NEW FEATURES Maine Premiere
Sunday, July 9 6:40PM | MFC 2 Tuesday, July 11 9PM | MFC 1
THE SUN RISES IN THE EAST
USA 2021 - DCP - 58 minutes, in English Director: Tayo Giwa Screenplay, Producers: Tayo Giwa, Cynthia Gordy Giwa Print Courtesy: Black-owned Brooklyn This fast-moving historical astonishment chronicles the birth, rise and legacy of The East, a pan-African cultural organization founded in 1969 by teens and young adults in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Led by educator and activist Jitu Weusi, The East embodied Black self-determination, building more than a dozen institutions, including its own African-centered school, food co-op, news magazine, publisher, record label, restaurant, clothing shop and bookstore. The organization hosted world-famous jazz musicians like Pharaoh Sanders (who recorded his “Live at the East” album there) and Sonny Rollins, as well as Black poets at its highly sought-after performance venue, and it served as an epicenter for political contemporaries such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Congress of Afrikan People, as well as comrades across Africa and the Caribbean. In effect, The East built an independent Black nation in the heart of Central Brooklyn. The film also examines challenges that led to the organization’s eventual dissolution, including its gender politics, financial struggles, and government surveillance. Featuring interviews with leaders of The East, historians, and people who grew up in the organization as children, The Sun Rises in The East delivers an exhilarating and compelling vision, showing just how much was—and perhaps still is—possible. —KE
Shown With
CONVICTION
USA 2022 - DCP - 31 minutes, in English Director: Jeremy Raff Producer: Jeremy Young Print Courtesy: 2nd Place Media “I don’t want to be accepted, I want to be embraced,” says Brandon Jackson, who has just been released from 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. In 1997, Jackson was convicted for an armed robbery of $6,500 from an Applebee’s restaurant outside of Shreveport, Louisiana. Nobody was injured. There was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime. At trial, two jurors voted not guilty. In 48 states, it would have been a mistrial, and he may have walked free, but Louisiana’s Jim Crow-era laws designed to lock up Black defendants allowed for non-unanimous jury convictions. Jackson was sentenced to life in prison. Over time, he finds a sense of purpose advocating to reverse Louisiana’s last such law, as we see in this powerful documentary. —KE
New England Premiere
Wednesday, July 12 6PM | MFC 1
THE TUBA THIEVES USA 2023 - DCP - 91 minutes, in English Director, Screenplay: Alison O’Daniel Producers: Su Kim, Rachel Nederveld, Alison O’Daniel, Maya E. Rudolph, Elizabeth Skadden With: Nyeisha Prince, Geovanny Marroquin, Russell Harvard, Sam Quinones Print Courtesy: The Film Collective
A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. Blending documentary and fictionalized performances and set to an L.A. landscape/soundscape never quite seen/heard before, The Tuba Thieves explores a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way. This is NOT a conventional whodunit, to say the least. In The Tuba Thieves’ world, plants whisper and hum to each other, the air above a forest fire vibrates and one man’s ASL sign for “sunrise” is infinitely more expressive than the English word alone. —KE
30
Maine International Film Festival 2023 MIFF.ORG