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Moondance 2001 Announces Finalists

MOONDANCE 2001 SCREENPLAY FINALISTS:

BAIT & SWITCH by Heather Hale
Romantic comedy: A genial, happily-married, work-at-home dad has his life turned upside-down when he walks in on his wife in bed with another woman. In the comedy- of-errors process of trying to salvage his marriage, he finally figures out how to save his family, instead.

CHILD IN THE WELL by Regina Richardson
Drama: A feisty youngster, fleeing a pre-arranged marriage in medieval England, falls under the influence of a mysterious brigand, a wise crone, a mad child, and a bull of the purest evil.

GONE TO MERCY by Shelle Sumners
Romantic drama: When she is called home to a strange old house she has inherited, a shattered and lonely woman finds a surprising and welcome challenge: to love fearlessly and fiercely, regardless of the ultimate choice.

HEAT by Beverly Smith-Dawson
Drama: A young African-American woman's surreal coming of age in a magical realm of the Southwest. Unable to journey far from home, because her father refuses to buy her shoes, trouble comes to her, instead, in the guise of Red Boy, a meeting which mysteriously brings water to the parched landscape.

STEALING PARADISE by Gabriella Belloni
Drama: A wolf-pack of outcast teenagers learn the hard way that paradise is ultimately within their love and respect for one another.

MOONDANCE 2001 STAGEPLAY FINALISTS:

THE BEATRICE FACTOR by Sandra Perlman
Romantic drama: A contemporary tale of love, faith, family and the power of the Internet. Characters in this spirited story include Leonard and Sissy, online chat-room lovers; Leonard's African-American step-daughter who has just joined the Army; her mother, a peace-loving woman; and a mysteriously-pregnant midnight visitor who just wants them all to be happy.

THE BELLES OF THE MILL by Rachel Rubin Ladutke
Drama: A gripping tale of women mill-workers who stage a bold strike, called the "Bread & Roses Strike", set in the 1912 rag-time-era of New England. A young Irish mill-worker finds her faith in God and humanity sorely tested, and a Jewish midwife jeopardizes her own career and family when she, too, enters the fray.

SAPPHO IN LOVE by Carolyn Gage
Comedy: A lesbian Midsummer Night's Dream; comedy in the best Greek tradition. The goddess of celibacy teams up with the goddess of monogamy to challenge Aphrodite on the isle of Lesbos. Sapphic poetry abounds, amid meteor showers, midsummer eve trysts, masquerades and melodramas.

SWAMP FEVER by Ginny Cerrella
Musical Comedy: Murder, mayhem, incest, a ghost and "singing 'gators" in a Louisiana swamp. An alligator farm's sign, "Feed the 'gators", takes on new meaning to tourists and troublesome kin alike.

THE VISIBLE HORSE by Mary Lathrop
Drama: On the first anniversary of the fatal car accident, a boy accidentally conjures his father back from the grave, only to find that Dad is the legendary "monster under the bed".

MOONDANCE 2001 SHORT-STORY FINALISTS:

BEAUTY by Lynne Barrett
Drama: Pregnant at 36 from sex in a hatchback with a boy who couldn't be more than 23-24, Susan lies on the floor, looking up at row upon row of Barbie dolls her mother had sewed costumes for, year after year, waiting there, multiplying, for her to screw up again and come home.

THE GIFT by Uma Krishnaswami
Drama: India is being torn apart, as are friendships, due to the partition of the country, and what seems almost an afterthought turns into a very special gift from Fauzia to Lakshmi. Years later, the gift is handed down to Lakshmi's daughter and grandaughter, and the gift takes on the power of generations of women.

KOTEX QUEEN by Kathy Coudle King
Comedy: A adolescent girl's pleasant weekend plans are turned upside-down when her best friend smugly rejects their plans and stays home with her "friend", making our heroine wish to grow up too soon.

MAMA’S EYES by Rosalee Mayeaux
Drama: (an excerpt from the story:) "... like flowers pressed between the pages of too-wet paper, it leaves a permanent mark, forever. That's what I want. To be marked by (my mother's) arms. I want a mark on my skin from the wrinkle in her skirt where I slept too long on her lap...to let my children feel her fluffy white arms, to have her smoothe our hair with the palms of her hands."

