Lake of Fire
Directed by: Tony Kaye

screening at Jengo's Playhouse, 815 Princess Street
Thursday, January 24 @ 7:30pm BUY TICKETS!
Friday, January 25 @ 7:30pm BUY TICKETS!
Saturday, January 26 @ 7:30pm BUY TICKETS!

$5 tickets, Cucalorus Members free

Ever since Roe v. Wade, the United States has been deeply divided on the issue of abortion. As the religious right has increasingly flexed its power, the issue has become even more divisive – and violent.

Interviewing a range of individuals – from fundamentalist Christians to professors of sociology, philosophy, and bioethics; from hardcore pro-lifers to equally impassioned pro-choice advocates – director Tony Kaye splices into what motivates both sides.

This film is not for the faint-hearted; there are many graphic images of termination procedures and their aftermath. Kaye endeavors to show abortion's physical and psychological reality in order to allow us to see what is really at stake.

Click here for more info on the film.

YWCA's Racial Justice Film Series presents:

Lillie and Leander
Directed by: Jeffrey Morgan

screening at Jengo's Playhouse, 815 Princess Street
Friday, January 18 @ 7:30pm BUY TICKETS!
Saturday, January 19 @ 7:30pm BUY TICKETS!
$5 tickets, Cucalorus Members free

This feature length documentary examines the case of a black man suspected of raping and murdering a white woman at the turn of the 20th century in Pensacola, Florida.

In investigating the rape and murder of her great-great aunt Lillie Davis, Alice Brewton Hurwitz stumbles upon an explosive family secret. While newspaper accounts of the time reported the vigilante lynching of Lillie’s suspected black assailant Leander Shaw in fascinating detail, Hurwitz discovers that the men in her family exacted their own system of revenge. In one interview, an elderly relative recounts how the men in the family killed every black man who walked the road they lived on. The story seems to match the local mythology in this divided community.

When the State Attorney gets involved, an investigation begins in full force. More than a crime investigation, Lillie & Leander addresses the racism that still simmers in many U.S. communities through a powerful, unforgettable tale of family secrets unlocked.

Click here for more information on the film.

For the Bible Tells Me So
by Daniel Karslake

screening at Jengo's Playhouse, 815 Princess Street
Thursday, January 10 @ 7:30pm
Friday, January 11 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, January 12 @ 7:30pm BUY TICKETS!
$5 tickets, Cucalorus Members Free

Can the love between two people ever be an abomination? Is the chasm separating gays and lesbians and Christianity too wide to cross? Is the Bible an excuse to hate?

Winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival, Dan Karslake's provocative, entertaining documentary brilliantly reconciles homosexuality and Biblical scripture, and in the process reveals that Church-sanctioned anti-gay bias is based almost solely upon a significant (and often malicious) misinterpretation of the Bible. As the film notes, most Christians live their lives today without feeling obliged to kill anyone who works on the Sabbath or eats shrimp (as a literal reading of scripture dictates).

Through the experiences of five very normal, very Christian, very American families -- including those of former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and Episcopalian Bishop Gene Robinson -- we discover how insightful people of faith handle the realization of having a gay child. Informed by such respected voices as Bishop Desmond Tutu, Harvard's Peter Gomes, Orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg and Reverend Jimmy Creech, FOR THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO offers healing, clarity and understanding to anyone caught in the crosshairs of scripture and sexual identity.

Click here for more info on the film.

King Corn
A film by Aaron Woolf, Curt Ellis, and Ian Cheney

screening at Jengo's Playhouse, 815 Princess Street
Thursday, January 3 @ 7:30pm
Friday, January 4 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, January 5 @ 7:30pm

$5 tickets, Cucalorus Members free

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

Almost everything Americans eat contains corn: high fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods which are the staples of our modern diet. Ready for an adventure and alarmed by the signs of their generation's bulging waistlines, college friends Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis are on a mission: they will plant an acre of corn, follow their harvest into the world, and attempt to understand what they - and all of us - are really made of.

The breadth of the problem soon becomes clear: the American food system is built on the abundance of corn, an abundance perpetuated by the subsidy system that pays farmers to maximize production. But how far will they go to get the best yield? From injecting ammonia fertilizer into the ground to buying genetically modified seed, their journey leads them to question the troubling ways that we farm and eat.

Click here for more information on the film.

YWCA's racial justice film series presents:
Two films by UNCW professor Maurice Martinez

Wings of Wood - Wilmington Premiere
and
Too White To Be Black,
Too Black To Be White: The New Orleans Creole

Screening at Jengo's Playhouse, 815 Princess Street
December 13 at 7:30pm
December 14 at 7:30pm
$5 tickets, Cucalorus Members free

Wings Of Wood, 24 minutes
New Orleans Creole Wood Carvers have been creating works of art in wood for centuries. Each succeeding generation has added to the evolution of decoy carving from the utilitarian “working duck decoys” to “decorative decoys” and beyond. This documentary presents the work of Charles Hutchison, his brother Rudolph Hutchison and son, Eric Hutchison. These three men perfected the art of the “soft feather” technique, where each feather is carved to scale from an individual piece of wood. There may be as many as 5000 pieces of wood in a single carving. So lifelike are these birds that when a fan blows air across the carving, the feathers ruffle. The work of the Hutchison family is in great demand. In 1980, a carving depicting two life-sized bald eagles sold for $24,000. Eric Hutchison provides deep insights into this meticulous artform in Maurice Martinez's informative documentary.

Too White To Be Black, Too Black To Be White, 84 minutes
If the "Melting Pot" ever existed in America, it happened in New Orleans. This presentaion examines a group of marginalized mixed-race Americans who are phenotypically both multicultural and multi-ethnic.

This documentary is the first authentic treatment of a group of Americans who proudly identify themselves as "Creoles." It provides first-hand accounts of their experiences in New Orleans. After Reconstruction, the Supreme Court decision, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), divided American into two worlds: one white and one disenfranchised Black. The Creole stories they tell speak to the social history of the United States where the fruits of the American Dream were rewarded to those with European features, light skin, and "Good Hair." Often, survival meant giving up one's "Gens de Couleur" [colored people] identity to assimilate into White America. The process of "becoming a productive American" has been fraught with both rejections and racism for creoles...This is their story.

To contact the filmmaker:
martinez4212@bellsouth.net
phone: (910)297-2844