• Home
• Contact Us

Tickets are $7.50. Films start at 5:30 p.m.

You can find more detailed descriptions below

For more information contct Brenda at (819) 456-4020 or brenda@rooneyproductions.com

Directed by Leslie Iwerks (2009) | 75 mins | USA | Language: English

Narrated by Canadian actress and environmentalist Neve Campbell, this much-anticipated feature documentary from Academy Award®-Nominated director Leslie Iwerks goes deep behind-the-scenes into the strip-mined world of Northern Alberta.

The United States now imports more oil from Canada than from the Middle East. dramatically explores the battle between industry, government, local communities and environmentalists over the development of the Alberta oil sands. Extracting oil from tar sands is highly inefficient and takes the energy equivalent of two barrels of oil to produce three. The demand and toll this process is taking on the land, air, water and wildlife around the Athabasca River and the downstream communities from Fort McMurray is not only toxic, but most likely irreversible.

The film follows the pipelines from Canada to the mid-western U.S. refineries, bearing visually stunning witness to how refineries dump toxic waste into the great rivers of Northern Alberta and the Great Lakes. It’s the storyof industry and government putting money before the health and security of people and the environment.

Dirty Oil had its World premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October.  

www.babelgum.com/dirtyoil

Directed by Lixin Fan (2009) | 87 min. | Canada | Language: Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles

This is the latest award-winning feature from Montreal’s EyeSteelFilm. Each year in China more than 130 million migrant workers travel home for the New Year's holiday – the only time they reunite with family all year. This mass exodus from China’s industrial cities to its rural villages is the world’s largest human migration. draws us into the fractured lives of a single migrant family caught up in the chaos of this desperate annual migration, and reveals a country torn between its industrial future and rural past.

An emotionally engaging and visually beautiful debut film by Chinese-Canadian director Lixin Fan, Last Train Home won best feature at the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival; Best Documentary at the Whistler Film Festival and Best Canadian Film at Montreal’s Rencontres International de Documentaire. At the time of writing, it is Canada’s sole entry in official competition at Sundance 2010.

www.eyesteelfilm.com/lasttrainhome  

Directed by Jennifer Baichwal | (2009) | 75 mins | Canada | Languages: English & Spanish, Yoruba, French with English subtitles

What does it mean to be singled out by fate? Is being hit by lightning a random natural occurrence or a predestined event?

Act of God is a feature documentary about the metaphysical effects of being struck by lightning. Such an event represents the paradox of being singled out by randomness, provoking questions about chance, fate, and meaning in life. The film explores seven stories from around the world that raise and respond to these questions, while keeping the sky and what comes out of it as a visual metaphor and connecting thread. Paul Auster, a writer of metaphysical detective stories who was struck by lightning as a teenager, anchors the film philosophically, while world-renowned guitar improviser and composer Fred Frith personally demonstrates the ubiquity of electricity within our bodies and across the universe.

Dazzling to the eye and seductive to the ear, Act of God captures the harsh beauty of the skies and the lives of those who have been forever touched by their fury. A captivating new work by Jennifer Baichwal, director of Manufactured Landscapes, winner of the 2007 Genie for Best Documentary.

www.mercuryfilms.ca/index.php  

Directed by Andy Bichlbaum, Mike Bonanno. Co-director Kurt Engfehr (2009) | 86 mins | USA | Language: English

Andy and Mike are the Yes Men – the same Yes Men who so recently embarrassed Canada at the Copenhagen climate summit. These two gonzo political activists in thrift-store suits parody their corporate targets to satirize the folly of letting greed run our world.

When Andy appears on BBC World News as a Dow Chemical spokesperson, he tells 300 million viewers that Dow will take responsibility for the largest industrial accident in history – Bhopal, 1984. In just 23 minutes, Dow's stock loses two billion dollars as shareholders reject the idea of compensating the tens of thousands of victims of 42 tonnes of toxic gas leaked from the chemical plant.The reality hits Andy and Mike like a ton of bricks: The Peoplearket We have created a market system that makes doing the right thing impossible, and the apparent leaders must actually follow its pathological dictates. But leaving The Market in the driver's seat, could happily drive our whole planet off a cliff. At conference after conference, the Yes Men pull off the most outrageous pranks as they try to wake up corporate audiences to this frightening prospect. Hilariously shocking – who knew changing the world could be such fun?

