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Wisconsin Union Theater
800 Langdon St.
Madison, WI 53706
608-265-ARTS
Tales from Planet Earth: Losers and Winners
Tales from Planet Earth: Losers and Winners
Saturday, Nov 07,  3:45 PM
Memorial Union - Play Circle
Free
An official selection of over 30 film festivals and winner of numerous documentary film awards, Losers and Winners faithfully recounts the dismantling of a steel coke plant in the heart of Germany's Ruhr Valley for relocation to China. The simultaneous slowdown of European industry and explosion of the Chinese economic behemoth has transformed landscapes of labor around the globe and, in this case, led to the transplanting of what was once the world's most sophisticated coke plant after only eight years of operation at its original site in Germany. In the race to relocate the plant quickly, the new owners bring hundreds of Chinese workers to Germany, creating a clash of cultures as each country's workers view the demolition of a manufactured landscape with opposing feelings of optimism, despair, alienation and understanding. (Showing with Solitary Life of Cranes)
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Tales from Planet Earth: Solitary Life of Cranes
Tales from Planet Earth: Solitary Life of Cranes
Saturday, Nov 07,  3:45 PM
Memorial Union - Play Circle
Free
People engage with landscapes in a variety of ways and from many different perspectives. Eva Weber explores perhaps one of the most ignored perspectives, hidden in plain sight in almost every big city and developing landscape around the world. Capturing images not for the faint of heart (or acrophobic), Weber bravely ventures high above London to discover its world of crane operators. What she discovers in Solitary Life of Cranes is a complex relationship between man and machine, executing sweeping movements with balletic precision and in the process reshaping the landscape below. (Showing with Losers and Winners)
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Tales from Planet Earth: Never Cry Wolf
Tales from Planet Earth: Never Cry Wolf
Saturday, Nov 07,  4:15 PM
Memorial Union - Union Theater
Free
Tales from Planet Earth is pleased to be screening one of director Carroll Ballard's many extraordinary films that documents the intense connections that exist between humans and animals. Ballard captures the often spiritual quality of the human-animal bond that famed naturalist E.O. Wilson has suggested is an innate "biophilia," or love for other creatures on the planet. And in his films, Ballard also reveals the great lengths humans often go to study and preserve our animal kin, such as Never Cry Wolf's adaptation of the real-life efforts of Farley Mowat to research wolves in Northern Canada and his growing awareness of wolves' unfair reputation and persecution. While the impressive visuals and stories of this film makes it ideal viewing for the whole family, Ballard's work is far from a kid's film but, in fact, required viewing for anyone interested in the intertwined fates of all humans and animals.
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Tales from Planet Earth: Deep Down
Tales from Planet Earth: Deep Down
Saturday, Nov 07,  7:00 PM
Memorial Union - Play Circle
Free
Appalachian Mountain coal today provides 35 percent of America's electricity - in 20 years this figure is expected to double. Deep Down explores the implications of this reliance on coal and the impacts across Appalachian communities that are literally being split apart by mountaintop mining, as well as impacts in communities reliant upon coal-fired power plants. As the effects of this coal dependence spread across our land and atmosphere, it is time to reconnect the disparate human stories of impact, use, and extraction that are all too often forgotten in debates over this precious resource. In Deep Down we see the poignant tale of two old friends in Maytown, Kentucky both ambivalent about plans for a new mountaintop strip mine and unsure whether to sell out to the mining officials. Is staying and living right next to teeth jarring dynamite explosions really better than moving away? What happens to their friendship, to their community, if they stay? What happens if they go? Deep down, the divides over this issue are more personal and emotional than just a question of coal. Filmmakers scheduled to be in attendance. Visit the film's official website
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The Imaginary Invalid
The Imaginary Invalid
Saturday, Nov 07,  7:30 PM
Vilas Communication Hall - Mitchell Theatre
General Public $20; Sr. Citizen (62 and over) $18; Friend of UT $16; 17 and younger $14; UW Student $14
by Moliere, adapted by Arrie Callahan Directed by Patricia Boyette Cough! Wheeze! Gasp! Argan, a miserly hypochondriac, wants his daughter, Angelique, to marry a doctor¿for the free medical care. This new translation of Moliere¿s farcical comedy pokes fun at the medical profession, family corruption, and absurdities in familial duty. Produced in the Steampunk aesthetic, a fantastical spin Victorian decadence and turn-of-the-century industrialization, this costume drama will delight through its combination of satiric commentary, physical farce, and stunning visuals.
