2024 43rd Season of the Thomas Edison Film Festival Program

DIRECTOR’S
CHOICE AWARDS
Nisei – Narrative
21 min. by Darren Haruo Rae, Studio City, CA, USA
Based on stories from the filmmaker’s grandfather, “Nisei” follows the journey of
two Japanese American brothers during World War II. Stripped of their citizenship
and placed in internment camps, they volunteer for the 442nd Regimental
Combat Team, an all-Japanese American unit that sacrificed everything to
prove their loyalty to a country that didn’t want them. Torn between country and
family, they face
the enemy
overseas along
with adversity at
home.
DIRECTOR’S
CHOICE AWARDS
The Bellmaster – Documentary
5 min. by Madeline McDonald, Princeton, NJ, USA
“The Bellmaster” is a behind-the-scenes look at one of the largest instruments
in the world – the carillon. These thousand-pound bells have been part of the
human soundscape for thousands of years and the bellmaster of Princeton
University, Lisa Lonie,
offers a masterful
demonstration of
the instrument as
well as the history of
Princeton’s carillon.
Soundscape – Documentary
14 min. by Timmy O’Neil, Zephyr Cove, NV, USA
“Soundscape” shares the sightless experience of climbing a mountain via
echo location, touch and imagination. The film features Erik Weihenmayer, a
global adventure athlete and author who is fully blind, as he ascends a massive
alpine rock face deep in the Sierra Nevada.
The Expectation of the Observed – Animation
5 min. by Stephanie J. Williams, Washington, DC, USA
This experimental short considers the unrecognized labor in having and
being a body. The puppets, disembodied meaty legs, flayed of skin, dance in
repetition even as they start to disintegrate.
78 www.TEFilmFest.org
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