Daniel Junge returns to Cheyenne with an Oscar-winning doc and a new short film

This comes from the CIFF's Alan O'Hashi: The Cheyenne International Film Festival is honoring Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Daniel Junge on Saturday, May 19. The full evening event is selling out, but CIFF is offering tickets for the films, interview and questions and answers with Daniel Junge. The films include “One Day” which is Daniel’s latest short film followed by the Oscar-winning “Saving Face.” Tickets are also available at the Phoenix Books and Music walk-up box office 1612 Capitol Avenue in Downtown Cheyenne. Tickets for the reception honoring Daniel Junge are also on sale online and at the box office.

Daniel Junge will be on hand to intro his Oscar-winning doc May 19 at CIFF

The Cheyenne International Film Festival program for 2012 is completed. The CIFF May 17-20 is highlighted by Cheyenne native Daniel Junge and his Oscar-winning documentary “Saving Face."

He’ll be on hand and in person at a reception taking place on the Mezzanine of the Plains Hotel on Saturday, May 19. The screening takes place across the street at 1615 Lincoln.

Saturday is full and starts with a return screening of John Ford’s classic western “Cheyenne Autumn” which made its World Premiere at the Lincoln Theater in 1963. Actress Carroll Baker will participate in a live interview via Skype following the movie.

See the entire program here.

Cheyenne native Daniel Junge wins Oscar for documentary "Saving Face"

"Saving Face" filmmakers Daniel Junge, left, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy of Pakistan accept their Oscar for best documentary short at the 84th Annual Academy Awards tonight in L.A. Junge grew up in Cheyenne and now lives in Denver.

Occupy Greeley invites us to an "Inside Job" screening Jan. 21

From our pals at Occupy Greeley.

"Freedom Riders" asks: Would you put your life on the line?

An amazing documentary. My wife and I saw it on WY Public TV several weeks ago. Donate to Truthout and get a fee copy. 

Reviving Victory Gardens by growing veggies and art

This is a 1940s-style poster for the Peterson Garden Project, which encompasses "vegetable gardening, history, seed diversity and community... all in a day's work as we revive a World War II Victory Garden in Chicago's 40th Ward." This 2010 growing season poster was designed by E. Karl Fresa Fine Art. Signed limited edition prints were sold at an Aug. 5 fund-raiser geared to collect money for a documentary film on the project. Cool idea. Where were the WWII Victory Gardens located in Cheyenne? Time for some research... Thanks to Red, White and Grew's Facebook page for the tip-off about this effort. Read the latest posts on Red, White and Grew making a case for Victory Gardens as folk art.

We love you, "Dirt," yes we do

Coming to a theatre near you? Probably not in Wyoming. But look for it in Fort Collins and Denver and Salt Lake City. The film features physicist/environmentalist Vandana Shiva, one of the speakers at the Shepard Symposium on Social Justice April 7-9 in Laramie. Shiva will discuss "Soil Not Oil: Food Security in Times of Climate Change" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 7, in the UW Fine Arts concert hall in Laramie. The event is free and open to the public. A reception and book signing follow the presentation.

A "Kangaroo System" documented in "Juvenile Justice in Wyoming"

This trailer is from a documentary by Laramie's Chris Hume.

Learning something new from "WWII in HD"

B-17 Stratofortress, B-24 Liberator, M-1 rifle, dogface, Tarawa, D-Day, Kasserine Pass, Patton, Mt. Suribachi, panzer, blitz...

And so it goes.

Watching "WWII in HD" on the History Channel, I realized that all these terms -- and many more -- are etched permanently into my brain. Chris and I have been transfixed on the couch for the past three nights watching the personal WWII stories unfold in HD. Both of our fathers were WWII veterans. Chris's father was an Army lifer and also a veteran of Korea and Vietnam. It's not so much the HD but the new color footage that makes the difference. And I'm learning some new things in the process.

Baby Boomer boys devoured war stories. Those stories usually came from magazines and books and black-and-white TV and other boys. Fathers often didn't share the real stories about war. Maybe they thought it would damage our fragile sensibilities. Maybe they just wanted to forget.

I turned to books. In the fourth grade, I pulled Richard Tregaskis' "Guadalcanal Diary" from my dad's packed shelves and read it over the course of a couple days. It was more exciting than "Ivanhoe" and "Treasure Island," other books on my father's shelves. But Tragaskis' book was about recent history. It was also about my father and our neighbors and my Little League coach. I was pleased to see that the character of Tragaskis, the war correspondent, is being featured on the History Channel series.

