This month, Rialto Documentary is playing a series of films that take a look at what happens when governments overstep their normal boundaries in order to make an example of someone, and how those affected fight back. Some of these stories will be familiar to you: Citizen Four follows Edward Snowdon as he blows the whistle on illegal covert surveillance programs run by the NSA, and The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz tells the tragic story of programming prodigy and activist Aaron Swartz who took his own life in 2013.
Other stories might have familiar subject matters, such as Dinosaur 13’s Sue, the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus ever found. However, what you might not be familiar with is the story behind the discovery of Sue and what happened to those who found her. Being a paleontologist it seems, can get you locked up in the same prison as Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. It’s worth checking out in Dinosaur 13, screening on Thursday.
This month, Rialto Documentary is playing a series of films that take a look at what happens when governments overstep their normal boundaries in order to make an example of someone, and how those affected fight back. Some of these stories will be familiar to you: Citizen Four follows Edward Snowdon as he blows the whistle on illegal covert surveillance programs run by the NSA, and The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz tells the tragic story of programming prodigy and activist Aaron Swartz who took his own life in 2013.
Other stories might have familiar subject matters, such as Dinosaur 13’s Sue, the largest, most complete and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus ever found. However, what you might not be familiar with is the story behind the discovery of Sue and what happened to those who found her. Being a paleontologist it seems, can get you locked up in the same prison as Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh. It’s worth checking out in Dinosaur 13, screening on Thursday.
Saturday 12th September, 8.30pm… The Duke of Burgundy
Written and directed by Peter Strickland (Katalin Varga), The Duke of Burgundy is a sensual and erotic drama. This high art version of Fifty Shades of Grey is filled with luscious cinematography and art direction and is set in an almost timeless era. Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), a specialist on butterflies, is the meticulously ordered dominatrix, who puts her lover Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna) through a series of humiliating chores, before punishing and pleasing her. When Cynthia grows tired of sticking to their precise script, their relationship begins to fray. In amongst the voyeurism, fetishism and bondage is a tender story about the human need for intimacy.
Monday 7th September, 8.30pm …
This award winning drama by French Canadian filmmaker filmmaker Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette is inspired by her time spent in Palestine while making her documentary Si j’avais un chapeau. Intrigued by the contrasts, people and landscape, Barbeau-Lavalette returned to Palestine to study and work on the script for Inch’Allah. Even thought the film is set amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it isn’t so much about it. Rather it’s the story about a female obstetrician from Quebec who is thrown in the deep end of a war. Living in Israel and working in the conflict ravaged Palestinian territories, Chloé (Evelyne Brochu) becomes close to people on both sides of the wall, and the more she gets to know these people and experience their lives, the more confused her sympathies become. Inch’Allah is a film about how in the face of war, ones moral compass can shift in ways you’d never imagine. Heartwarming, horrifying and bleak, Inch Allah doesn’t offer a thesis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it does remind us of how complex and horrific the situation is.
Thursday 10th September, 8.30pm … Dinosaur 13
In this Sundance Grand-Jury-Prize-nominated film, documentary maker Todd Douglas Miller takes a look at the events that unfolded after a group of paleontologists discovered Sue in 1990. Sue was remarkable because of her size and exquisite preservation of the bones. Sixty-seven million years after her death, it is still possible to see fine details where muscles, tendons and tissue attached to the bone. Todd Douglas Miller became interested in this story after reading Pete Larson’s book Rex Appeal. Peter Larson of the Black Hills Institute was one of the paleontologists who discovered and removed the fossil after paying the landowner Maurice Williams $5000.00 to do so. Larson and his team began meticulously restoring Sue (named after one of the paleontologists who first saw her, Sue Hendrickson) until the FBI raided their Institution, claiming the dinosaur was discovered on government land, and then Williams also got in on the mix, claiming the fossil still belonged to him. What followed was a decade long battle that saw Sue sit in crates while the government took Peter Larson and his team to court for whatever reasons they could, and Williams got ownership of Sue, which he then went on to sell for a cool US$7.6 million.