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Louverture Films develops, produces and executive produces independently financed feature and documentary films. These include:
In Release
TROUBLE THE WATER
Directed by Tia Lessin & Carl Deal
2009 Academy Award Nominee - Best Documentary Feature
Winner Grand Jury Prize, 2008 Sundance Film Festival
Winner Grand Jury Award, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Winner, Special Jury Prize, SilverDocs
Winner, Best Documentary, 2008 Gotham Independent Film Awards
http://www.troublethewaterfilm.com/
Feature documentary that takes you inside Hurricane Katrina in a way never before seen on screen. The film features Kimberly and Scott Roberts, a young couple living on the margins who survive the flooding of their city, recording their experience in a chilling video diary. Weaving fly on the wall and in-your-face filmmaking with home video footage and archival news, this is a redemptive tale of two unforgettable people who are surviving not only failed levees, bungling bureaucrats and armed soldiers, but also a system that has failed them.
SALT OF THIS SEA (Milh Hadha Al-Bahr)
Directed by Annemarie Jacir
Official Selection 2008 Cannes Film Festival - Un Certain Regard
Official Selection 2008 Times BFI London Film Festival
Official Selection 2009 Tribeca Film Festival
Winner, Randa Chahal Prize, Carthage Film Festival
Winner, Special Jury Prize & FIPRESCI Award, Osian Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema
Winner, First Prize-Best Film, Sguardi Altrove Film Festival, Italy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDRmLPGAGzI
Born in Brooklyn, a young working-class Palestinian-American woman fulfills her life-long dream of returning to Palestine. Slowly taken apart by the reality around her, she is forced to confront her own anger. She meets Emad, a young Palestinian whose ambition, contrary to hers, is to leave forever. Tired of the constraints that dictate their lives, they take things into their own hands. Palestine's first feature by a Palestinian female director.
Coming Soon
THE TIME THAT REMAINS
Directed by Elia Suleiman
Official Selection 2009 Cannes Film Festival - in Competition
A semi-autobiographical film, in four episodes, about the filmmaker's family, from 1948 until recent times. Inspired by the private diaries of his father and by his mother's letters to family members who were forced to leave Palestine, the filmmaker brilliantly combines intimate memories with a portrayal of daily life among those Palestinians who remained and were labelled Israeli-Arabs.
SOUNDTRACK FOR A REVOLUTION
Directed by Bill Guttentag & Dan Sturman
Official Selection 2009 Tribeca Film Festival
Official Selection 2009 Cannes Film Festival
http://www.soundtrackforarevolutionfilm.com/Home.html
Feature documentary showcasing some of America’s top contemporary musicians as they perform new and vibrant renditions of the Civil Rights Movement’s freedom songs – songs originally sung by civil rights protesters in mass meetings, on picket lines, in paddy wagons, and in jail cells throughout the American South. These songs literally provided the soundtrack for a revolution that forever impacted American society.
In Production
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF McKINLEY NOLAN
Directed by Henry Corra & Celia Maysles
Private McKinley Nolan vanished forty years ago in Vietnam on the Cambodian frontier. Some say he was captured, some say he was a traitor, some even say he was an American operative. The US Army officially claims he was radicalized and “went native”, joining the Viet Cong and later encountering the Khmer Rouge. In 2006, retired US Army Lt. Dan Smith, revisiting the battlefields of his youth, may have encountered the elusive McKinley, alive. So began a journey into the heart of darkness.
GHETTO
Directed by Eugene Jarecki
While the Iraq War rages, another war continues, unnoticed, barely reported, and yet it has taken more lives than the war, destroyed more families, orphaned more children, and, like the war, holds significant implications for the future of American society. America’s War on Drugs has deep roots in the country’s history. This theatrical documentary examines how America’s drug laws have been used as political and economic tools against the poor, the ethnic, and the “undesirable” - focusing particularly on the effects on Black America, for whom, despite the exceptional progress of some and the nascent presidency of Barack Obama, the war continues, undeterred and persistent in its destructive impact.
In Prep or Development
TOUTI in Harlem
Directed by John Akomfrah
A music-driven comedy about an African woman who moves to Harlem and finds her voice.
TOUSSAINT
Directed by Danny Glover
Action epic, based on the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and the life of Toussaint Louverture, who led one of the only successful slave uprisings in history, successively defeated the French, Spanish and British imperial armies, followed by Napoleon Bonaparte, and established the first independent black Republic: Haiti.
The Making of TOUSSAINT
Directed by Michèle Stephenson & Joe Brewster
Documentary film about the making of TOUSSAINT, situating the places and events in the feature film within historical and current Haitian realities. Examines past efforts to tell the story and includes in-depth interviews with the director, actors, writers and producers of TOUSSAINT, as well as experts in various fields pertaining to Haitian history.
Einstein/Robeson Project
As yet untitled feature film about the enduring friendship and shared activism of world-renown scholar, actor, athlete and singer Paul Robeson and the world's most famous scientist, Albert Einstein.
Now in DVD
BAMAKO
Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako
Nominated, 2007 César Award
Winner, 2007 Lumière Award
Official Selection 2006 Cannes Film Festival
Official Selection 2006 Toronto International Film Festival
Official Selection 2006 New York Film Festival
Now available in DVD from New Yorker Films
BAMAKO in Philip French's Top 50 Films of Last Five Decades
Feature film set in the traditional courtyard of an African home, in which a very non-traditional tribunal is taking place - offering an opportunity for ordinary Africans to face the representatives of the international financial institutions that supposedly exist to eradicate poverty. The court-within-the-courtyard tries the case of Globalization.
AFRICA UNITE
Directed by Stephanie Black
Now available in DVD from Palm Pictures
http://www.bobmarley.com/africaunite/
Feature documentary that celebrates the life of Bob Marley and highlights the vision for African unity that he was devoted to throughout his music career. Focusing on youth empowerment and important issues confronting Africans at home and across the Diaspora, the film presents an inspiring tribute - both musically and substantively - to a man who defined his own aim as "spreading the message of unity and equality to end the needless suffering of mankind."
NEW MEDIA
SHARQ WARRIORS
Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)
Colourblind Entertainment & Louverture Films
Featuring “Sami”, the Middle East’s first modern action-adventure hero in a dynamic 3-D gaming experience. In Arabic and English.