PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL (72 min.) (USA)
A Film by Abigail E. Disney and Gini Reticker

Pray the Devil Back to Hell, winner of numerous awards including Best Documentary Feature at the Tribeca Film Festival, chronicles the remarkable story of the courageous Liberian women who came together to end a bloody civil war and bring peace to their shattered country. Liberia, a West African country of 3 million people, was funded in 1847 by freed American slaves. Their descendents formed an elite class which dominated indigenous ethnic groups for more than a century. Rising tensions finally erupted into civil war in 1989. Then, thousands of women—ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts and daughters, both Christian and Muslim—came together to pray for peace and then staged a silent protest outside of the Presidential Palace. Pray the Devil Back to Hell reconstructs the moment through interviews, archival footage and striking images of contemporary Liberia. It is compelling testimony to the potential of women worldwide to alter the history of nations.

11:30 am - 1:00 pm PROGRAM B

UNFINISHED SPACES (86 min.) (Cuba)

Director: Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray

1:30 – 3:20pm PROGRAM C SHORTS (106 min)

PETROPOLIS: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands (43 min.) (Canada)
Directed by: Peter Mettler

The Athabasca tar sands in Alberta are an oil reserve the size of England.Extracting crude oil that lies beneath the unspoiled wilderness requires a massive industrialized effort. Peter Mettler films primarily from a helicopter to capture this breathtaking, unparalleled view of the world's largest industrial, capital and energy project. In a hypnotic flight of image and sound, Mettler explores the clash between industry and earth, and beholds the barren wasteland that is left behind.

ELECTRIC SHADOWS (30 min.) (Iran)

A Film by Herve and Renaud Cohen

In the heart of the Chinese province of Sichuan, Mr. Wu, Mr. Shen, and Mrs. Li—a team of itinerant film projectionists—travel through the countryside showing monthly film programs to peasants in twenty neighboring villages. They transport their film reels, projectors, and screens on bicycles and on their backs. This lyrical documentary accompanies these guardians of the "Electric Shadows" - the translation of the Chinese name for cinema - from village to village as it explores their devotion to a profession threatened by the arrival of television and Chinese economic reforms

Two Selections from Chris Marker’s BESTIARY (France)

Animals in Chris Marker's films often function as cultural or political metaphors ("A cat is never on the side of power," Marker has explained). In this anthology of short films, however, Marker avoids the commercial cinema's tendency to anthropomorphize animals in favor of a simple celebration of their exotic beauty, primal nature and mystery.

FLYING PEOPLE (24 min)

A Film by Tom Collinson

“A film about the passion for flight and the will to overcome any handicap or obstacle that might deny it, Collinson’s film has the same kind of single-minded devotion as Werner Herzog’s classic Little Dieter Needs to Fly... [Its] power derives from its understatement, [the] ability to allow the viewer to reach their own conclusions, and the distance from the subject that is the hallmark of most good documentary filmmaking.‘’ Shane Danielson, Edinburgh International Film Festival.

SHARP EDGE BLUNT (2 min.)

A Film by Leighton Pierce

Pierce explores the margins of memory and perception and the cinematic construction of space and time in order to crack the hold on normal reality. A deep immersion into a simple process with ambiguous goals.

3:30 – 4:50pm PROGRAM D

BEING ELMO: A Puppeteer’s Journey (80 min.) (USA)

Beloved by children of all ages around the world, Elmo is an international icon. Few people know his creator, Kevin Clash, who dreamed of working with his idol, master puppeteer Jim Henson. Displaying his creativity and talent at a young age, Kevin ultimately found a home on Sesame Street. Narrated by Whoopi Goldberg, Being Elmo includes rare archival footage, interviews with Frank Oz, Rosie O’Donnell, Cheryl Henson, Joan Ganz Cooney and others and offers a behind-the-scenes look at Sesame Street and the Jim Henson Workshop. Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Documentary at Sundance Film Festival 2011, the New York Times calls it, “A winning tale of the persistence and creativity behind one of the most famous and fuzziest faces in the world.”

5:00 - 6: 25pm PROGRAM E

CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE (83 min.) (USA)

The story of legendary performer Carol Channing's life is as colorful as the lipstick on her big, bright smile. In CAROL CHANNING: LARGER THAN LIFE, director Dori Berinstein (ShowBusiness, Gotta Dance), with co-writer Adam Zucker, captures the magic and vivacity of the 90-year-old icon – both onstage and off...past and present. The film is both an intimate love story and a rarefied journey inside Broadway's most glamorous era. It is, above all, a look at an inspiring, incomparable and always entertaining American legend. A bonbon for buffs of all things Broadway, "Carol Channing: Larger Than Life" is a celebration of Channing's seven decades as musical comedy star, and a lament that there's really no one like her anymore, a performer who eclipsed most of the roles she played by force of personality, and defined the word "trouper." – Variety.

Saturday, January 28
UNCW's King Hall Auditorium
10AM - 6:30PM
General Admission: $7
Students & Seniors: $5
All-Day Pass: $23

Advance tickets may be purchased at Sharky's Box Office (in UNCW's Fisher Student Center) or online at www.etix.com.