Freedom Cinema Festival

Freedom Cinema Festival is on a temporary hiatus. We are currently working on strategies for long term fundraising. We thank the many people who have supported us in the past and we look forward to seeing all of you at future events soon.

We are not currently accepting submissions for Park City January screenings, but we will continue to present more events there, as well as in various locations around the country as we have in the past, as our fundraising efforts allow.

If you would like to help us make the festival sustainable by contributing your ideas, time or funds, please

Thanks for your interest and keep creating a culture of freedom justice and peace!

Thanks to everyone who helped make the January 2005 Park City festival our best event yet! For those who couldn't make it please check out our full program schedule.

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Industry professionals: Please call for credentials, mailboxes, and V.I.P. Lounge access. 1-800-503-5923.

Freedom Cinema Festival is a non-profit organization that exists to provide venues for artists, activists, media makers and entertainment industry professionals to exhibit, discuss, teach and address social and political consciousness in cinema, media and the arts. The Park City festival is the flagship event in a traveling series of year round programs celebrating arts and media that matter.

FREEDOM CINEMA FESTIVAL RETURNS TO PARK CITY
Festival Creates Home for Political Films and Leading Activists
‘Celebrating Arts and Media That Matter’
Announces Film Selections and Live Events Lineup
January 25 to 30, 2005

OAKLAND, CA -- The 2005 Freedom Cinema Festival: Park City will be held concurrently with the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, Jan. 25-30.

The second annual flagship event features gripping and provocative films from around the world, including several national premieres, and the participation of award-winning filmmakers. Freedom Cinema Festival also includes live music events, panel discussions of activist media, stand-up comedy, graphic arts/cartooning and more.

One of the top alternative and truly independent festivals during this annual convergence of arts, media and commerce, Freedom Cinema Festival provides a unique forum for leading grassroots artists addressing socially and politically relevant issues.

Freedom Cinema Festival will be headquartered on the second floor of the Main Street Mall, 333 Main Street (directly across the street from the Egyptian
Theater) in Park City. This central location houses the box office, screenings, bookstore, FairTrade Cafe, music lounge, and their offices.

''The rise in popularity of political film and arts, especially activist documentaries, is an undeniable and unprecedented trend,'' said Andrew Jon
Thomson, the festival’s founder and executive director.

''While other festivals have done a good job of including important political
work in their program, the films with the big stars and the big corporate
money behind them will continue to get the most attention at these
festivals.'

''Freedom Cinema Festival is at the center of the new political cinema
movement, bringing together the leaders of the activist arts and media including cinema, music, comedy, graphic arts and journalism, creating a meeting place for this work, giving the industry a way to access the artists and their work directly.”

''The Freedom Cinema Festival was the best thing about Park City during the
2004 Sundance Film Festival,'' said director Mark Achbar, whose film “The Corporation” won last year’s Sundance Audience Award World Cinema Documentary.

''If there was a prize for 'Best Vibe' they would surely have won. There was a consciousness in all the organizers' choices that did not pervade the larger festival down the street. This is a festival that doesn't just choose excellent films that delve into important issues, it actually DOES something about them.''

The 2005 Freedom Cinema Festival selected over 64 films submitted from
filmmakers around the world:

This year’s films are powerful and unafraid of rocking the boat. Their subjects include an Iraqi mother singing a lullaby to her children as bombs and artillery fire demolish their world; a drug sting operation in a small town in Texas resulting in the arrest of nearly 20 percent of the black community; a modern-day "underground railroad" through China for refugees from North Korea; a true story of a St. Louis couple who lost their chain of video stores, their family, and almost their lives, fighting a religious group over the removal of the controversial film, ''The Last Temptation of Christ''; and a filmmaker discovering that 16 out of the 32 women she interviewed because they share her name, have been raped, beaten or molested, herself included.

SHEM (Director: Caroline Roboh)
Heart of the Beholder (Director: Ken Tipton)
Seoul Train (Directors: Jim Butterworth, Aaron Lubarsky, Lisa Sleeth)
The Future of Food (Director: Deborah Koons Garcia)
An Iraqi Lullaby For Children Who Are About To Die (Directors: Allie Light,
Irving Saraf)
Weapons of Mass Deception (Director: Danny Schechter)
Arlington West the Film (Directors: Sally Marr and Peter Dudar)
Helen's War: Portrait of a Dissident (Director: Anna Broinowski)
Livicated (Director: Eric Crown)
Sha Chen Bao (Sandstorm) (Director: Michael Mahonen)
Kilowatt Ours (Director: Jeff Barrie)
Bush Family Fortunes (Director: Greg Palast)
Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman (Director: Judith
Montell)
Searching For Angela Shelton (Director: Angela Shelton)
Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War (Directors: Emily and Sarah Kuntsler)
Citizen Stan (Director: Patty Sharaf)
Hunger No More (Director: Burton Buller)
Quenching the Thirst (Directors: Phyllis Eckelmeyer and Kym Cohen)

For tickets, information, volunteering, call 1-800-503-5923, or visit
www.freedomcinemafestival.org. This event is co-sponsored by Mother Jones
Magazine, ACLU, and Speakoutnow.org.