January | THE FIRST RAINBOW COALITION
DOCUMENTARY - 56 Minutes
Directed by Ray Santisteban
Description: In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latino group the Young Lords Organization and the working-class young southern whites of the Young Patriots. Finding common ground, these disparate groups banded together in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing, calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition. The First Rainbow Coalition tells the movement’s little-known story through rare archival footage and interviews with former coalition members in the present-day.
While the coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Fred Hampton, it had a long term impact, breaking down barriers between communities, and creating a model for future activists and diverse politicians across America.
Talkback with Denise Oliver-Velez, former black panther and a Young Lord | Moderator: Randall Pinkston, former correspondent/anchor for Al Jazeera
March | Bedlam
documentary - 86 Minutes
Directed by Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D.
Description To get to the bottom of the current mental health crisis in the U.S., psychiatrist and documentarian Kenneth Paul Rosenberg, M.D. chronicles the personal, poignant stories of those suffering from serious mental illness, including his own family, to bring to light to this epidemic and possible solutions. Shot over the course of five years, Bedlam takes viewers inside Los Angeles County’s overwhelmed and vastly under-resourced psych ER, a nearby jail warehousing thousands of psychiatric patients, and the homes — and homeless encampments — of people affected by severe mental illness, where silence and shame often worsen the suffering.
Rosenberg follows the lives of three patients in particular who find themselves with a chronic lack of institutional support while weaving in his own story of how the system failed his late sister, Merle, and her battle with schizophrenia. Featuring interviews with experts, activists, individuals living with a mental illness, and their families, Bedlam builds on historical footage and commentary related to mental health, exploring the rise of this issue on a national scale in the mid- and late 20th century.
Talkback with Peter Miller, producer
April | Eating Up Easter
documentary - 77 minutes
Directed by Sergio Mata'u Rapu and Elena Rapu
Description More than just a picture-perfect postcard of iconic stone statues, Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is a microcosm of a planet in flux. Directed by native Rapa Nui filmmaker Sergio Mata’u Rapu, Eating Up Easter explores the challenges his people are facing, and the intergenerational fight to preserve their culture and a beloved environment against a backdrop of a modernizing society and a booming tourism trade.
Crafted as a story passed down to his newborn son, Rapu intertwines the authentic history of the island with the stories of four islanders, crafting a moving portrait of a society striving to keep step with the rest of the world while maintaining its own unique identity, and asking the next generation, "what will be left for you?"
Talkback with Dr. David Robinson, New Jersey State Climatologist & Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University; Alexa Fantacone, M.S., M.A. - Executive Director of The Teaneck Creek Conservancy; Paula Rogovin - Activist, Educator, Author and Co-Founder of The Coalition to Ban Unsafe Oil Trains and Don't Gas The Meadowlands Coalition | Moderator: Harriet Shugarman - Executive Director of ClimateMama
