CIFFF 2021 Narrative Selections

 Narrative Selections

Note: Films accessible on filmfreeway

user name: rlmurray@eiu.edu

pw: nib8.pet

Good Wishes 

Daria Gordeeva 

Russian Federation 

Access here: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17937292 

This is a social video dedicated to the problem of domestic homophobia in Russia However, in this film we address not only the problem of homophobia in general, but also gaslighting and toxic communication in particular. We think that any person (not only representatives of the LGBT+ community) can suffer significant damage to their mental health if they are forced to spend their life surrounded by people who broadcast such a contradictory attitude to their personality and choice for a long time.

Zஅ 

D Balajisaravanan 

India 

Access here: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17944883 

Most of the times, we forget to realize that the things which we consider is a waste and of NO USE or END OF LIFE can be a big savior and even a START to some others. This story portrays the above. The storyline: one upper middle class young boy was coloring the Alphabet using a good color pencil. Suddenly the pencil hook breaks, and he starts crying. On seeing this, his mom throws away the broken pencil and pacifies him saying she will get another new one. A poor gully boy walking on road picks up the thrown pencil and runs far to his hut. He sharpens the color pencil and gives to his younger sister and makes her to write ‘a’, the 1st letter of local language (Tamil). Happiness blossoms on the poor boy’s and sister’s faces.

Cellfie 

Débora Mendes 

Portugal 

Access here: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17941993 

A scientist seeks answers by observing the world through the lens of her microscope. 

Illinois Narrative Winner

Birthday

Bianca Caniglia 

Chicago, IL USA 

Access here: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17925209 

A ritual for (cis)men, in which we perform a reincarnation, goddess invocation, sleep-paralysis nightmare in the realm of the Hungry Ghost. Bound by and to their Earthly desires, it is a a very very un-birthday, re-birthday party. 

 K-12 Narrative Winner

Thirty Minutes on the Earth 

Evangelina Sarett 

Russian Federation 

Middle School 

Access here: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17932248

John had never seen snow. He almost didn't see the green plants. Now he knows that such beautiful places existed, but people left them long time ago. But why does John feel so sad when he looks at the beautiful nature of the Earth?...

2021 CIFFF Post-Secondary Documentary Selections

 

Note: Filmfreeway films accessible with user name rlmurray@eiu.edu and pw: nib8.pet

First Place 

Femme Fatale 

Meghan McArdle 

Ireland 

Access: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17942935 

 How fashion has been used as a catalyst for feminism in the last century.

Second Place

I Call it Home 

Leila Ahang 

Islamic Republic of Iran 

Access: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17850058 

This experimental abstract animation, “I Call It Home,” demonstrates two distinct worlds for a migrant who is born and lives far from her real home. One world is where she was born. It is like somewhere humans live before birth, the womb. This is growing and the spirit is blown into it. The spirit of the human is floating like a fish in the water. For her, the first world is selected as a home to settle down. But slowly she understands the real home is somewhere else. This is another world out of her mother's womb, a strange and frightening place. All things are dark and against her. So she has to struggle to overcome them. It takes time but finally she feels tranquility and starts to live in a new world like a newborn baby.

Third Place

My Mother’s Pain 

Juliana Erazo 

Columbia 

https://vimeo.com/455193418 

pw: eddmm 

This animated documentary and visual essay, tells the story of three generations of mothers and daughters in the same family. Their struggles and growth and how they worked to make their children's life better than their own.

Honorable Mention

Tishala: Nothing to Lose 

Brian Wachira 

Kenya 

https://youtu.be/lBtXD2n5lak 

The animation is about Tishala, a girl who lives in fear of being subjected to Female Genital Mutilation. She wishes what befell her friends does not befall her. She wants girls to grow up normal.

2021 CIFFF K-12 Student Documentary Winners

 

Note: Film Freeway films accessible via user name, rlmurray@eiu.edu and pw, nib8.pet

First Place Winner

The Black Collective 

Roxy Morris 

USA High School Student 

 Three businesspeople of color discuss the Black Lives Matter movement, supporting black businesses, and the small shop in Encinitas, CA that showcases their products.

Second Place Winner

The Air I Breathe 

Kim Chairez 

USA High School Student 

Youth Programs for The Representation Project 

Access: https://filmfreeway.com/submissions/17750588 

 "The Air I Breathe" raises awareness about her family’s home, Wilmington, California, one of the most polluted cities in the United States. "The Air I Breathe" is a short documentary set in Wilmington exploring our relationship to our natural environment, pollution, and the air we breathe.

Illinois Winner

Family is Everything 

Erin Hastings 

Elmhurst, IL 

https://youtu.be/mr0X8PeX8rs 

A short documentary portrait of a man who survived the impossible and how it affected both him and his family.

King Corn as Weakened Rhetorical Documentary

 

What weakens King Corn’s argument is its reliance on the logical fallacy of causal oversimplification. As with Michael Pollan's Food, Inc., Cheney and Ellis place blame for this corn epidemic on the policies of one man, Earl Butz, the Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon because he released farmers from decades of production controls and encouraged them to plant “fence row to fence row” to meet the global demand for their corn, soybean, and wheat crops, especially. In an interview with the then 96-year-old Butz in his nursing home apartment, Cheney and Ellis wanted to challenge the modern food system his policies had helped create and policies that led to food subsidies for corn equaling $51 billion between 1995 and 2005. 

When Ian Cheney broaches the subject, asserting, “We've heard from some people that they think there is too much food,” however, Butz counters with his own unchanged perspective on his policy: "Well it's the basis of our affluence now, the fact that we spend less on food. It's America's best-kept secret. We feed ourselves with approximately 16 or 17% of our take home pay. That's marvelous, that's a very small chunk to feed ourselves. And that includes all the meals we eat at restaurants, all the fancy doodads we get in our food system. I don't see much room for improvement there, which means we'll spend our surplus cash on something else." 

Butz argues that cheap food eased hunger and increased disposable income, so everyone, for example, could afford a car. After the interview, Curt Ellis concludes that “Earl Butz was a product of his time” (“Meeting King Corn”) because he finished college in the middle of the Great Depression when scarcity was the norm, but he continues to blame Butz for the consequences of cheap corn, cheap soy, and cheap food, including Type II diabetes and obesity. 

But it was the 1996 farm bill that, according to David Moberg, “ended the old policy of managing both prices and production through a system of loans, target prices and stored surpluses” and “provided subsidy payments to farmers that were ‘decoupled’ from production.” And those subsidies continued after 2002, when prices crashed and subsidies became seen as a political necessity. Blame for the turn to high fructose corn syrup also does not land solely on Earl Butz’s shoulders, since the move occurred in 1980 after sugar tariff and quota policies failed during the Carter administration. Ethanol, an area of corn production overlooked by the film, became a centerpiece of the Carter administration, as well, as an alternative energy solution to ongoing oil embargo problems. King Corn entertains and partially enlightens the issues surrounding corn production, but it falls short because, like Food, Inc., it draws too much on nostalgia, and its argument is oversimplified.