For two years, Kartemquin filmmaker Maria Finitzo follows five strong young women between the ages of 13 and 17. Unlike the mainstream media who portray young women as passive, powerless or mean, 5 Girls explores the ways these girls navigate adolescence. It focuses on the positive ways that girls learn to adapt to challenges in their lives by understanding and exercising choices, by resisting powerful cultural messages and by believing in their strength when others do not.

From the creators of Super Size Me comes a funny, provocative yet heart-felt story of drama teacher extraordinaire, Jay W. Jensen, who has touched the lives of thousands of students over the years. CLASS ACT is set against the specter of No Child Left Behind and documents how the arts are disappearing from the American classroom, giving us a report card on what lies ahead for America’s kids.

Many challenges are ahead for Peter Kohn, a beloved collegiate lacrosse field manager who is believed to be autistic. As the team seeks a national championship, Peter must choose between his allegiance to the student athletes and his devotion to a cancer-stricken friend, all while reacting emotionally to his upcoming retirement. Can anyone, let alone Peter, negotiate such dramatic changes?
Read the announcement from Middlebury.

Thoughts on Peter Kohn from Keeper of the Kohn director, David Gaynes

August 6, 2008

Many people today mourn the passing of Peter Kohn, a wonderful man who was hard to summarize as he was everything from a simple equipment manager to a prophet.  My relationship with Peter was was one of deep respect, mutual trust, and enduring love.  I have been interviewed a few times in the past 24 hours, I suppose because it is assumed that I knew Peter’s story well and can tell it succinctly.  What these interviews do not give me the chance to express is that fact that Peter knew me incredibly well.  It was the process of revealing myself to Peter that made our relationship so meaningful-- so much deeper than simply the cooperation between a biographer and his subject.  Today there is a piece of me missing, as all those who knew Peter can attest.

Any time a person consents to have their most private self revealed through the medium of documentary film, intimate moments will be captured on tape, synthesized in editing, and eventually revealed to an audience.  I advised Peter to not take this process lightly, to appreciate what I was trying to accomplish by telling his story and to work with me as we exposed more and more people to the messages in the film.  Peter, a thoughtful person throughout his life, always wanted the film to affect people in a positive way and I hope that every decision I have made for the film satisfies this noble wish.  As new people experience Keeper of the Kohn, it is my great desire-- and I believe Peter’s as well-- that we think critically about the friendships and life experiences depicted in the work and apply those lessons to our daily lives.  We are all better for having known Peter, whether we met him in waking life or in the world of moving images.

David Gaynes
Director, Keeper of the Kohn

Click the Q&A tab for an inteview with Keeper of the Kohn Director, David Gaynes

Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee is the setting for this documentary about an extraordinary experiment in Holocaust education. Struggling to grasp the concept of six-million Holocaust victims, the students decide to collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of this crime against humanity. The film details how the students met Holocaust survivors from around the world and how the experience transformed them and their community.

What can be said of a justice system that sentences a young mother of three to life in prison for a first-time and non-violent drug-related offense?

PRISON LULLABIES is the remarkable portrait of four young women living on the bad side of luck, struggling with drug addiction, arrested for dealing, prostitution, grand larceny and serving prison time with one common bond; they were all pregnant at the time of their arrest, and all have given birth behind bars. For these women who are on intimate terms with sexual abuse and assault, destitution, poverty and addition, the Taconic Corrections Facility in New York State offers a rare glimmer of hope. Taconic allows the women to keep their babies for the first 18 months of their lives while insisting that the mothers participate in a rigorous series of classes that range from basic child care to anger management, and drug counseling. Each woman is released in the course of filming, and each must choose, minute to minute, whether to find a job, break the cycle of relapse and re-arrest, or to pick up the crack-pipe, abandon the child and return to the streets. Shot in cinema verite style, PRISON LULLABIES addresses these issues by allowing the audience the opportunity to observe and listen as the stories of the inmate mothers unfold- in their own time and their own words.

Members of Congress may not come to the floor armed with pistols as they did in the days leading up to the Civil War, but their words are as toxic as any time since then. And we are — in many ways — a more divided nation than any time since then.

In interviews with political leaders, media analysts, and people in communities around the country, ABC News found what appears to be a new phenomenon: the polarization is feeding on itself. It’s not just politicians, business or religious leaders, liberals or conservatives — or the media: It’s each of us. And it’s alarming.

Bill Bishop, a reporter for the Austin-American Statesman newspaper in Texas, conducted a three-year investigation into America’s divide. Bishop reached back over the last 14 presidential election cycles and counted Republican and Democratic votes in all 3,100 American counties. The research yielded some startling information. “There’s a steady trend line of the country pulling apart, becoming more politically segregated. We call this “The Big Sort,” said Bishop.