FrontSeet

Robert Blecker is one of the country’s most impassioned crusaders for capital punishment. A self-described ‘emotive retributivist’ and New York Law School professor, his credo is “Some people deserve to die, and we have an obligation to kill them.” Daryl Holton is one of those people. In 1997, Holton shot his four children to death with an assault rifle in Shelbyville, Tennessee. For these crimes, he received four separate death sentences. The two men met in 2005, during Blecker’s research trip to Riverbend maximum-security prison. ROBERT BLECKER WANTS ME DEAD tells the story of the unlikely friendship that develops between them, as the condemned man and the scholar explore together the meaning of mercy, justice, and the morality of the death penalty.

The Medieval and Renaissance blade, a profound and beautiful object hand- crafted by master artisans of old. An object of great complexity, yet one with a sin- gular use in mind – it is designed to kill. The truth of the sword has been shrouded in antiquity, and the Renaissance martial arts that brought it to being are long for- gotten. The ancient practitioners lent us all they knew through their manuscripts. As gunslingers of the Renaissance they were western heroes with swords, and they lived and died by them. Yet today their history remains cloaked under a shadow of legend.

In the summer of 2006, while the football world’s attention was focused on Germany, thousands of players around the globe were training hard and competing to be part of the World Cup…The Homeless World Cup. It began in 2001 as a wild idea by a Scot and an Austrian to give homeless people a chance to change their lives through an international street soccer competition. Five years later, the annual Homeless World Cup had become an internationally recognized sports competition. 500 homeless players from 48 nations would ultimately be selected to represent their country in Cape Town, South Africa coming from such disparate parts of the world as war torn Afghanistan, the slums of Kenya, the drug rehab clinics of Dublin, Ireland, the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, the overflowing public shelters of Madrid, Spain, and the unforgiving city of St. Petersburg, Russia, where the homeless have no rights or identity. Win or lose, for these players it would be the journey of a lifetime. The film follows seven players in their own tough worlds as they confront the daily challenges of life on the streets, battle drug and alcohol addiction, and fight for the right to be recognized as human beings. We witness their struggles, hopes, and determination. The teams are greeted by the South African President, as they make their spirited entrance in to two newly built street soccer “pitches”, located at the precise spot where Nelson Mandela was released from prison with the glorious Table Mountain as the backdrop. Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu joins the players, declaring homelessness the new “apartheid.” For 7 days of fiercely competitive matches, the teams vie for the championship cups. Despite the fact that they may not have a home, the players wear the colors of their country with pride. From shattering misconceptions about the homeless to seeing people living at the edge of society discover that they also can be winners, the film shows in a real and powerful way that sports can and does change lives. As the Russian coach observes, “To me, football is the best model for real life. There is no last game in football and there is no last game in real life. You always have another chance to win.”

The first film in the Disneynature series, earth, narrated by JAMES EARL JONES, tells the remarkable story of three animal families and their amazing journey across the planet we all call home. earth combines rare action, unimaginable scale and impossible locations by capturing the most intimate moments of our planet’s wildest and most elusive creatures. Directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, the acclaimed creative team behind the Emmy Award(r)-winning “Planet Earth,” combine forces again to bring this epic adventure to the big screen, beginning Earth Day 2009.

On November 5, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was murdered in a parking lot in western Pennsylvania; the prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr. Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John’s, Canada, where she announced that she was pregnant with Andrew’s child. She named the little boy Zachary. Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Andrew’s oldest friend, began making a film for little Zachary as a way for him to get to know the father he’d never meet. But when Shirley Turner was released on bail in Canada and was given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the U.S., the film’s focus shifted to Zachary’s grandparents, David & Kathleen Bagby, and their desperate efforts to win custody of the boy from the woman they knew had murdered their son. What happened next, no one ever could have foreseen…

Filmed over the course of 23 years, The Betrayal is the extraordinary story of a family’s journey from war-torn Laos to the mean streets of New York. During the Vietnam War, the United States government clandestinely operated in the neighboring country of Laos – recruiting Laotians for CIA-backed missions. When the U.S. withdrew, the new Communist regime sought vengeance. Thousands were imprisoned or killed. One family, the Phrasavaths, made the courageous decision to escape to America. Epic in scope yet devastatingly intimate, renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras’ directorial debut is a collaboration with the film’s subject and co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath. Featuring a score by Academy Award winning composer Howard Shore, The Betrayal is an astonishing tale of survival and a testament to the resilient bonds of family.”

A troubled fifteen boy attempting to cope with the recent death of his mother sets out to research Dr. Max Gerson’s claims of a diet that can cure cancer as his first assignment for home schooling in this documentary from filmmaker Steve Krischel (Avalanche, Dying to Have Known). Garrett is a boy who has always been close to nature. He lives on a reserve with a menagerie of orphaned animals, and over the years he’s become especially sensitive to the nutritional needs of the diet sensitive animals he’s charged with caring for. When Garrett’s mother suffers a tragic and untimely death, the boy falls into a dangerous downward spiral and nearly flunks out of school. Increasingly concerned for Garrett’s well being and determined to strengthen their bond despite the many challenges on the horizon, his father makes the decision to begin home schooling the distressed teen. Garrett’s first assignment: study a controversial book written by Dr. Max Gerson, a physician who claims to have discovered a diet that’s capable of curing cancer. Is Dr. Gerson’s therapy truly the legitimate, alternative cure it appears to be? In order to find out the truth behind this long-suppressed treatment, Garrett interviews not only Dr. Gerson’s family members, but various doctors, skeptics, and cancer patients as well. His studies completed and his findings revelatory, Garrett’s now sets out to tell the entire world about The Gerson Miracle.

This landmark concert film follows three acclaimed comedians on stage and off as they lift the veil to reveal the humorous side of what it’s really like to be American and Muslim. Mo Amer, Azhar Usman, and Preacher Moss poke fun at themselves, their communities, government, human nature and the tricky predicament of living in post- 9/11 America. Featuring music of rising indie scene artists, Allah Made Me Funny: Live in Concert is rollicking good fun and gives people of all cultural backgrounds an opportunity to laugh hard, drop their guard, and open their minds.