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William Kunstler, Disturbing the Universe
Directed
by
Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler
USA / 2009 / 85
minutes
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Screening
Times and Venues:
Bearsville Theater
10/02/2009, 12:15PM |
$8 |
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Upstate Films I
10/03/2009, 1:30PM |
$10 |
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In "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" filmmakers Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler explore the life of their father, the late radical civil rights lawyer. In the 1960s and seventies, Kunstler fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and represented the famed “Chicago 8” activists who protested the Vietnam War. When the inmates took over Attica prison, or when the American Indian Movement stood up to the federal government at Wounded Knee, they asked Kunstler to be their lawyer.
To his daughters, it seemed that he was at the center of everything important that had ever happened. But when they were growing up, Kunstler represented some of the most reviled members of society, including rapists and assassins. This powerful film not only recounts the historic causes that Kunstler fought for; it also confronts a man that even his own daughters did not always understand, a man who believed that, however unpopular, justice should serve all.
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Producers/directors Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler run Off Center Media, a production company that produces documentaries exposing injustice in the criminal justice system.
The sisters founded Off Center Media in 2000, and have produced, directed, and edited a number of short documentaries, including "Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War" (2002), which won Best Documentary Short at the Woodstock Film Festival, and was instrumental in winning exoneration for 46 wrongfully convicted people; and "Getting Through to the President" (2004), which has aired on the Sundance Channel, Current TV, and Channel Thirteen/WNET.
Other notable Off Center Media projects include "A Pattern of Exclusion: The Trial of Thomas Miller-El" (2002), a documentary about racism at the trial of Miller-El, who had been on death row in Texas since 1985; "The Norfolk Four: A Miscarriage of Justice" (2006), about four young men in Norfolk, Virginia, who falsely confessed to a rape-murder that they did not commit; and "Executing the
Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti" (2007). These films have contributed to campaigns to stay executions and convince decision makers to reopen cases. "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" is the sisters' first documentary feature.
Emily and Sarah were recently nominated for the L'Oreal Women of Worth Vision Award, which honors female filmmakers whose works "serve their communities, inspire others by example, and have an innate sense of social responsibility."
Emily Kunstler graduated in 2000 from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film and Video. She was a video producer for Democracy Now!, an independent national television and radio news program, and a studio art fellow with the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004.
Sarah Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a BA in Photography in 1998 and from Columbia Law School with a JD in 2004. She is currently a criminal defense attorney practicing in the Southern District of New York. |
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