FIRST FRIDAY FILMS
finding a home in the world while moving across it

Enjoy four exciting and free evenings of experimental films, videos, documentaries and animations. This year's First Friday Films explores the notion of home in the context of a global world. The program ranges from stories exploring the intimacy of family life to narratives unfolding across time and continents. The selected films are imaginative and honest, cheerful and distressing.

The program in August focuses on people and individuals who have moved from place to place. The featured films creatively address issues of migration and exile, of asylum and the challenge of finding a home in foreign countries.

from place to place — august 3

The Wall, 1962, 10 min.
Walter de Hoog
For this short documentary Walter de Hoog gathered footage from U.S. and German newsreel sources about the first year of the Berlin Wall. Built on the night of August 12, 1961, the Berlin Wall became a potent symbol of the Cold War eventually running 28 miles across Berlin and fortified by watchtowers and mines. Almost overnight, it stopped the thousands of Germans that had daily crossed the border between East and West Berlin except those with the daring captured in this film. The Wall was produced by the United States Information Agency with the specific agenda of disseminating ideas about America and the "Free World" to audiences abroad.
(b&w, 35mm, produced by the U.S. Information Agency, preserved and transferred to DVD by the National Film Preservation Foundation)

Passage, 2005, 25 min.
Nasrin Tabatabai
A middle-aged woman is selling magazines in a small passage in front of a supermarket in the city of Rotterdam. Filmmaker Nasrin Tabatabai focuses on the space the woman inhabits, her interactions with people passing by, and her conversations with shoppers. We only learn gradually and selectively about her life, her departure from Iran, her family and previous job. Even when the filmmaker asks directly, the answers are illusive and contradictory. It emerges a complex and multi-layered portrait of the woman defying not only the expectations of a documentary portrait but also a simple explanation for leaving one's country.
(Dutch and Farsi with English subtitles)

Hmong Voices: A Hmong Leader, 2005, 16 min.
Fresno Unified School District,
(Hmong and English with subtitles, produced by High School Students with support from the Center for Multicultural Cooperation)

Calcutta Calling, 2004, 28.30 min.
Sasha Khokha
This film follows the story of three girls — Kaylan, Anisha, and Lizzie — as they travel from their homes in rural Minnesota to the crowded and busy streets of Northern India. The three teenage girls were all adopted as infants from an orphanage in Calcutta by white American families, which raised them lovingly as daughters who sing in the choir, play soccer, and shop at the mall. Filmmaker Sasha Khokha accompanies the three girls with their parents as they discover the country of their birth, ride in rickshaws, and are reunited with the nuns who say they cared for them. Calcutta Calling is a honest and moving journey of self-discovery and friendship.

Location: Reeves ASK Science Center, 933 Van Ness Avenue, Fresno
Starts: 2007 Aug 3 - 8:30pm
Ends: 2007 Aug 3 - 10:30pm
Website: http://fresnomet.org