{"id":2442415,"date":"2019-04-01T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=302882"},"modified":"2019-04-01T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T23:00:00","slug":"aspen-shortsfest-timely-personal-international-documentaries-in-the-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-shortsfest-timely-personal-international-documentaries-in-the-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Shortsfest: Timely, personal, international documentaries in the spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"swift-gallery\" readability=\"5.6315789473684\">\n<ul id=\"imageGallery-302882-307\" class=\"gallery list-unstyled\">\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Courtesy photo |\" life overtakes class=\"h-100\">\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\" readability=\"6\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4.jpg\" alt life overtakes><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"7\">\n<p><strong>&#8220;Life Overtakes Me&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>Courtesy photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-1-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-1.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Courtesy photo |\" ghosts of sugar class=\"h-100\">\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\" readability=\"6\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-1.jpg\" alt ghosts of sugar><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"7\">\n<p><strong>&#8220;GHosts of Sugar Land&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>Courtesy photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li data-thumb=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-2-150x150.jpg\" data-src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-2.jpg\" data-sub-html=\"Courtesy photo |\" all in my class=\"h-100\">\n<div class=\"row no-gutters h-100\">\n<div class=\"col my-auto\" readability=\"6\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/04\/shorts-atd-040219-4-2.jpg\" alt all in my><\/p>\n<div class=\"caption\" readability=\"7\">\n<p><strong>&#8220;All In My Family&#8221;<\/strong><br \/>Courtesy photo<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"caption-toggle\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-shortsfest-timely-personal-international-documentaries-in-the-spotlight\/#\" class=\"show-captions\">Show Captions<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-shortsfest-timely-personal-international-documentaries-in-the-spotlight\/#\" class=\"hide-captions\">Hide Captions<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">For anyone curious about the world around us, Aspen Shortsfest offers a rich trove of personal, innovative, and timely documentaries.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sprinkled throughout <a id=\"N0x238ae00N0x2357140:N0x238ae00N0x214aa30\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/weekly\/ready-set-action\/\">the festival \u2013 opening Tuesday night and running through Sunday in Aspen and Carbondale<\/a> \u2013 are a number of outstanding nonfiction shorts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cWhile more news-based documentaries are being made, often works too rooted in the news cycle quickly seem dated,\u201d said Shortsfest program director Landon Zakheim. \u201cDocumentaries with a more filmic sense, or an attention to larger human significance, are the ones that make the most impact. Those are the ones that we respond to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Among the standouts is this quartet of original storytelling, each seeking to discover its subject\u2019s authentic, resonantly human epicenter:<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u2018ALL IN MY FAMILY\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sunday, April 7, 2:15 p.m. Wheeler Opera House<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sunday, April 7, 7:30 p.m. Crystal Theatre<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">When Hao Wu relocated from his native China to New York 20 years ago, he was determined to live life on his own terms, far from familial\u2014and ancestral\u2014expectation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Along the way, he became a filmmaker, documenting technology\u2019s transformation of Chinese society. But when Wu and his longtime partner decided to have children, he turned the camera on himself. \u201cAll in My Family\u201d is a charming 40-minute recounting of his adventures becoming a non-traditional parent. It is also a remarkably candid portrait of Wu\u2019s emotionally risky efforts to finally reveal his life-choices to his large, intense, and exceedingly opinionated traditional family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">While seeking to garner acceptance without sacrificing his hard-won independence, Wu discovered an unanticipated benefit of being in front of the lens.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cI was nicely surprised by the conversations [it] enabled me to have\u2026As a typical Chinese family, we don\u2019t often share how we truly feel with each other,\u201d Wu said via email. \u201cHaving the camera on pushed me to ask them questions I would not normally ask, and to understand them in a way that I would otherwise never be able to.