Film

As the Republican National Convention begins to take over Minnesota, many people will be attending and exploring different political activities around the Twin Cities area. An opportunity to give your tired feet and cheering/protesting voice—if not your conscience—a rest is the Impact Film Festival, which will be screening eight new films at the Landmark Center and the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul. IFF features documentaries and narrative films from various film festivals (Sundance, Toronto, SXSW, L.A. Film Festival) from over the past year. The films’ topics range from our rising debt to women in politics to water. MORE »

To the barricades…or something like that. So say the organizers of the UnConvention, the multi-faceted string of cultural activities that is taking place in tandem with the Republican National Convention (RNC) in St. Paul. As forward-thinking and inclusive as the UnConvention proffers to be, though, it isn’t for every creative type. In fact, some of the most interesting activities will be independent, renegade affairs that may or may not be noticed. Collectively, they constitute a sort of UnUnConvention. MORE »

Labor Day weekend will be an appropriate time for the broadcast premiere of “If Stone Could Speak,” a documentary by local labor filmmaker Randy Croce. The film tells the story of Italian stonecutters who immigrated to Vermont in the late 1800s, where they continued to practice their age-old craft, creating art from stone, art that continues to grace public buildings, churches and cemeteries across the U.S. The film also tells the story of the stonecutters’ struggles against silicosis and how the union they organized in the 1930s ultimately won safer workplaces. MORE »

How much secrecy is necessary for our national security, and to what extent is secrecy detrimental to our national security? How much information do we as citizens have the right to know, and how much endangers our lives as we know them? These and other questions are probed in the documentary film Secrecy, showing as part of the Walker Art Center’s Cinema of Urgency series. Providing no concrete answers to these deep questions, the film reveals the ongoing pendulum swing between factions thinking there is no such thing as too much secrecy, and others who think too much secrecy infringes on citizens’ right to know. MORE »