**Looped film program for entire duration of Unlikely Allies festival**
HANY’S STORY Director: Zahra Mackaoui
2014 | 3 min Lebanon | Switzerland
Language: English
Hany is a 20yearold Syrian refugee from Homs who lives with his family in a smalltented settlement in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. Back in Syria, Hany was at university studying to be a communications engineer, but he was unable to complete his studies. In Lebanon, he doesn’t have the fees to study, a painful realization for a boy who loves to learn. Hany taught himself English by listening to music and watching films.
EMPOWERING WASTE: A BANNERS TO BAGS DOCUMENTARY
Director: Rohit Shakya
2012 | 7 min Nepal
Language: Nepali
Subtitles: English
Banners to Bags is a social and environmental entrepreneurship venture based in Kathmandu, Nepal. This is the story of their vision to create alternatives to plastic bags by designing durable and reusable bags from waste materials.
OUR STORY, YOUR STORY Director: Yvette Lambrecht
2014 | 6 min South Africa
Languages: English, isiXhosa
Subtitles: English
Clowns Without Borders South Africa (www.cwbsa.org) presents OUR STORY YOUR STORY – an intergenerational project connecting elders and youth through autobiographical storytelling. Storytelling has immense power to build connections between individuals, between generations, and between the past and the future. OUR STORY YOUR STORY engages participants in an interactive storytelling workshop process. Seniors and youth are guided to identify personal narratives from their lives, craft them into stories, and share them with each other. It provides healing from trauma, safe activities for atrisk youth, and a sense of common humanity.
SECOND CYCLES Director: Gwendolyn Hamilton
2013 | 9 min Nicaragua
Languages: English, Spanish Subtitles: English, Spanish
Bicimaximo is a social enterprise with a heart of a nonprofit organization. With a passion for bicycles, Baker Nicholaou – the director and cofounder of Bicicmaximo – traveled from the United States to Nicaragua to open up a business in hopes of providing better quality bikes while training locals as bike mechanics in order to provide sustainable jobs for people in need. This documentary film takes a look at what is the ultimate goal of this social enterprise and how it could significantly impact the residents of Granada. Explore the potential impact this program could have through one man’s personal journey, a man who understands what it takes to rebuild one’s life. “Second Cycles” gives us a glimpse into what a second chance can mean to a person in need.
THIS FILM IS ABOUT Director: Eduardo Hunter Moura
2012 | 4 min Brazil
Language: Portuguese Subtitles: English
In Rio de Janeiro an engineer fights for a sustainable future with spirited ideas and an unconventional source of energy – made from sewage.
VITAL VOICES: TEP VANNY Director: Aaron Kisner
2013 | 3 min Cambodia Language: English
Subtitles: Spanish
Anyone who has worked in a developing country in the last decade will have heard a similar story. Developers seize a valuable piece of land, throw the existing community out, and after protests ebb away, a new development arises: apartments, a mall, restaurants and stores for the newly wealthy. The people of Boeung Kak Lake, Cambodia have tried to rewrite the script. With Tep Vanny, a dedicated and energetic young woman as one of their spokespeople, they challenged the developer and the Cambodian government, and they have refused to go quietly.
WOLFDOG WORKSHOP Directors: Bernadine Santistevan and Hamid Shams
2014 | 7 min USA
Language: English
This film highlights the social impact that the Wolf Dog Workshop educational curriculum – through its innovative use of storytelling and media, such as animation, film, music, and art – is having among atrisk elementary students across the U.S, bringing them hope while connecting them to themselves, their communities and the environment.