Winner of the Berlin Film Festival’s prestigious Audience Award.

www.theyesmenfixtheworld.com

Directed by Franny Armstrong (2008) | 89 mins | UK | Language: English

A documentary-drama-animation hybrid from Director Franny Armstrong ( ) and Oscar-winning Producer John Battsek).

Oscar-nominated Pete Postlethwaite (In The Name of the Father, The Usual Suspects) stars as an old man living in the devastated world of 2055. Runaway climate change has ravaged the planet, and Pete plays the founder of The Global Archive, a storage facility located in the (now melted) Arctic, preserving all of humanity's achievements in the hope that the planet might one day be habitable again. Or that intelligent life may arrive and make use of all that we’ve achieved.

The lead character watches “archive” footage from 2008 and asks: Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance? He then pulls together clips of archive news and documentary from 1950-2008 to build a message showing all that went wrong. The Age of Stupid inspired the crowd-funding financing model, the Indie Screenings distribution system and the just-launched 10:10 climate campaign. 

www.ageofstupid.net  

Directed by Ellen Kuras. Co-director Thavisouk Phrasavath (2008) | 96 mins | US | Languages: English & Lao with English subtitles.

Filmed over the course of 23 years, The Betrayal is the epic story of a family forced to emigrate from Laos after the chaos of the secret air war waged by the U.S. during the Vietnam War.

The Betrayal chronicles Thavisouk’s emotionally gripping first-hand account of his own boyhood survival of the war, his later escape from arrest and persecution in Laos, his miraculous reunion with his family and their journey to America, and the second war they had to fight on the streets of New York City. Thavisouk’s mother also gives powerful testimony of her unflagging efforts to single-handedly raise and shepherd a family of ten amidst almost constant danger. Renowned cinematographer Ellen Kuras’ directorial debut is a remarkable collaboration with co-director Phrasavath – a poetic, deeply personal film that was an Oscar Nominee for Best Documentary in 2009.

www.thebetrayalmovie.com  

Directed by Laura Bari (2008) | 82 mins | Canada | Language: French with English subtitles

Antoine is five years old. He was born one hundred days prematurely, and because he was deprived of oxygen in the incubator, he is blind. Yet he treats his blindness as a minor interference, and has integrated into the regular school system in Montreal with unprecedented success.

In his spare time, Antoine is Detective Dec, a boy detective who runs, drives, makes decisions, hosts radio shows and adores simultaneous telephone conversations. When he receives a phone call from a Madame Rouski, who while taking a shower has mysteriously dissolved into the water, Antoine recruits two friends and using a microphone they set out to find her.

This daring, poetic, and playful docudrama intimately explores the magic of childhood. Director Laura Bari, with Antoine’s help, skillfully presents children’s uninhibited and creative thought processes while creating an extensive sensory experience for the viewer. Over the course of two years, he used a mini-boom microphone to discover and capture the sounds surrounding him. In this manner, he co-created the film’s soundtrack. This multi-award winning production pays homage to human resilience, optimism, and creativity.

www.antoine-film.com  

Directed by Richard Brouillette | 160 mins | Canada| Languages: French & English with English subtitles.

Neo-liberalism’s one-size-fits-all dogmas are well-known: deregulation, reducing the role of the State, privatization, limiting inflation rather than unemployment... In other words, depoliticizing the economy and putting it into the hands of the financial class. These dogmas are gradually settling into our consciousness because they’re being broadcast across a vast and pervasive propaganda network.

Beginning with the founding in 1947 of the Mont Pèlerin Society, neo-liberal think tanks financed by big money and multinational companies have propagated neo-liberal ideas in universities, in the media, and in governments.

Convinced of its historical and scientific validity (as proven in particular by the fall of the Soviet Union), this ideology has intoxicated governments, left and right alike. In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the worldwide rate of neo-liberal reforms has increased dramatically. Often imposed with force, either through the structural adjustment plans of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, by the pressure of financial markets and multinationals, or even by outright war, the neo-liberal doctrine has reached nearly every corner of the planet.

But behind the ideological smokescreen, behind the neat concepts of natural order and the harmony of interests in a free market, beyond the panacea of the "invisible hand," what is really going on? A variety of international observers attempt to explain.

With: Noam Chomsky, Ignacio Ramonet, Normand Baillargeon, Susan George, Omar Aktouf, Oncle Bernard, Michel Chossudovsky, François Denord, François Brune, Martin Masse, Jean-Luc Migué, Filip Palda and Donald J. Boudreaux.

encirclement.info/watch.html