Woodstock Film Festival

Woodstock Town Hall
10/13/2007, 2:30PM

Qty

Upstate Films II
10/14/2007, 3:15PM

$10

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In a story as convoluted as the Iraq war itself, 25 year old Iraqi film student Muthad Mohmed is invited to intern on Liev Schreiber's "Everything is Illuminated" in the Czech Republic. Ironically, the theme of the film, young people crossing a cultural divide, becomes the story of Mohmed and the filmmakers who set out to help him. Nina Davenport, hired to direct the documentary, is soon caught up in the conflicts between Muthad, who refuses to fulfill the expectations of his benefactors, and the political realities of the dangers that the boy would face back in Iraq. Muthad truly becomes a "man without a country." "I love George Bush because he changed my life," says Muthad early on. But as the war escalates and he becomes disenchanted with motives of all those around him, what emerges is a gripping portrait of an angry young man adrift in an alien culture. (Barbara Pokras, A.C.E.)

BIO:
After studying photography and filmmaking at Harvard College, Nina Davenport completed her first film "Hello Photo," a poetic travel documentary about India, which premiered at Rotterdam and won "Best Documentary" at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Her second film "Always a Bridesmaid" described by the Hollywood Reporter as "dripping with artistic merit" -was autobiographical, and aired on Cinemax/HBO and Channel Four in the U.K. Davenport's third feature, "Parallel Lines," a lyrical road movie about the private stories and personal grief of Americans in the aftermath of September 11th, premiered at IDFA (The International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam) in the Joris Ivens competition, and subsequently aired on the BBC's "Storyville," "Operation Filmmaker," her most recent film, first screened as a work-in-progress at the Rotterdam International Film Festival in 2007, where it won the prestigious KNF Dutch Film Critics Award, and later premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Davenport's unique and personal style of documentary has earned her numerous filmmaking awards and grants. She grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and lives in New York City.

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