RATTLESNAKE HEART by Linda Oatman High
Comedy: Shaina hates Texas; the hot windless air, the sun-scorched grass, the dust, the cracker music, the barbecued-rib hick-food, the tight geek-jeans the so-called cowboys wear, the bucking-bronco belts and the big hair on girls stuck in the 80's. Shania just wants to go home to Pennsylvania, where the grass is green and the sky is blue. And where they don't make a big stinking deal over extra whipped cream on your peanut butter sundae.

MOONDANCE 2001 SHORT FILM FINALISTS:

BROAD BEANS by Konstantia Kontaxis (US/Greece)
Comedy: Inspired by a Pythagorian golden verse, this visually succulent film is a bizarre & increasingly apocalyptic yet comic tale of revenge & superstition in a small Greek town.

CAT’S CRADLE by Liz Hughes (AUSTRALIA)
Dark Comedy/Drama: In this film by an Aboriginal Australian woman, Dad is dead on the dining room table. His family cannot afford to bury him, so they set out with his corpse on their shoulders to find a final resting place for their father. Shot in grainy black & white, with no dialog & only ambient sounds, this surreal, incredibly poignant film has won awards all over the world for its quiet yet harrowing portrait of desperation and love.

GEORGIA PEACH BOY by Mamie McCall (US)
Fantasy/Drama: Tonya, a very large woman, wants only one thing in life: a baby. But when her wish is magically granted, and she suddenly finds her baby in the pit of a giant peach, she discovers she’s not the only one wanting the miraculous child. A tragi-comic story of dreams-come-true, money, seduction, betrayal and a giant peach.

ODESSA by Amy Lyndon (US)
Drama: Yolanda King (Martin Luther King Jr's eldest daughter) gives a dynamic performance as Odessa, a maid who comes to work for a family in upstate New York in 1969.  Odessa quickly bonds with the only child, and together they learn to deal with desegregation, family values and forgiveness during a very turbulent time in history. The film tells a courageous story of love and the strength to stand up for what is right and good.

THE SHANGRI-LA CAFÉ by Lily Mariye (US)
Drama: This touching drama weaves an allegorical tale of a Japanese-American family who conceals their ethnicity and reluctantly adopts discriminatory practices in order to operate a popular Chinese restaurant during the hostile post-WWII climate of Las Vegas in the late 1950s. The ultimate decision Emiko must make, and the effect it has on her young daughter, will profoundly change their lives.

MOONDANCE 2001 DOCUMENTARY FILM FINALISTS:

LA FRONTERA (THE BORDER) by Barbara Martinez-Jitner (USA/MEXICO)
"As we leave our land, our culture is erased forever". This Latina filmmaker exposes the sad reality of women fleeing virtual slavery in NAFTA factories in Mexico. Martinez-Jitner lived in the shacks and instant communities: the shanty-towns of Tijuana, while filming this documentary, traveled with a Mixtec Indian woman to Oaxaca to bid farewell to her family forever, and then documented her illegal crossing to "El Norte".

LAST JOURNEY INTO SILENCE by Shosh Shlam (Israel)
The wall of silence still remains for some Holocaust survivors. The elderly men & women in this stunning film were hospitalized in mental institutions for sometimes 40 years, but have now been relocated to a hostel for Holocaust survivors, imprisoned in the hell of their memories, where they do not even remember the Holocaust, and emptiness and inner time rule their lives.

MARIE by Jadina Lilien (USA)
A day in the life of a thoroughly mad pack-rat of a 70 year-old woman, who lives in abundant squalor amidst what she considers riches…she must clamber over piles of junk, garbage and everything she’s ever owned in order to even get out the door. Marie tells us her strange, personal philosophy of life, and almost convinces us!

WITHOUT LYING DOWN by Bridget Terry (USA)
An excavation of the legacy left by the women of early Hollywood, as seen through the remarkable life of one of the most successful screenwriters ever, Frances Marion. Marion wrote over 200 films, won 2 Oscars ‚, and for 3 decades, was the highest-paid screenwriter in the world. This film traces the lives and careers of many powerful women in the budding Hollywood film industry who, without lying down, had a profound and lasting influence on the birth of that industry.

