Upon completion, China’s mammoth Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River will be the largest hydroelectric power station in the world. Progress, though, comes at a price: the dam will displace over a million residents and destroy numerous cultural and archaeological sites, upending a way of life. In Up the Yangtze, filmmaker Yung Chang sensitively examines the effects of this massive project on personal lives, as he follows two young people, each transformed by the construction.

Sixteen-year-old Yu Shui and her family are dismantling their tiny shack along the river’s edge to make way for rising waters. She longs to continue her education, but financial circumstances force her to work for Farewell Cruises, a company that ferries tourists to catch a glimpse of the river region before it’s too late. The irony of her employment becomes clear as the boat glides along the river, revealing a landscape changing at an alarming pace. Meanwhile, the journey’s significance is lost on her co-worker Chen Bo Yu, whose good looks and English skills make him an ideal hire. He merely sees his job as an opportunity to make some money.

Beautifully photographed, the film provides a final snapshot of a rapidly-disappearing cultural landscape. Juxtaposing the Yangtze’s stunning panorama with the reality of Yu Shui’s poignant story, Chang shows the tenuous balance between China’s rich cultural past and its modernized future.

-Rosie Wong, Sundance Film Festival

The SXSW Special Jury Award winning The Way We Get By is a deeply moving film about life and how to live it. Beginning as a seemingly idiosyncratic story about troop greeters – a group of senior citizens who gather daily at a small airport to thank American soldiers departing and returning from Iraq, the film quickly turns into a moving, unsettling and compassionate story about aging, loneliness, war and mortality.

When its three subjects aren’t at the airport, they wrestle with their own problems: failing health, depression, mounting debt. Joan, a grandmother of eight, has a deep connection to the soldiers she meets. The sanguine Jerry keeps his spirits up even as his personal problems mount. And the veteran Bill, who clearly has trouble taking care of himself, finds himself contemplating his own death. Seeking out the telling detail rather than offering sweeping generalizations, the film carefully builds stories of heartbreak and redemption, reminding us how our culture casts our elders, and too often our soldiers, aside. More important, regardless of your politics, “The Way We Get By” celebrates three unsung heroes who share their love with strangers who need and deserve it.

(Denver)

There’s no straight path to riches, particularly if you’re a Utah used-car salesman helping two World War II veterans find treasure they’ve buried… and now lost. The failing eyesight of one keeps him from unearthing his cache in Austria. The other is a pack rat who may or may not have a map to hidden samurai swords and jewels in the Philippines. But Loot isn’t just about loot — it’s also about the quest for deeper truths, and the excising of personal demons. It’s a lyrical tale of fathers and sons, the fallibility of memory and, ultimately, about our own mortality, and a story about storytelling, about coincidence and chance. If it is a disquieting film for us — watching as characters deal with their ghosts — that not-unpleasant haunting feeling lingers long after the film ends.

(TRUE/FALSE)

Brothers Bill and Turner Ross assembled four seasons’ worth of images from their hometown of Sidney, Ohio (zip code 45365), ranging from the mundane to the sublime, and the result is a 21st-century Midwestern American Graffiti. Vividly shot sequences of playground romps, traffic violations, football games, and demolition derbies are enhanced by a soundtrack made up of local disc jockeys, overheard phone conversations, and a particularly charming and poetic use of a classic tune by the Flamingos.  Expansive and cumulative, 45365 is a big interpretation of small-town life.  TM

(FULL FRAME)

Flipper was one of the most beloved television characters of all time. But ironically, the fascination with dolphins that he caused created a tragic epidemic that has threatened their existence and become a multibillion dollar industry. The largest supplier of dolphins in the world is located in the picturesque town of Taijii, Japan. But the town has a dark, horrifying secret that it doesn’t want the rest of the world to know. There are guards patrolling the cove, where the dolphin capturing takes place, who prevent any photography. The only way to stop the evil acts of this company and the town that protects it is to expose them….and that’s exactly what the brave group of activists in The Cove intend to do.

Armed with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, the members of the small group, led by the most famous dolphin trainer in the world, devise a covert plan to infiltrate the cove to document the horrifying events that happen there. Along the way, they uncover what may be the largest health crisis facing our planet— the poisoning of our seas. Part environmental documentary, part horror film, part spy thriller, The Cove is as suspenseful as it is enlightening. The final result is a heart-wrenching, but inspirational, story that shows the true power of film in the hands of people who aren’t afraid to risk everything for a vital cause.

(FROM SUNDANCE FF)

OCTOBER COUNTRY is a haunting multi-generational story of a working-class family coping with poverty, teen pregnancy, foster care and the ineffable horrors of child molestation and war. A co-directing effort by filmmaker Michael Palmieri and photographer and writer Donal Mosher, it follows Donal’s family in Herkimer, New York from one Halloween to the next, resulting in a beautifully crafted film remarkable for its intimacy, sensitivity and textured portrait of a family in crisis that has become all too familiar, if not representative, of America’s poor.

Who are the Moshers? Don, the emotionally remote and dry-witted head of the family, returned from Vietnam plagued by nightmares about his dead friends and admits he’s an ass who takes a hard line on foolishness. Dottie, his intrepid and eternally optimistic wife, forms the emotional glue for the family. Don’s estranged sister, Denise, is a practicing witch and a lifelong outsider who takes us to the cemetery she frequents to meet her ghost friends. Don and Dottie’s daughter, Donna, grew up too fast, picked men who beat her and gave birth to Daneal as a teen. Daneal also had a teenage pregnancy with a man who beat her and is ill-equipped to care for the toddler now that they have divorced. Donna’s youngest daughter, Desi, is a clever girl who is aware of the bad examples set by her sister and mother. She just might avoid repeating their mistakes and thereby overcome her own tragic history. As the Mosher family does their best to grapple with their lives, circumstances and decisions, we root for them—especially Desi, who holds such promise.

(FROM SILVERDOCS)