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Tales from Planet Earth: Sleep Dealer
Tales from Planet Earth: Sleep Dealer
Saturday, Nov 07,  9:00 PM
Memorial Union - Union Theater
Free
Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer, a multiple Sundance Award winning science-fiction masterpiece, imagines a future in which all U.S. borders are closed to immigration yet foreign workers continue to perform labor remotely via robotic connections. After Memo Cruz's home is destroyed in an attack, he travels to Tijuana with dreams of working in the high-tech labor factories, even though workers there go until the point of collapse. Along the way, he meets the mysterious Luz who is trying to use him for her own reasons. A mind-blowing, satirical look at modern labor and the uses of people, this film will change how you think about people's relationships to the land and asks you to consider what it is we really are arguing about in our recent debates over U.S. immigration policy. Part of a three film retrospective of Rivera's work, along with The Sixth Section and Papapapá. Filmmaker scheduled to be in attendance.
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Tales from Planet Earth: The Chances of the World Changing
Tales from Planet Earth: The Chances of the World Changing
Saturday, Nov 07,  9:20 PM
Memorial Union - Play Circle
Free
An astonishingly moving and intimate portrait of one man's quest to keep from losing himself as he tries to save the world, The Chances of the World Changing follows several years in the life of Richard Ogust, a writer and turtle collector who took on the challenge of trying to save many of the world's endangered turtle species and in the process lost his home, his career, and almost his sense of self. Even as he continually confronts insurmountable obstacles - lack of funding, dying turtles, illegal smugglers - the most amazing thing (as director Eric Daniel Metzgar has noted) is that this film concerning extinction is less about gloom and doom than it is about persistance, hope and survival.
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Soylent Green
Soylent Green
Saturday, Nov 07,  11:59 PM
Memorial Union - Play Circle
FREE
November 7 | USA, 1973 | 97min | Richard Fleischer | DVD | PG
Presented with the Tales from Planet Earth Film Festival. The year is 2022. New York City has become overpopulated with 40 million people and pollution has caused the temperature to be risen and all natural resources have been destroyed, leaving 40 million people starving. The Soylent Company has create a new food product, Soylent Green. In the overpopulated and polluted New York City, police detective Thorn is assigned to investigate the brutal murder of an corporate official of the Soylent company, William R. Simonson. Thorn's investigation into Simonson's murder leads him to uncover a conspiracy in the Soylent company and the Soylent Green food product itself, where Thorn uncovers the horrible truth about Soylent Green. (from IMDb)
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Tales from Planet Earth Keynote Speaker, Winona LaDuke: The Economy for the Next Seven Generations
Tales from Planet Earth Keynote Speaker, Winona LaDuke: The Economy for the Next Seven Generations
Sunday, Nov 08,  1:00 PM
Memorial Union - Union Theater
Free
Winona LaDuke (Anishinaabe) is an internationally renowned activist working on issues of sustainable development, renewable energy and food systems. She lives and works on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, and is a two time vice presidential candidate with Ralph Nader for the Green Party. As Program Director of the Honor the Earth, she works nationally and internationally on issues of climate change, renewable energy, and environmental justice with Indigenous communities. In her own community, she is the founder of the White Earth Land Recovery Project, one of the largest reservation based non-profit organizations in the country, and a leader in the issues of culturally based sustainable development strategies, renewable energy and food systems. (Her keynote will be preceded by a Native American Drum Circle and will be followed by a screening of Lighting the Seventh Fire and a panel on native peoples' resource issues)
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Tales from Planet Earth: Lighting the Seventh Fire
Tales from Planet Earth: Lighting the Seventh Fire
Sunday, Nov 08,  2:00 PM
Memorial Union - Union Theater
Free
Bringing Tales from Planet Earth's global explorations home to Wisconsin, Lighting the Seventh Fire takes up the issue of the Chippewa Indians' struggle to revive traditional methods of spearfishing against fierce oppposition from other Wisconsin residents fearful of the loss of the walleye resource. Director Sandra Osawa reveals how a seemingly simple question of "resource management" is intertwined with issues of racism, historical obligations of treaty rights, and how people choose to define natural "resources." Behind it all, she explains the Chippewa prophecy of the seven fires that encompass seven eras of time for the Chippewa people. Still to come is the time of the seventh fire, when the Chippewa's lost traditions will be restored. (The film plays as part of a series of events related to native peoples' resource issues - preceding the film will be Winona LaDuke's keynote and following the film will be a panel discussing resource issues)
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