Thomas Chapin, Night Bird Song at Real Art Ways

Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film – 2016 Academy Awards

A WAR explores how societies react when reasonable decisions lead to unacceptable results, and how the ambiguities of combat play out for soldiers and their families.

Company commander Claus M. Pedersen and his men are stationed in an Afghan province. During a routine mission, the soldiers are caught in heavy crossfire and in order to save his men, Claus makes a split-second decision that threatens grave consequences for him, his wife Maria, and their three small children.

Director Tobias Lindholm strives for the utmost authenticity, using actual Danish and Afghani veterans to play all but the key roles. A WAR conveys the emotional strain and the “on-the-ground maelstrom of combat as vividly as any film on the subject.” (Variety)

Ever watch the Oscars and wonder where you can see some of those under-the-radar films?

Every year Real Art Ways brings the Oscar Nominated Short Films to its cinema so you can catch some of the finest, but least talked about film making of the year. It’s a perennial hit with audiences!

Live Action Shorts:

Dekalb Elementary USA/20 minutes
Director: Reed Van Dyk
Writer: Reed Van Dyk
Producers: Reed Van Dyk, Cory Desrosiers, Christopher Leavins, Enrique Diaz, Morgan Peterson and Ricardo Ramirez
Synopsis: Inspired by a 911 call placed during a school shooting incident in Atlanta, Georgia.

My Nephew Emmett USA/20 minutes
Director: Kevin Wilson, JR.
Producer: Kevin Wilson, JR.
Synopsis: In 1955, a Mississippi preacher tries to protect his 14-year-old nephew, Emmett Till from two racist killers out for blood.
Based on true events.

The Eleven O’Clock – Australia/13 minutes
Director: Derin Seale
Producers: Josh Lawson and Karen Bryson
Synopsis: The delusional patient of a psychiatrist believes he is actually the psychiatrist. As they each attempt to treat each other the session gets out of control.

The Silent Child – UK/20 minutes
Director: Chris Overton
Writer: Rachel Shenton
Producers: Rebecca Harris, Danny Ormerod and Julie Foy
Synopsis: THE SILENT CHILD centres around a profoundly deaf four year old girl named Libby who is born into a middle class family and lives in a world of silence until a caring social worker teaches her the gift of communication.

Watu Wote/All Of Us – Germany & Kenya/23 minutes
Director: Katja Benrath
Producers: Tobias Rosen, Bramwel Iro and Matrid Nyagah
Synopsis: For almost a decade Kenya has been targeted by terrorist attacks of the Al-Shabaab. An atmosphere of anxiety and mistrust
between Muslims and Christians is growing. Until in December 2015, muslim bus passengers showed that solidarity can prevail.

Love games! Lawmen! Old songs! Folklore! The Evil Eye! Puppets! Aferim!

Old ways are rendered anew in this darkly funny, ribald comedy/period piece/Western from director Radu Jude. The “Wallachian Western” is a new kind of classic, featuring all the standard elements – but set in 1835 Romania, where the Roma people are held as slaves, noblemen wield tyrannical power, and foreign occupiers terrorize the populace.

A lawman and his son are dispatched to find a runaway slave. Their encounters reveal a cross-section of society tinged with ignorance and sedimented hatreds passed down through generations.

The result is a “current of informed anger” mingled with sardonic humor, in a film that sharply points a finger at bigotry all while poking fun.

Nominated for Best Foreign Film – 2016 Academy Awards

Winner – Art Cinema Award, Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival

Werner Herzog meets Heart of Darkness in the latest film from Colombian newcomer Ciro Guerra (The Wind Journeys).

Meshing the lyrical majesty of the Amazon with the devastating consequences of western colonialism, Embrace of the Serpent encompasses no fewer than nine languages and four decades in its depiction of dual treks through the jungle, as two men in different eras embark on the same search for a legendary herbal cure for their grave illnesses.

This atmospheric, evocative film – inspired by true accounts from 20th century explorers – is “stunning…At once blistering and poetic.”

Nominated for Best Foreign Film – 2016 Academy Awards

A beautiful, haunting, and uplifting film about five free-spirited sisters in rural Turkey asserting their identities in the face of crushing patriarchal tradition.

The “singularly excellent” debut of director Deniz Ergüven is narrated by Lale, youngest and most defiant of the sisters, as she watches her older siblings married off one by one by their fretful grandmother. As the restrictions on the sisters tighten, the fierce love between them empowers them to rebel and chase a future where they can determine their own lives in this unapologetic portrait of female empowerment.

Nominated for the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film and the Official Selection of France for the 2016 Academy Awards, MUSTANG is an exhilarating, fresh-spirited moviemaking debut.

What if Apollo 11 never actually made it to the moon? What if, in reality, the famous images of the moon landing were shot in a studio under direction of the US government?