After "Guadalcanal Diary," I turned to Bill Mauldin and Willie and Joe. I tried some of the war's "big books," such as "Berlin Diary" by William Shirer and Churchill's six-book series. Just couldn't get into it. Boring. Too much about politics. Too little action.

Not sure what makes "WWII in HD" so vivid. The only true HD is the film shot of living veterans. The old footage has been high-def'd, which may make it a bit more vivid. But most of the footage was shot from cockpit cameras or G.I. photographers dodging bullets. I credit story and editing. The twelve featured witnesses to that era have distinctive voices. Pilot Bert Stiles was obviously a talented writer and left behind some samples for the series. He was killed in action. There's an Army nurse and a Nisei soldier who wonders at the irony of being held behind barbed wire in a German prison camp while his family was being held behind barbed wire in an Idaho internment camp.

For me, it always comes down to story.

Tectonic Theater Project revisits Laramie w/update

The epilogue of "The Laramie Project" will be screened at a theatre or library or arts center near you on Oct. 12. It may not be anywhere near you if you happen to live in Wyoming. Off Stage Theatre Company in Jackson plans a screening. No word about any events in Laramie.

UPDATE: Oct. 12 presentation in Laramie

THE LARAMIE PROJECT: TEN YEARS LATER: AN EPILOGUE

By Moises Kaufman, Leigh Fondakowski, Greg Pierotti, Andy Paris, and Stephen Belber.

October 12, 7:30 p.m., FREE! Arts & Sciences Auditorium, University of Wyoming, Laramie

See the August 2009 press release from The Tectonic Theater Project here.


See the September 29, 2009 press release from the AP here.

This event is FREE and the public is cordially invited.

Mad As Hell Doctors stop in Cheyenne

Laramie's Nancy Sindelar featured this in her excellent e-letter:

On Sunday Sept 13, Mad As Hell Doctors will be speaking to promote universal health care. These three docs on their way to Washington, D.C., will present the documentary "Health, Money, and Fear" (2009) that covers the insanity of the current system. The event begins at 12:30 p.m., and will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 3005 Thomes Ave., Cheyenne. Free.

FMI: www.madashelldoctors.com, www.ourailinghealthcare.com, www.uucheyenne.org, 307-638-4554.

Michael and me: Angry White Men

"Sunday Night Films Not Seen in a Theater Near You" Aug. 16 in Laramie

Nancy Sindelar sends this from Laramie:

Sunday, August 16, Laramie: Double Feature -- Rick Steves' Iran Yesterday and Today and Fallout: Coming Home from the War in Iraq.

The Laramie Film Society and the Wyoming Peace, Justice, and Earth Center (publishers of Nancy's nifty newsletter) are cosponsoring the "Sunday Night Films Not Seen in a Theater Near You" series for the third summer. Proceeds are used to upgrade the projection and sound set up at the library.

Films begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Albany County Public Library, 310 S. 8th St. Get information at www.film.laramie.wy.us or http://www.ghosttownmovie.com/#/home. Free, soda and popcorn provided, donations accepted.

Life in the U.S. -- deja vu all over again

My wife and I just finished watching the first installment of Ken Burns' "The War" on PBS. Both of our fathers were combat veterans of World War II. Her father chose the Army as a career, eventually retiring in 1971 when ordered to Vietnam for a second tour. He also saw action in Korea. My father couldn't wait to get out of the Army when he returned to Denver in January 1946 from occupation duty in Germany. He wanted to go to college, ger married, and have a passel of kids. He accomplished all of those goals.

Both of these veterans are dead. We're not there yet, but there will come a time when we'll mark the passing of "The Last Surviving World War II Veteran." As Burns notes many time in this series, this generation was asked to make a huge sacrifice, and they came through. I don't like to romanticize it, and neither did our fathers.

Since 1945, the country has not experienced the kind of shared sacrifice that WWII demanded. Perhaps we had an inkling of the aftermath of Pearl Harbor immediately following the attacks of 9/11. But that shared sense of outrage was squandered by Bush & Co., with the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Sunday evening was a time for documentaries. The History Channel featured one on "The Hippies," followed by "The Hillbillies." The three shows didn't have a lot in common, but they all carried a shared sense of loss. The U.S. performance in WWII made it a world power, but we squandered that on Cold War misadventures. The hippies' peace & love ideas degenerated into drug abuse and hedonism. The eastern mountain people that are the hillbillies gave rise to a rich culture of storytelling and music, but they've become members of the huge Southern Wal-Mart cult.

The U.S. keeps reinventing itself. That's been its strength, but how much more of it can we stand?

Repeat after me: Greed is Good!