WOMEN’S PRIVATE PARTS by Wong Chun Chun (Hong Kong)
This film was created by an all-women crew, and documents the real and private side of modern Chinese women, who are commonly perceived as conservative and subservient. But after experiencing the revelations in this passionate & shocking film about the Chinese sex-industry, you’ll see another side of some of the women of China, and you’ll see how women are much the same, worldwide, when it comes to the subject of men & sex.

MOONDANCE 2001 ANIMATION FILM FINALISTS:

FIRST PERSON SINGULAR by Kim Zumpfe (USA)
God (whether male or female is unknown) almost accidentally creates the universe from his/her hands, and in the process, creates music and even allows a brief cameo appearance by primitive homo erectus. Clay animation by a talented Boulder animator.

FLIGHT OF THE STONE by Suzanne Horizon-Franzel (Germany)
In this memorable and surprising film, a cobblestone is torn out of its natural environment and is made into a tool of violence, hurled at a perceived enemy, and yet…the stone misses its target and enters into an orbit around the Earth. It impacts on varied people in its strange journey through many countries, before it returns to the hand that threw it. The film took two years to shoot, and was an adventure for the entire crew (more than 500 people!), who literally walked around the world, and shot one frame every few steps. Using a technique called pixillation, they then inserted the stone into digitized scenes.

THE GREEN MAN OF KNOWLEDGE by Rachel Bevan Baker (Scotland)
In this Jack and the Beanstalk story, a young man ventures forth and finds himself in a land of enchantment, where he encounters the Green Man of Knowledge and completes 3 challenges, but only with the help of a beautiful girl, with whom he, of course, falls in love. Bevan-Baker’s film, "Beelines", won the Moondance 2000 for best animation.

MOONDANCE 2001 COLUMBINE AWARD FINALISTS:

SCREENPLAY: BUENOS AIRES by Olga Rojer
Romantic drama: WWII-era Buenos Aires, it's atmosphere tumultuous with tango, political intrigue and Nazis, is the historical setting for this old-fashioned romance between an outcast of Hitler's Germany and an impassioned Argentine woman.

STAGEPLAY: JANE: THE ABORTION & THE UNDERGROUND by Paula Kamen
Drama: The story of "Jane", the legendary feminist underground Chicago abortion service, run by housewives and student radicals, which was the only safe and affordable alternative for more than 10,000 women, in pre-Roe vs. Wade America.

SHORT STORY: GHOST OF HA-TAY by Uyen Nicole Duong
Surrealistic Drama: Set in post-war Viet Nam, a French journalist, with the help of a Vietnamese psychic, discovers the secrets of the "ghost of Ha-Tay", a young girl who was raped and murdered...or is the Frenchman's lost love that same ghost, seeking her revenge?

SHORT FILM: THE MASK MAKER by Amy Waddell (US)
Drama: During the "Great war", soldiers who were severely disfigured in combat were asked by the French government not to show their faces in public. A mask-maker who carries his scars internally helps an ostracized, disfigured soldier, and in doing so, is healed. A memorable tour de force of an avant garde film.

DOCUMENTARY FILM: LAST JOURNEY INTO SILENCE by Shosh Shlam (Israel)
The wall of silence still remains for some Holocaust survivors. The elderly men & women in this stunning film were hospitalized in mental institutions for sometimes 40 years, but have now been relocated to a hostel for Holocaust survivors, imprisoned in the hell of their memories, where they do not even remember the Holocaust, and emptiness and inner time rule their lives.

ANIMATION FILM: FLIGHT OF THE STONE by Suzanne Horizon-Franzel (Germany)
In this memorable and surprising film, a cobblestone is torn out of its natural environment and is made into a tool of violence, hurled at a perceived enemy, and yet…the stone misses its target and enters into an orbit around the Earth. It impacts on varied people in its strange journey through many countries, before it returns to the hand that threw it. The film took two years to shoot, and was an adventure for the entire crew (more than 500 people!), who literally walked around the world, and shot one frame every few steps. Using a technique called pixillation, they then inserted the stone into digitized scenes.

*there were no feature-film finalists

Updated: 01/07/2001

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