This is the premise of a totally plausible conspiracy theory that takes us to London in the swinging sixties, where a stubborn CIA agent (RON PERLMAN) is searching for famed director Stanley Kubrick in order to pull off this ruse. Instead, after failing to locate Kubrick he’s forced to team up with a seedy rock band manager (RUPERT GRINT) to try and execute the biggest con of all time in this riotous, high-tempo action-comedy.

THE MESSENGER is a visually stunning ode to the beauty and importance of the imperiled songbird, and what it will mean to all of us on both a global and human level if we lose them.

Director Su Rynard’s wide-ranging and contemplative documentary explores our ancient connection to birds, and warns that the uncertain fate of songbirds around the globe might be a harbinger of our own future.

Moving from the northern reaches of the Boreal Forest to the base of Mount Ararat in Turkey to the streets of New York, The Messenger brings us face-to-face with a remarkable variety of human-made perils that have devastated thrushes, warblers, orioles, tanagers, grosbeaks and many other airborne music-makers.

The Messenger is an engaging, visually stunning, and emotional documentary that mixes its portentous message with hope, glancing into the influence of songbirds on our own expressions of the soul.

Bikes Vs Cars returns for a second screening! Our first showing sold out so we’re bringing the film back on Monday, April 4!

About the film:

Climate change and never-ending gridlock frustrates people more than ever. Instead of whining, people in cities around the world take on the bicycle as a Do-It-Yourself solution. Road rage and poor city planning creates daily death amongst the bicyclists. And now they demand safe lanes.

It’s an uneven fight. Activists and politicians that work for change are facing a multi-billion dollar car, oil and construction industry that use all their means to keep society car dependent. We know that the world needs radical changes to save the climate and the environment, but the car industry is selling more cars than ever. Today there are one billion cars in the world. By 2020, that number will double. The film will follow the individuals around the world that are fighting to create change.

Before the film:

Starting at 6 PM, a number of bike organizations from the region will be sharing and educating patrons about their work as it relates to bicycles in CT and beyond.

Bike Walk Connecticut

BiCi Co.

East Coast Greenway

City of Hartford Complete Streets Challenge Team

I-84 Hartford Project

CTrides

Connecticut Cycling Advancement Program

Bike West Hartford 

Community Solutions and Catholic Worker House

Stay tuned as we confirm more organizations!

Please be aware that capacity is limited and likely to sell out. Purchase your tickets online as only a limited number of tickets will be available at the door.

This is the world premiere of Hasta Mañana, a short film by Hartford-born director Pedro Bermudez commissioned by Real Art Ways with support from the Edward C. and Ann T. Roberts Foundation’s Creation of New Work Initiative.

Victor is a young grandfather saddled with caring for his adolescent grandson in Hartford, Connecticut. After Javier’s shoes are stolen, the gulf between the two of them reaches a breaking point. Victor sets out to buy his grandson new shoes by selling his pet rooster. What starts off well intentioned quickly turns desperate as Javier enters the local underground cockfighting circuit.

The creation of Hasta Mañana began a decade ago in Puerto Rico, when director Pedro Bermudez, a Hartford native, met a man who loved the sport of cockfighting so much he’d organize fights in apartments around Rochester, New York. Cockfighting is legal and much beloved in Puerto Rico but is banned in the United States.

Filmed on-location in Hartford, using mostly local non-professional actors from the area, Hasta Mañana captures the fraught relationship of a grandfather and grandson in the context of cultural tradition and financial hardship.

Never fear! No animals were actually harmed in the making of the film. The filmmakers were fortunate to work with animal wrangler Eric Colon, who developed a specialty rooster harness while working on set of The Rum Diaries to ensure that no animals ever fully make contact. Taxidermied roosters took the place of live roosters to complete the illusion. A representative from the Humane Society was also on set through the production to ensure safety and compliance as well.

In the course of his brilliant, nearly half-century career, Frederick Wiseman has tackled both great social institutions (a prison for the criminally insane, high school, military, police, juvenile court, the welfare system) and cultural ones (La Comédie Franҫaise, the Paris Opéra Ballet, American Ballet Theater, London’s National Gallery).

With IN JACKSON HEIGHTS he profiles one of New York’s most diverse neighborhoods, with immigrants from Peru, Colombia, Mexico, India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan (167 languages are spoken) — as well as elderly residents of Jewish, Irish and Italian extraction. Under the elevated train, a hodge-podge of stores sell whole baby goats, saris, and Bollywood DVDs; they offer HIV testing, Tibetan food, and classes for would-be cabbies.

Jackson Heights is home to an activist LGBT community, to recent survivors of terrifying border crossings, students of the Quran, and small shop-owners who mobilize against the Williamsburg-ization of the neighborhood. Wiseman embraces a community that revels in still being affordable, 20 minutes from “the city,” and resolutely unhip.

