Film Series and Book Club Schedules

FILM SERIES

Films are shown first Monday of every month at 2 pm. The Travelling UNAFF is at the Avenidas Senior Center in Mountain View.  Admission is free.

Download PDFs of schedules for January - March 2010 .
Download PDFs of schedules for April - June 2010 .

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March 8, 2010 – Monday:   
Grandmother to Grandmother: New York to Tanzania  
Directors/Producers:  Anne Macksoud, John Angele (Tanzania) 56 minutes
     In sub Saharan Africa, AIDS is wiping out a generation of parents, leaving thirteen
million orphans behind. Many of the grandmothers, impoverished by the epidemic, have
rescued these children from the streets and are struggling to raise them. A similar thing is
happening in cities all across America. AIDS, drugs, and violence are wiping out a
generations of parents, leaving millions of children behind. Determined to keep these
children out of foster care, their grandmothers are stepping in to raise them. Their task is
made more difficult because many are poor women living in sub-standard housing and
gang-ridden neighborhoods. This film introduces two outstanding projects—one in the
Bronx, one in Tanzania. 
 
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April 12, 2010 - Monday:
What’s On Your Plate
Director: Catherine Gund, Producers: Catherine Gund, Tanya Selvaratnam
(USA) 75 minutes
What’s On Your Plate? is a witty, provocative documentary about kids and food
politics. Over the course of one year, the film follows two 11-year-old African-American city
kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah talk to food activists,
farmers and storekeepers, as they address questions regarding the origin of the food they
eat, how it’s cultivated, and how many miles it travels from farm to fork. Sadie and Safiyah
visit supermarkets, fast food chains, and school lunchrooms. But they also check out
innovative sustainable food system practices by going to farms, greenmarkets, and
community supported agriculture (CSA) programs. The film culminates with a delicious
local meal cooked by the girls and friends they have made along the way. Sadie and
Safiyah formulate sophisticated and compassionate opinions about urban sustainability,
and by doing so inspire hope and active engagement in others.

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May 10, 2010 - Monday:
Reclaiming Their Voices: The Native
American Vote in New Mexico
Director/Producer: Dorothy Fadiman (USA) 29 minutes
Reclaiming Their Voices documents ways in which Native Americans have been
disenfranchised over centuries, and are now becoming politically active. A little known fact:
Native Americans living on reservations were the last ethnic minority to have been granted
the right to vote in the United States. In this film, we meet Native Americans who are
stepping forward, and speaking out against injustice. We learn how they are reclaiming
their voices through education and action. The film follows two stories in New Mexico—the
Laguna tribe’s groundbreaking voter registration drive in 2004 and the Sacred Alliance for
Grassroots Equality’s (SAGE’s) work to preserve sacred petroglyphs.

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June 14, 2010 – Monday:
Speaking in Tongues
Directors/Producers: Marcia Jarmel, Ken Schneider (USA) 60 minutes
In a time where thirty-one states have passed English Only initiatives, one urban school
district is exploring the provocative notion that speaking a foreign language can be a
national asset. We follow four diverse students and their families as they encounter the
challenges and delights of becoming fluent in two languages. As we witness their journey,
we see how speaking more than one language changes them, their families, their
communities, and maybe even the world.


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BOOK CLUB

Meetings are on the 3rd Tuesday of every month 7:30 - 9pm. Hosted by the UNA-USA Midpeninsula Chapter, the book club focuses on United Nations issues and related topics. Read the book and join us for the discussion! Free admission.
Meeting location: 1945 Mount Vernon Court #15, Mountain View ( meeting location phone: (650) 968-1174 )

Download PDFs of schedules for January - March 2010 .
 
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February 16, 2010:   The Tiger and the Hare    by Jane Miller Chai
     Vietnam is peaceful and beautiful when Linnea Miller, a Southeast Asian scholar, arrives in Saigon in December
of 1961. Working with the United States Aid for International Development, she’s charged with the task of helping
the Hmong people change their growing habits from poppies to berries. Linnea finds herself caught between the
people she is trying to help and the growing national interests of the country she calls home.  Her excursions and
adventures expose her to many situations, such as probes into an opium network that takes her into a pirate lair in
the Mekong swamp. As events and relationships escalate, Linnea witnesses the self-immolation of a Buddhist
monk and realizes the world she knows is about to change. She has no idea it will include the assassinations of two
presidents, not to mention what she discovers about her boss who has become her lover. Passionately written and
intimately told, this story opens a rare window into the events preceding United States military involvement in
Vietnam, and forms an understanding of the inception of conflict from a personal perspective.
 Summary from:  www.iuniverse.com
 
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March 16, 2010:   Half the Sky   by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
     From two of our most fiercely moral voices, a passionate call to arms against our era’s most pervasive human
rights violation: the oppression of women and girls in the developing world.   With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D.
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the
extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian
woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting
experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity, and, ultimately, hope. They show how
a little help can transform the lives of women and girls abroad. Kristof and WuDunn help us see that the key to
economic progress lies in unleashing women’s potential.  Throughout much of the world, the greatest unexploited
economic resource is the female half of the population. Countries such as China have prospered precisely because
they emancipated women and brought them into the formal economy. Unleashing that process globally is the best
strategy for fighting poverty.                                      

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