CALLING ALL FILMMAKERS!

Our friends at explore.org have teamed up with HATCH to champion the selfless acts of others through a film competition at this year’s HATCHfest Bozeman.

The explore/HATCH award presented by explore.org will be given to a filmmaker who best tells the story of a remarkable individual’s actions in response to a devastating environmental event. From a woman who adopted orphaned children after the tsunami to a captain and his crew that saved the 115 survivors of Deepwater Horizon, explore.org wants to see how you define heroism in the face of catastrophe while inspiring others.

explore.org is a multimedia organization that documents leaders around the world who have devoted their lives to extraordinary causes. Both educational and inspirational, they create a portal into the soul of humanity by championing the selfless acts of others. In line with explore’s mission, HATCH inspires service and makes a positive impact on people and the planet in a creative way through film, music, photography, journalism, fashion, architecture, design, technology and more.

Winner of the first explore/HATCH award presented by explore.org will receive an all-expense-paid trip to HATCHfest Bozeman September 22-25 and be presented with a Canon HD SLR camera package from explore.org’s founder and documentary filmmaker, Charles Annenberg Weingarten, and HATCH. If you or someone you know has made a film highlighting a cause that inspires others to make a difference, submissions are now open!

Funding for the explore/HATCH award is made possible through the efforts of explore.org and the Annenberg Foundation.

Withoutabox Submission Guidelines:

• Submit a short documentary that has been completed in the last 5 years
• The short film will showcase a remarkable individual’s actions in response to a devastating environmental event
• Submission length for explore/HATCH award is 20 minutes or less
• DVD submission must be labeled explore/HATCH award
• Any accompanying paperwork and the outside of the envelope must be labeled explore/HATCH award
• Deadline is August 25, 2010, no exceptions will be made
• The final 5 nominees will be posted on explore.org for audience consideration
• The explore/HATCH award panel will announce the winner September 1, 2010

Learn more OR submit now!

Special Encore Presentation this Monday at 5pm PST/8pm EST!

This past May at the 2010 Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, our partners at explore.org received a very special honor, the Moving Mountains Prize, for their film "Fish Out of Water." The Moving Mountains Prize is awarded when a film depicts a unique mission or extraordinary impact of a non-profit organization. Featured in "Fish Out of Water," Sun Valley Adaptive Sports helps war veterans cope with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through fly fishing and other therapeutic outdoor activities. And as you will see when you watch the film, this organization is truly moving mountains.

"Fish Out of Water" began airing on Link TV in March (also available to watch online), but we are airing a special encore presentation because in addition to celebrating explore's success at MountainFilm, we were also introduced to a touching story that unfolded during the festival awards ceremony.

Christian Ellis, a vet whom Director Charlie Annenberg Weingarten became close with during the making of his film, experienced terrible traumas in Iraq. Losing many of his friends and fellow soldiers in combat, surviving a broken back, and suffering from severe PTSD, Christian returned home to a new reality.

Struggling to move forward, Christian returned to his music studies for the first time since he was 15. It had been a long-time dream of his to sing opera, and with a little encouragement from his new friend Charlie and two years of singing lessons, on Memorial Day Christian realized his dream. Closing the awards ceremony at the Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, after the screening of "Fish Out of Water," Christian sang a moving aria about his experiences in Iraq.

Fast forward to minute 10 to hear Christian's aria. It's a true testament to the resilience and strength so many men and women of service embody:

Higher Ground - Mountainfilm Awards Video from Mountainfilm in Telluride on Vimeo.

Global Pulse host Erin Coker has spent the last two weeks strutting the red carpet, interviewing filmmakers and stars for the San Francisco International Film Festival. The festival produces daily coverage for their Scoop Du Jour mini-site. Here, Erin speaks with legendary actor Robert Duvall, directors John Waters and Walter Salles, writer/producer James Schamus and others at SFIFF's Award Night.

Click here to check out all of Erin's videos for SFIFF.

This week marks the beginning of the San Francisco International Film Festival, a must for Link TV fans in San Francisco. On the Link TV blog we'll let you know about some great films screening at the festival that you should look out for in the future, regardless of the city you're in. One of the best things about living in a city like San Francisco is the opportunity to see an international line up of films year round, but we all hope that the Internet will give us more and more chances to connect with world cinema and documentaries.

Earlier this year I was at South by Southwest in Austin, and reviewed the documentaries Marwencol and Life 2.0, which are both screening at SFIFF this week. Marwencol offers not only a glimpse back into our childhood world of make believe, as told through a moving personal story, but stands up as an exploration of folk art and its delicate relationship to the world of its creator.

Also screening this week is The Oath, a riveting documentary portrait of Abu Jandal, Osama bin Laden's bodyguard of four years, and Jandal's brother-in-law Salim Hamdan, who was released from Guantanamo after the landmark case Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court. Director Laura Poitras was given striking access to Abu Jandal, and follows him with her camera, even when she's not there in person, as he teaches young students about jihad, drives his taxicab, and slowly reveals to us his past actions and dreams. Jandal is a study in the uneasy balance between religion, pride, and truthtelling - the more we're let into his charismatic world, the less we're able to trust what we're hearing. PBS' POV will premiere The Oath in September.

Today the San Francisco Film Society announced its program for the upcoming San Francisco International Film Festival. This event is always a must for Link TV viewers in San Francisco, and the festival often features work by directors featured on Link! But this year there's an extra connection -- Link TV partners Method, who created the initial design work for Link's ViewChange.org (beta launching in June), created the festival's trailer and designed all the print materials, including the program. 

You can browse the film selection, and watch the trailer, on the SFIFF website. Documentaries include Marwencol and Life 2.0, both covered on this blog when they screened at South by Southwest earlier this month.

Link TV editor Kyung Lee reports from the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea.  Currently the biggest film festival in Asia, PIFF showcases new talents and films from the Asian countries.  This blog offers rare interviews with Asian directors who discuss their filmmaking experiences in their native countries.

The current situation of Afghanistan is hard for outsiders to grasp.  Almost every day we hear the news of heightened insurgency in the country, but little beyond that.  In this extremely uncertain situation, there is a filmmaker who has managed to make films that reflect the reality of Afghanistan.
 
Siddiq Barmak is currently one of only a few filmmakers in Afghanistan who is able to make feature films in his native country.  His first feature film, "Osama", portrays a young girl who is forced to don a disguise as a boy in order to support her mother in the Taliban era.  The film won a Golden Globe Award, and made a great demonstration of Afghanistan's film heritage and its possible future to the world.

Siddiq, who was born in Afghanistan and studied film in Moscow, was exiled to Pakistan during the Taliban regime from 1996 to 2002.  The current reemergence of the insurgency is a reminder for him that another dark time may be ahead.  He was at the Pusan International Film Festival this year to present his second feature film "Opium War" which is, according to the director, "an exact reflection of the situation."  I was able to catch the director and asked a few questions on the current state in Afghanistan.

Learn more at about the films Opium War and Osama.

Exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer has become a prominent voice in the fight against what she describes as Chinese oppression of the Turkic speaking Muslim group, the Uighurs (or Uyghurs). Demonstrations in July have brought the conflict, centered in the Xinjiang region of China, into the media spotlight. Recently Chinese hackers attacked the Melbourne International Film Festival website in an attempt to stop the prestigious international festival from screening a documentary about Kadeer, The Ten Conditions of Love. In this Link TV video host James Zogby interviews Kadeer.

From now on Link TV will be posting Viewpoint with James Zogby weekly, so check back! Also check out this video over at Global Pulse: Uighurs vs Han: China's West Side Story.