiReFilms:

Cyborg Foundation
https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/contest/13/cyborg-foundation-rafel-duran-torrent

Heart Stops Beating
https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/films/9/heart-stop-beating

In Your Head
https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/films/65/in-your-head

Solar Roadways
https://www.focusforwardfilms.com/films/30/solar-roadways

Follow the Sound of My Voice

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/134431270

A young poet with autism faces Africa’s highest peak.

After his first year of college, Troy, a young man with autism, gets roped into an extreme fundraising climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro, the world’s tallest freestanding mountain. As the climb progresses, he begins writing poetry at the urging of the filmmaker, Ben Stamper, as a way to process his experience and garner strength to continue. As Troy begins to find his own voice, the mountain becomes the central metaphor for an emerging poet caught in the middle of a highly competitive father and a doting mother. This is a film about letting the voiceless speak and define for themselves the meaning of their accomplishments apart from the world’s agendas.

E-Team

http://www.eteamfilm.com/

Anna, Ole, Fred, and Peter are four members of the Emergencies Team – or E-Team: the most intrepid division of a respected international human-rights group (Human Rights Watch). Trained to deal with unfolding crises, the E-Team flies to hotspots all over the world as soon as allegations of human rights abuse surface. Then they get to work – gathering crucial evidence to determine if further investigation is warranted and, if so, to investigate, document, and capture the world’s attention. They also immediately challenge the responsible decision makers, holding them accountable. Human-rights abuses thrive on secrecy and silence, and the work of the E-Team, backed by their international human rights organization, has shone light in dark places and given voice to thousands whose stories would never otherwise have been told.

Using a cinema verite approach, our camera follows the E-Team investigators in the field as they piece together the actual events that take place in troubled spots around the globe. Together we smuggle across the border into Syria to conduct undercover investigations as the civil war rages; amidst bullets and bombs we watch as Fred and Peter work to halt human rights abuses in the aftermath of the Gaddafi regime. We also spend time with each E-Team member at home – from a quiet farm outside of Geneva to bustling urban lives in Berlin and Paris – as they balance the intricacies of family and personal relationships within the challenges of their exceptional work life.

Though they are different personalities, Anna, Ole, Fred, and Peter share a fearless spirit and a deep commitment to exposing and halting human rights abuses all over the world.

Dying in Vein

https://dyinginveinmovie.org/

From Academy Award–winning producer (and FiReFilms Ambassador) Geralyn White Dreyfous.

Dying in Vein is a deeply personal exploration of opiate and heroin addiction through a cinema verite style that drops you directly into the lives of an addict in recovery, a couple trying to get clean, a family grieving the loss of their son, and an Emergency Room physician trying to save one patient at time. Through these stories, the film explores the contemporary belief of “living life pain free” and the shame and blame that exists around addiction. The film looks at the impact of socioeconomic class on our broken treatment system, and how a group of emergency-care physicians are working to save their patients.