2008 Program guide - Victoria Film Festival

DOCUMENTARY
48
AUTISM: THE MUSICAL THE UNION
DIRECTOR: TRICIA REGAN
USA
2007 94 MINUTES DIGIBETA
PRODUCERS: TRICIA REGAN, PERRIN CHILES, SASHA ALPERT
Winner of the Audience Award at Mill Valley Film Festival
Winner of the Audience Award at Newport International Festival
Responding to the needs of her autistic son and her own need to
go back to work, innovative educator Elaine Hall devised the Miracle
Project, an informal classroom experience in which a group of eleven
special needs children with varying manifestations of autism would
create, rehearse, and perform a musical play. In this heart-wrenching
and heart-warming, riveting and revealing documentary fi lmmaker
Tricia Regan follows fi ve of the children and their families with
astonishing candor over the six months of the production.
Each story is different. Each is compelling. There is Lexi, the shy, early
teen with the sweet smile and the lovely singing voice; verbose little
Wyatt with the bully problems; Neal who speaks only through a
typing machine; tiny Adam who has taught himself to play the mouth
harp and cello; and Henry, the angelic blond with an encyclopedic
knowledge of dinosaurs and reptiles (and son of Stephen Stills of
Crosby, Stills and Nash). The fi lm cuts from one situation to another
feeding out information tantalizingly. With autism still a baffl ing
disease and its incidence growing alarmingly, director Regan has hit
on a raw nerve.
Saturday • February 2 • Odeon • 3:30 PM
DIRECTOR: BRETT HARVEY
BRITISH COLUMBIA
2007 105 MINUTES DIGIBETA
PRODUCERS: G. FLANNIGAN, S. GREEN, S. GRENN, K. MAGUIRE
WRITERS: BRETT HARVEY, ADAM SCORGIE
Winner of the Outstanding Documentary
at Winnipeg International Film Festival
This prize winning British Columbia documentary is the ultimate A
to Z primer on the 7 billion dollars per year business of BC bud. As
entertaining as it is informative, it fi lls in the history of marijuana
cultivation and use.
It explains the way the “union” works – the loose affi liation of
growers and distributors who, at various levels, carry on the business
despite prohibition. Best of all, it seeks out experts in every related
fi eld – doctors, scientists, law enforcement offi cers, criminologists,
psychologists, politicians – as well as growers, users and pop stars, to
explore in depth the relevant questions about risks and benefi ts and
the motives behind the multi-billion dollar War on Drugs (more than
anything, a War on Weed). Some of the answers will surprise you.
Thursday • February 7 • Capitol 6 - 1 • 9:30 PM