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Funny and lively, this tender-hearted valentine celebrates the abiding love\u2014and worry\u2014of parents, regardless of generation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u2018ENFORCEMENT HOURS\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Saturday, April 6, 8 p.m. Wheeler Opera House<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Her labor organizing and Latinx-focused documentaries have long sensitized Paloma Martinez to a pervasive condition of the immigrant experience, which she called in a phone interview \u201cthe invisible fear that undocumented immigrants feel on a daily basis.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">But a creative quandary held her back from tackling the topic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u201cHow do you make something visual about something unseen, the feeling of fear?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">When she read about a San Francisco hotline providing rapid-response legal assistance for those detained by ICE, an idea sparked for \u201ca film centered around tone and the emotional arc versus a narrative that tracks a person, putting someone out in the open and risking their livelihood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In the 13-minute \u201cEnforcement Hours,\u201d Martinez\u2019s camera threads a path across the city, exploring personal and public spaces, as the voices of hotline volunteers calmly answer myriad queries: defusing nervously reported ICE rumors, deflecting menacing crank callers, gently explaining their services, and doing the real work of providing emergency support. As the calls mount up, Martinez shows that, while a community\u2019s fear may be invisible, it is clearly audible\u2014and deeply felt.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u2018GHOSTS OF SUGAR LAND\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Saturday, April 6, 5:15 p.m. Wheeler Opera House<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Bassam Tariq has spent much of the last decade documenting the Muslim experience, here and abroad. When disturbing messages drew him back to his Texas hometown, Tariq found his childhood buddies struggling with upsetting news: a classmate had reportedly joined ISIS.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Even though Tariq knew his subjects (\u201cThese are my friends. We all grew up together.\u201d) he was surprised how \u201cnone of us cared to talk about what happened and felt too scared to speak about it, even without cameras.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In an e-mail interview, he added: \u201cMy older brother was instrumental in making this film happen. \u2026Not only is he in it\u2026but he was the one that pushed a lot of them to open up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Unfolding across a familiar tableau of suburban settings, the close-knit cohort, ingeniously disguised, fall into a series of heart-felt conversations as they try to understand \u201cMark\u2019s\u201d choice and what they might have done to prevent it. What emerges is a potent recitation on identity and belonging, friendship, race, and faith. It is also a moving exploration of strong, honest emotions as these young men grapple with what it means to be an American and Muslim today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">\u2018LIF OVERTAKES ME\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sunday, April 7, 2:15 p.m. Wheeler Opera House<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Sunday, April 7, 7:30 p.m. Crystal Theatre<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">In John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson\u2019s evocative 40-minute \u201cLife Overtakes Me,\u201d parental love is colored by geopolitical trauma. The Emmy- and Oscar-nominated filmmakers travel to Sweden to introduce refugee families whose children suffer from a baffling deep-coma condition dubbed \u201cResignation Syndrome.\u201d Like protagonists in a haunting fairy tale, hundreds of young refugee children have succumbed to this mysterious ailment after settling into their host country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"STND-STND BodyText\">Quiet and intimate, the film unobtrusively ushers viewers into the homes \u2014 and stories \u2014 of three families with parents who now juggle domestic routines and the uncertainty of their asylum status with caring for an inert young patient. A compassionate support network of volunteer professionals sheds light on the illness, what triggers it and what seems to heal it. Haptas and Samuelson \u201cknew [this] had to be a short from the beginning, as its emotion would only be diluted in a longer format,\u201d they wrote in an e-mail. \u201cWe think of much of what we do as crafting essays, which are usually best when economical and direct.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/entertainment\/aspen-shortsfest-timely-personal-international-documentaries-in-the-spotlight\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Life Overtakes Me&#8221;Courtesy photo &#8220;GHosts of Sugar Land&#8221;Courtesy photo &#8220;All In My Family&#8221;Courtesy photo Show CaptionsHide Captions For anyone curious about the world around us, Aspen Shortsfest offers a rich trove of personal, innovative, and timely documentaries. Sprinkled throughout the festival \u2013 opening Tuesday night and running through Sunday in Aspen and Carbondale \u2013 are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2442415","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 02:22:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2442415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2442415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2442415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2442415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2442415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}