Nominated for Best Animated Feature – 2016 Academy Awards

A kaleidoscopic journey through Brazil’s colorful jungles and fields, towering cities, and mechanized factories, Boy and the World is a feat of imagination and creative skill. Relying on imagery and the infusion of Brazilian hip-hop, samba, and traditional folk music more than any dialogue, Boy and the World takes children and adults on a journey through a richly imagined landscape.

Cuca’s cozy rural life changes when his father leaves for the city, prompting him to embark on a quest to reunite his family. The young boy’s journey unfolds like a tapestry, the animation taking on greater complexity as his small world expands.

Animal-machines, barrios of decoupage streets and shop windows, and flashing neon advertisements that illuminate the night make up the ever-changing stages of his journey. The story is a “contemporary allegory and an ancient fable,” showing the hazards of a changing world through the eyes of a curious child.

Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Amy Berg (Deliver Us from Evil) delves into the life of late rock legend Janis Joplin.

Internationally-celebrated chef René Redzepi has won Best Restaurant in the World four times for his Copenhagen-based restaurant Noma. Working from the concept of time and place, Redzepi and his team create region-specific food from local products that put Nordic cuisine on the map.

Redzepi’s genius crosses with his sometimes abrasive style as the Noma team push for another win in the high-stakes game of international restaurant competition.

It’s 1957 in the small town of Rockwell, Maine. Hogarth Hughes is just a normal nine-year-old boy: headstrong and imaginative, always on the lookout for adventure. When Hogarth overhears a tall tale about a giant metal man falling into the sea, Hogarth sets out exploring to find the enormous robot. What he finds is a 50-foot giant with an insatiable appetite for metal and a childlike curiosity about its new world.

As rumors fly about everything from an alien invasion to a Russian secret weapon, the paranoia of the town escalates and the possible destruction of Rockwell looms. Hogarth turns to his friend, the Iron Giant, who ultimately finds its humanity by unselfishly saving the town.

From Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Starring Jennifer Aniston (voice of Annie Hughes) and Christopher McDonald (voice of Kent Mansley).

When “The Iron Giant” arrived in theaters in 1999, it was hailed as an “instant classic” by Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal and the world soon learned another “giant” had arrived as well: filmmaker Brad Bird, who made his stunning directorial debut with this film and has gone on to win two Oscars, as well as worldwide acclaim for his work on both animated and live-action features. This is the remastered version of the 1999 classic, featuring two all new scenes and a special video intro from director Brad Bird.

There is a stream that courses through American roots music. Its source is in the Appalachian foothills in a place called Maces Springs, Virginia. It was there that the Original Carter Family (A.P. Carter, his wife Sara and his sister-in-law Maybelle) began their careers as three of the earliest stars of country music.

These three didn’t just play the music emerging from their hill country upbringing. They helped invent it. A.P. was both song collector and composer, crafting and arranging snippets of ancient, musty melodies into commercial American popular music. Maybelle took the then-underplayed guitar and made it into the cornerstone of country instrumentation that we know today. And Sara became the first well-known woman’s voice in country music, stamping it with the eerie Gothic quality we find in so much of the country canon.

THE WINDING STREAM tells the story of the Carter Family and its legacy. The film blends studio and live performances by country music royalty like George Jones, Rosanne Cash, and Sheryl Crow, and also features priceless, late-life scenes and interviews with June and Johnny Cash.

*Stay after Friday, December 18 screening for a Q&A with Director Beth Harrington.

**Stay after Saturday, December 19 screening for an informal, open, acoustic, bluegrass jam in the Real Art Ways’ lounge!

A young boy must use his intuition, nascent survival skills, and the wisdom of his father to outwit potential enemies in a cross-desert trek set in the inhospitable Hijaz wilderness.

Theeb (meaning Wolf) is a Bedouin boy in a time when his culture and way of life were radically changing. Pilgrim guides like Theeb and his brother Hussein were being replaced by railroads running all the way to Mecca.

Director Abu Nowar’s “impressive” debut feature places the real history of a region at the heart of a “classic adventure tale of the best kind.” (Variety)

An offline celebration of the internet of felines!

We’re bringing the 2015 Internet Cat Video Festival to our cinema with a brand-new reel of over 100 videos, culled from nominations by the public in the categories of Comedy, Drama, Animated, Musical, Action, Vintage, and Documentary and curated by Will Braden, creator of the “Henri Le Chat Noir” videos and recipient of the fest’s first Golden Kitty (people’s choice) award. Film critic Roger Ebert called “Henri 2, Paw De Deux” “the best Internet cat video ever made.”

The Internet Cat Video festival is hosted live by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but you don’t have to go that far to see funny cats. We’ll have the videos for two weekends, starting after Thanksgiving.