Good Works Film Festival

12/12/2013

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”

― David W. Orr, Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World

06/26/2013

The Good Works Film Festival applauds the two Supreme Court rulings today which declare the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional and effectively overturn Proposition 8 in California which banned same-sex marriages. Today is a big step forward for the LGBT communities to realize their civil and human rights to choose whom they wish to marriage and enjoy the full status of the law. Good Works Film Festival congratulates our partner organizations, Pride Foundation and Basic Rights Oregon, Soromundi and allies for their hard work. Let's celebrate!

04/21/2013

Last night Good Works Film Festival partnering with Cinema Pacific at the UO presented Alien Boy, a film by a Portland Filmmaker, Brian Lindstrom, about the murder of James Chasse, a man with schizophrenia, by the Portland police. A sad but enlightening film about a tragedy that could have happened in any of our cities. Brian and his film team engaged with the audiences to discuss the film and what it reveals about who we are and how we grow. Kudos to the one member of the Eugene Police Commission who attended!

03/18/2013

It was great seeing everyone this weekend! Check out what's coming up next...

Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse is a feature-length documentary film that chronicles one man’s struggle with schizophrenia and examines the actions of the police officers responsible for his death, exposing a city grappling with accountability in the death of an innocent, unarmed man.

03/16/2013

Filmmaker Peter Wang’s In the Family came to him in a mental flash. “I had a glimpse of this family, the family at the center of the movie — two dads playing soccer with their kids,” Wang tells EW. It seems simple; a fleeting spark that captures the imagination, but Wang’s feature-length directorial...

03/09/2013

change is coming...

The president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act now believes it’s unconstitutional.

02/20/2013

Honduras; A military coup d'etat pushes landless farmers to carry out the most audacious takeover in recent memory. You were inspired by Tahrir. You were inspired by Occupy Wall...

02/03/2013

Review Summary

You've probably heard little about “In the Family,” a remarkably fresh and unpredictable drama set in the American every town of Martin, Tenn. This off-the-map independent production was rejected by 30 festivals before its October premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival and is now playing on a single Manhattan screen as a self-distributed release. “In the Family” is the first film by its writer, director and low-key leading man, Patrick Wang, whose creative background is in stage acting and dramaturgy. Not surprisingly the film boasts more than a few memorable performances — by Elaine Bromka, Park Overall and Kelly McAndrew, among others — and one truly remarkable turn by the stage great Brian Murray, as a grandfatherly Southern lawyer with a voice as smooth and warm as a tumbler of bourbon, a role worthy of Will Rogers. — Paul Brunick
New York Times Review

02/03/2013

In The Family - What Critics Are Saying...

"In some ways IN THE FAMILY is the CITIZEN KANE of domestic-issue movies, for it is always employing innovative staging, camera placement, and lighting for subtly dramatic effect."
Robert W. Butler, Butler's Cinema Scene

"IN THE FAMILY is the kind of film I step out of and can't wait to tell people about... Completely confident in its storytelling, with restrained, realistic performances and unapologetic aesthetic choices, it's a compelling narrative with a lot of heart."
Phil Yu, angryasianman.com

"...it's so morally invigorating you might just feel the world tremble."
Rob Humanick, Slant Magazine

"I was completely absorbed from beginning to end. What a courageous first feature this is, a film that sidesteps shopworn stereotypes and tells a quiet, firm, deeply humanist story about doing the right thing. It is a film that avoids any message or statement and simply shows us, with infinite sympathy, how the life of a completely original character can help us lead our own."
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"A signature achievement… deliberate and marked by uncommon grace, IN THE FAMILY manages to feel politically and culturally acute without ever resorting to melodrama, or having to wave banners for issues or causes, except perhaps in its quiet way for a renewed humanism in movies and a return to stories about everyday lives."
Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times