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7 Documents Found
The Forest for the Trees: the amazing story of the fight to clear Earth First! activist Judi Bari's name after her car was bombed and she was arrested as a terrorist.
Date: 1/1/2006Call Number: V 229Format: DVDProducers: Bullfrog Films - Bernadine MellisCollection: Videos in many formats – both camera originals as well as reference materials
An intimate look at an unlikely team of young activists and old civil rights workers who come together to battle the U.S. government.
Filmmaker Bernadine Mellis is the daughter of 68-year-old civil rights lawyer Dennis Cunningham. Dennis started out his career representing the Black Panthers and the Weathermen.
Judi Bari was an Earth First! leader who was one of the first to place as much importance on timber workers' lives and families as she did on the legacy and future of the trees. But that strategic relationship was too much of a threat. Her car was bombed in 1990, and three hours later, she was arrested as a terrorist--charges that were later dropped. Convinced it was a ploy by the FBI to discredit her and Earth First!, Judi decided to sue.
Cunningham took on Judi's case and after 12 years, Judi Bari v. the FBI finally gets a court date. Knowing this is one of her father's most important cases, Mellis is there at strategy meetings, at breakfast, driving to and from the court, documenting her morally driven, very tired dad. Not your typical "Take your daughter to work day," THE FOREST FOR THE TREES offers access into a unique father-daughter relationship, the painfully short yet extraordinary life of Judi Bari, and a piece of U.S. history that everyday grows increasingly resonant as once again the lines between dissent and terrorism are being intentionally blurred.
Note: This is a completely reworked version of the award-winning 2004 film of the same name. See the filmmaker's note below.
"I completed a version of THE FOREST FOR THE TREES as my master's thesis from Temple University in 2004. While that film was the same length as the final cut, and essentially followed the same story, it was quite a different film. It was my first documentary, and I was producer, director, shooter and editor, learning everything about the process as I did it. I submitted the film to festivals, and it showed at several (as listed here). Soon after finishing it, in early 2005, I went to the Working Films/MASS MoCA Documentary Residency, designed to help filmmakers develop outreach strategies for social justice films. There, I was encouraged to re-open the film by Judith Helfand (BLUE VINYL), who later became one of the Executive Producers of THE FOREST, along with Julia Parker Benello. Judith felt that if I brought in an editor, I could bring the film to a new level.
Then, in the summer of 2005, Chicken & Egg Pictures was founded by Judith Helfand, Julia Parker Benello, and Wendy Ettinger in order to support emerging and veteran women filmmakers. Chicken & Egg provided the support to hire an editor, Susan Korda. Working closely with Judith, Susan and I spent several months re-editing the film. The old cut was divided into two parts: The first half was about Judi Bari, her organizing work in the Redwoods, the bombing of her car, and the FBI and Oakland Police's arrest of her and Darryl Cherney. The second half followed Judi's civil case against the FBI, and the legal team who fought that battle, which included my father, Dennis Cunningham, as lead attorney. What Judith Helfand pushed me to do was to integrate those two stories, and to foreground my father's role a bit more, teasing out some of the richness of the father-daughter element of the film.
Making the first cut was a personal victory for me (there were times I was not at all convinced I would be able to finish it), and it was a hugely important step in the process. Ultimately, the new film, enabled by the awesome support of the women of Chicken & Egg, feels like the true realization of my initial vision, the vision that drove me to begin shooting in the first place." Bernadine Mellis
Green Guerrillas - Volume 1
Date: 6/6/2006Call Number: V 257Format: DVDCollection: Videos in many formats – both camera originals as well as reference materials
The "Green Guerrillas" are local young people who knew relatively nothing about digital media, green building, organic food, or renewable energy at the start of the summer. Through twenty hours per week of hands-on instruction with an all-volunteer staff and limited equipment, the Green Guerrillas learned how to use computer and video technology to build entrepreneurial job skills, convert a diesel engine to run on vegetable oil, and make a music video for a local hip hop group.
Welcome to New Orleans
Date: 1/1/2006Call Number: CD 549Format: DVDProducers: Rasmus HolmCollection: Compact discs and videos representing digitized copies of analog tapes
The city of New Orleans is a ghost town after the Hurricane Katrina. While most people left the city in fear, racism and poverty is there to stay. In a city full of racists and vigilantes, we meet the 58-year-old former Black Panther Malik Rahim. All his life he has been struggling to make a difference, and been trying to pass on a better society to his children and grandchildren. In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina, the need is greater than ever, and Malik uses the attention this brings, to begin the building of a long-term grassroots organization. The film starts in the days after the hurricane, and takes us on a journey to poor Afro-American neighborhoods where the mainstream media never goes. We meet despair, hate and a little hope despite all. But most of all it tells us the story about one man who wants to make a better world, and about his extraordinary fight for peace and justice.
Food Justice - a Growing Movement
Date: 1/1/2006Call Number: CD 624Format: DVDProducers: Martina Brimmer, Zora TuckerCollection: Compact discs and videos representing digitized copies of analog tapes
Issues of urban food security ae discussed in relationship to systemic oppression, environmental racism, health issues and the failure of our conventional food system. Focuses upon several of many Bay Area grassroots projects that are part of the food justice movement.
Las tortugas también lloran
Date: 1/1/2006Call Number: V 672Format: DVDCollection: Videos in many formats – both camera originals as well as reference materials
Nicaragua tiene el privilegio de ser uno de los pocos países en el mundo donde aún llegan a anidar masivamente tortugas. pero la contaminación de las playas, la extracción sin control los huevos y la caza indiscriminada de ciertas especies constituyen una amenaza para su sobre vivencia. La leyenda dice que las tortugas lloran. Será porque presienten que quizás, en un día no muy lejano, ya no regresarán más a nuestras costas?.
Interview with Dennis Cunningham
Date: 2/24/2006Call Number: JB 118Format: DV CamProducers: Bernandine MellisCollection: Materials shot and collected in the making of The Forest for the Trees
Mellis interviews her father, Dennis Cunningham. He describes what it feels like to win the case, complexity of his relief, ominousness of victory based on current political setting, disappointment by lack of media/public response to verdict, how he felt having his daughter filming, feelings on his life work, his work with Black Panthers and Attica, activism vs. consciousness, his activism as a vocation and how he chose law.
Interview with Dennis Cunningham (II)
Date: 2/24/2006Call Number: JB 119Format: DV CamProducers: Bernandine MellisCollection: Materials shot and collected in the making of The Forest for the Trees
Dennis Cunningham interview continued. Describes his disgust with Bush administration, the necessity to continue despite hopelessness (spirituality), how he got involved in case, explains FBI's claims, Geronimo Pratt's and Fred Hampton's case, and COINTELPRO documents.
7 Documents Found
