Between 1976 and 2016, the U.S. executed more than 1,400 people. The mothers of many of the condemned men and women testified at trial, pleading for the lives of their children. The intense grief these women feel is unacknowledged by society. Each of these mothers has a story to tell. This film presents just a few.
Arguably, James Blue’s most ambitious project, this complex documentary was originally made in five one-hour episodes as an interactive public television series. The sixth episode, which summarized the series, will be screened. Blue and renowned architect Adele Santos take us on a tour of 1970s Houston, a divided city, growing in the midst of an oil boom. Skyscrapers going up, unemployment going down. One thousand new residents were arriving per week. But the filmmakers see two cities. Visible Houston is populated by well-educated citizens earning high wages with no state or income taxes. Invisible Houston, for whom the most basic city services did not exist, was inhabited by poorly educated citizens earning low wages. Blue was founder of Rice University Media Center and a leader in the movement to democratize media access and production across America, including Houston’s Southwest Alternate Media Project (SWAMP), a media arts organization founded in 1977.
In this timely follow-up to his documentary Casting By (HCAF 2012), Tom Donahue explores the insidious and systematic sexism in Hollywood through the voices of leading actors and directors, including Geena Davis, Meryl Streep, Sandra Oh, Jessica Chastain, Shonda Rhimes, Reese Witherspoon and many other ambassadors of the #TimesUp movement. Filmmaker Maria Geise will be in attendance.
The United States’ postwar housing policy created the world’s largest middle class. It also set America on two divergent paths—one of imagined wealth, propped up by speculations and endless booms and busts, and the other in systematically defunded, segregated communities, where “the American dream” feels hopelessly out of reach. Some ten years after the last housing collapse and well into a perceived upswing, the election of Donald Trump and urban uprisings in places like Baltimore suggest that there’s a far more fundamental problem with housing policy in America. And we haven’t even begun to ‘recover.’This documentary is a fever dream vision into the dark history behind the US housing economy. Tracking its overtly racist beginnings to its unbridled commoditization, the film exposes a foundational story few Americans understand as their own.
If you could know the truth about the threat of climate change — would you want to know? Before the Flood, presented by National Geographic, features Leonardo DiCaprio on a journey as a United Nations Messenger of Peace, traveling to five continents and the Arctic to witness climate change firsthand. He goes on expeditions with scientists uncovering the reality of climate change and meets with political leaders fighting against inaction. He also discovers a calculated disinformation campaign orchestrated by powerful special interests working to confuse the public about the urgency of the growing climate crisis. With unprecedented access to thought leaders around the world, DiCaprio searches for hope in a rising tide of catastrophic news. March 21, 2018, at Rice Media Center. 6:30 PM conversation, networking, and a light meal; 7:00 PM screening. Free to the public, though donations are kindly appreciated.
