NEW FILM! MOTHER'S DAY

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MOTHER'S DAY was shown at The 2007Moondance International Film Festival --- Friday through Sunday, SEPTEMBER 7, 8 9, 2007 at UNIVERSAL STUDIOS CITY WALK CINEMAS Hollywood, California, where it won the Columbine Award for documentaries that promote non-violence.

MOTHER’S DAY chronicles women activists and grieving mothers heeding Julia Ward Howe’s 1870 hallmark call to action as they gather on Mother’s Day 2006 to voice a message not found on any greeting card – “Mothers say NO to war!” The 40-minute documentary by filmmaker and journalist Diane Mason weaves the historic origins of Mother’s Day into a contemporary exploration of women united to end war.

Norma Aviles, devastated, speaks out against the war that took her son’s life at age 18. Others stand together before the White House with the message: “We are taking back our Mother’s Day!” As thousands join with actress Susan Sarandon and activist Cindy Sheehan, Howe’s eloquent proclamation resonates with a force undiminished by time.

The film features the uplifting, soulful, unforgettable songs of Pat Humphries and Sandy O of emma’s revolution.

>View Trailer Online

More about Mother's Day in the St. Petersburg Times >>

Recent Films
Condemned, (68:00) Behind the façade of wealth and privilege in the Gulf Coast city of Sarasota, Florida, lurked a dirty secret — the Janie Poe housing project.  In this cluster of derelict low-rise buildings, 128 families fought daily against filth, disease and neglect. Shielded from view by million-dollar high-rise condominiums and sparkling arts venues, the low-income project was out of sight, out of mind for the majority of the city’s predominantly white and increasingly wealthy residents.  Inside the Janie Poe project, children were forced to sleep with roaches swarming their beds, black mold invading their lungs and raw sewage bubbling up in the yards where they play. By focusing an unflinching spotlight on this slum in one of Florida’s wealthiest cities, this documentary spurred desperate public housing residents, a complacent community, recalcitrant local politicians and the federal government to right decades of neglect and indifference. Co-produced with Darryl Saffer.
Available as a DVD.>View Trailer Online

Faces of Peace (21:12) is a documentary about the stirrings of the peace movement in the months prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. With the words and faces of those who stood up and spoke out against war, the film shows the diversity and beauty of the people in this movement. “Faces of Peace” was screened at the 2003 Through Women’s Eyes International Film Festival, and by the Sarasota Film Society. >View Online

Three Khmer Flowers (58:00) When an adoptive mother of a Cambodian orphan girl decides to adopt two more children, the U.S. government halts adoptions from Cambodia. The girls, 6- and 8-year-old sisters, wait in the orphanage, innocent of politics and policy, as the mother fights her way to their side. This story, of a mother’s journey to Cambodia to unite with her adoptive daughters, is moving and suspenseful, enhanced by original music by Darryl Saffer that blends Western and Asian melodies.
Available as a DVD.>View trailer Online

A Woman Who Runs With the Wolves For the past ten years, scientist C.J. Rogers has been living with wolves. Far from the urban Chicago where she grew up, Dr. Rogers created “Raised by Wolves,” a research center in a remote location in northwestern New Mexico. She lives there with 19 wolves, who are not only her research subjects but her surrogate family. Rogers is engaging, funny, and fiercely devoted to the wolves. She believes that her research, gathered in day to day hour by hour observation and interaction, will yield the secrets that will help save this endangered species from extinction. The documentary captures the wolves interacting with each other and with humans, some dangerous moments when the wolves are being wolves, and some touching scenes of humans bonding with these mysterious creatures.
Available as a DVD. >Request a copy

Recent Films available online:

The Last Refuge:
One Woman’s Glimpse of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Featured film: 2007 Gray's Reef Ocean Film Festival, Savannah, Georgia.

(15:20) This dramatic journey takes you over the formidable peaks of the Brooks Range and into the last wilderness of its kind on the planet, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The film captures the quiet beauty and stunning vastness of a region that is for the most part untouched by mankind, with glimpses of some of the wildlife -- caribou, seals and polar and grizzly bears -- that depend on this habitat for their survival. The Refuge is now endangered by those who would open area to oil drilling, and the film offers a firsthand glimpse of what will be lost if drilling is allowed. The filmmaker and her daughter, Ann Mason, traveled to Washington, D.C., and with the help of volunteers, delivered the film to all 535 members of the U.S. House and Senate.>View the film online

Bring Them Home (6:27) This documentary takes you to the heart – literally and figuratively – of the September, 2005, march for peace on Washington, D.C. There, nearly half a million citizens gathered to call for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.>View the film online

Florida Breeze (4:50) This is a music video with “Florida Breeze,” a song about Florida’s natural beauty and a plea to save it. The enchanting song is written and performed by Dick Joslyn, a Tampa folksinger and environmental activist who died in 2000. Archival footage of the singer is used in the film, which features stunning footage of Florida and its wildlife.>View the trailer online