Event
SFWFF - Opening Night Tribute Award + Film Screening with Judith Helfand
Film Line-Up:
Healthy Baby Girl directed by Judith Helfand
(USA, 1997, 56 min, Documentary)
A Healthy Baby Girl is an intimate, humorous, yet searing exploration of what happens when science, marketing, and corporate power enter our deepest family relationships. A Healthy Baby Girl is an inter-generational story of one family's response to an ethical and technological crisis, experienced from their home in Merrick, Long Island. In 1963, filmmaker Judith Helfand's mother was prescribed the drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), meant to prevent miscarriage and ensure a healthy baby. But technology is rarely a benign midwife. In 1990, at age twenty-five, Helfand was diagnosed with DES-related cervical cancer. She went home to her family to heal from a radical hysterectomy. There she picked up her camera. Her video diary, A Healthy Baby Girl, was shot over five years and goes beyond loss to document mother-daughter love, family renewal, survival, political awakening, and community activism.
Blue Vinyl directed by Judith Helfand
(USA, 2002, 20 min excerpt, Documentary)
With humor, chutzpah and a piece of vinyl siding firmly in hand, Judith Helfand and co-director Daniel B. Gold set out in search of the truth about polyvinyl chloride (PVC), America's most popular plastic. From Long Island to Louisiana to Italy, they unearth the facts about PVC and its effects on human health and the environment. Back at the starter ranch, Helfand coaxes her terribly patient parents into replacing their vinyl siding on the condition that she can find a healthy, affordable alternative (and it has to look good!). A detective story, an eco-activism doc, and a rollicking comedy, Blue Vinyl puts a human face on the dangers posed by PVC at every stage of its life cycle, from factory to incinerator. Consumer consciousness and the "precautionary principle" have never been this much fun.
Ek Velt: At the End of the World directed by Judith Helfand
(USA, 2004, 17 min, Documentary)
This film is an epilogue to BLUE VINYL. Shot primarily by Judith Helfand, in the heymish style of A HEALTHY BABY GIRL, it picks up on a sub-plot only mentioned in BLUE VINYL, the sobering threat of Florence and Ted selling their house of 42 years and "downsizing". Judith's hopes for her parents to stay in the reclaimed blue wooden house are dashed and the reality of what it takes for middle-class people to find an affordable apartment or a retirement community -- close to the community they call "home" and made out of a material that is healthy becomes a whole new angst-driven odyssey for Judith to tackle, or just angst over - which she does. Buckle up and join her as she struggles to figure out: did my parents just let me believe that I had changed them so I could believe in my ability to change the world? Then, just when I was out changing it, they moved to a vinyl sided 55+ community! OY. this puts REAL back in reality and iron back in IRONY!
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LocationRoxie Theatre (View)
3117 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
| Wheelchair Accessible: No |
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