2022 Festival Highlights
Jazz in China
2022 Winner
Documentary | 01:00:00 | United States
Directed by: Dr. Eugene Marlow
“Jazz in China: The Documentary” chronicles the 100-year story of how jazz—a democratic form of music through improvisation—exists and thrives in China—a country with a long tradition of adherence to central authority.
The 60-minute documentary reveals the significant influence of African-American jazz musicians and twentieth century technologies on the spread of jazz in China and its appeal to a largely young audience through interviews with leading indigenous jazz musicians, sinologists, historians, and jazz club patrons in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and archival and contemporary performance footage.
2022 FREE SPEECH AWARD TRAILER
2022 Official Selection Trailers
Chinese Cancan
2022 Official Selection
Documentary | 51:40 | France
Directed by: Coralie Van Rietschoten
In China like everywhere, a woman’s place in society is linked to politics and tradition. But China’s politics and tradition make a unique setting on earth. It’s within this context that Lulu emerges. Back in 2009, she was a pioneer of Burlesque, in a country where strip tease can lead to jail and young girls run after marriage. We follow this extraordinary character for over ten years, in an ever evolving China.
My Grandmother Is an Egg
2022 Official Selection
Animation | 08:07 | Taiwan
Directed by: Wu-Ching Chang
The film is based on the director’s grandmother’s experience as a T’ung-yang-hsi. T’ung-yang-hsi is the traditional practice of pre-arranged marriage, selling or giving a young girl away, to another family, to be raised as a future daughter-in-law. This tradition has vanished for decades, but the patriarchal shadow still lingers. Focusing on female issues, this film aims to reflect upon women’s oppression and struggle for freedom. Trying to be true to the historical context in Taiwan, the narration is based on interviews with my grandmother’s children, and research in feminism in animated short films during the pre-production stage.
Common Grounds
2022 Official Selection
Documentary, Student, Short | 29:56 | United States
Directed by: Raed Truett Gilliam
In an age of hyperpolarization, the UVA Center for Politics documentary “Common Grounds?” examines the political climate on a college campus, at the Grounds of the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson. Through interviews with students from across the political spectrum, and a group dialogue between some of these students, the film asks a simple question: “Can tomorrow’s generation find common ground?”
Strength Among Us
2022 Official Selection
Documentary, Short | 22:00 | Turkey
Directed by: Taha Ovaci
The story of four refugee women who stand on own feet despite all their painful and difficult life experiences and struggle for their families.
Urania Leilus
2022 Official Selection
Short | 21:17 | United States
Directed by: Andrew Serban
A young female journalist is subjected to death threats and intimidation after witnessing human rights abuses at an ICE detention center for undocumented immigrant children. “Urania Leilus” is intended to be a warning about what might happen when a democracy succumbs to far-right extremists and descends into fascism — when immigrant children are ripped from their parents and locked up in cages without adequate food or medical care; when journalists and dissidents are regarded as “enemies of the people”, to be harassed, intimidated or “disappeared” by unidentified agents in unmarked vehicles — all of which have occurred (and continue to occur) in authoritarian regimes and have recently occurred in the United States.