Athens natives bringing College Town Film Festival to hometown

Sep 23, 2013
From staff reports

Athens High School graduates Matthew Jordan and Eric Zudak are bringing their one-of-a-kind touring film festival, dubbed the College Town Film Festival, to their hometown and Ohio University Oct. 2-5.

The College Town Film Festival is designed to bring together working professionals, students and academicians. Its goal is to locate local professors to champion, examine and discuss new films in an academic setting.

Held at the Athena Cinema in uptown Athens, the College Town Film Festival will feature several members of the Ohio University faculty and staff.

Both Jordan and Zudak have connections to the University. Jordan is an associate professor in the Department of Film/Video and Media Studies at Penn State University. His father, Don Jordan, is a professor emeritus of Asian history at OHIO. Zudak is a film producer and founder of the College Town Film Festival. His father, the late Lawrence Zudak, was a professor of economics at OHIO prior to his retirement in 1983.

The College Town Film Festival will include the screening of 10 feature-length films as well as eight short films. Most of the screenings will be followed by panel discussions or question-and-answer sessions featuring the films? actors, directors or producers, as well as members of the OHIO community whose expertise can shed additional light on the films? topics or the filming itself.

Those screenings include:

• ?No Horizon Any More,? a documentary highlighting the struggles of living in Antarctica, 2 p.m., Oct. 3. This screening will be followed by a panel discussion with film director Keith Reimink and Ryan Fogt, assistant professor of meteorology at OHIO.
• ?Tribe Wanted: Sierra Leone,? a documentary capturing Hermione Way?s experience living with a tribe, 4 p.m., Oct. 3. It will be followed by a panel discussion with film director Jonathan Sarno; Geoff Dabelko, an OHIO professor and director of environmental studies at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs; Bruce Martin, assistant professor of recreation and sport pedagogy; and Jeremiah Asaka, president of the Ohio University African Student Union.
• ?Karaoke Man,? a romantic comedy produced by Zudak, 7 p.m., Oct. 3. It will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Zudak, writer/director Mike Petty, cowriter Kevin Guzowski, and Annie Howell, assistant professor of film at OHIO.
• ?Twilight of the Gods,? a drama exploring the relationship between composer Richard Wagner and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, 1 p.m., Oct. 4. It will be followed by a panel discussion with director Julian Doyle; Dennis Delaney, associate professor of theater/directing at OHIO; and Associate Professor Vladimir Marchenkov and Professor Dora Wilson, both of whom teach in OHIO?s School of Interdisciplinary Arts.
• ?Too Cold Out There Without You,? a documentary about the Rev. Christopher Fike?s gender transition and his life as a priest, social worker and single parent. This screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Fike, film director Amy Gattie, and Delfin Bautista, director of OHIO?s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Center.
• ?That?s What She Said,? a comedy starring Anne Heche and directed by Carrie Preston who stars in HBO?s ?True Blood? and who earlier this month won an Emmy for her role on ABC?s ?The Good Wife.? This screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with Preston and Pearl Gluck, a visiting assistant professor of film at OHIO.

Other highlights of the film festival include:

• ?Making Movies with Monty Python,? a seminar featuring tales from Julian Doyle, a British filmmaker best known for editing Monty Python?s ?Life of Brian,? 1 p.m., Oct. 5.
• Closing Night Concert Party at Jackie O?s, featuring musical act Guiney and Grimes, 10 p.m., Oct. 5. Guiney was the bachelor on season four of ABC?s ?The Bachelor? and signed a record deal in 1994. Grimes is an actor and singer-songwriter who has had roles in ?E.R.,? ?Party of Five,? ?Band of Brothers? and ?American Dad.?

The College Town Film Festival kicks off with an opening night party at 9 p.m. Oct. 2 at Jackie O?s.

For a full schedule of events and ticket information, visit http://collegetownfilmfestival.com/.

Source: http://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/13-14/9/college-town-film-festival.cfm

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92% We Steal Secrets: The Story Of Wikileaks

All Critics (50) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (46) | Rotten (4)

Sometimes it takes a feature-length documentary to stitch together a story we think we already know.

A real-life cyber-thriller with real-life consequences, Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks is a riveting and revelatory documentary ...

Gibney builds a remarkable level of suspense, given how exhaustively WikiLeaks has been covered in the media.

Engaging, kinetic, revelatory and unexpected.

At once an awkward mingling of two complex life stories and a gripping, necessary look at how information is gathered, shared and, yes, stolen.

Who is "We" in the title We Steal Secrets? There's no need for a spoiler alert, but it's neither Gibney nor Assange.

Alex Gibney's film is an absorbing examination of the world's most infamous information portal.

Gibney doesn't set out with an agenda either to pillory or to sanctify Assange; he seeks out the various profiles that Assange has shown his followers, fans, enemies and interlocutors over the years. And they are not all in synch

Superb, unbiased filmmaking that allows us to make up our own mind about Assange and whether his idealist vision as an innovator has become confused by self-obsessed paranoia

Which is the real Assange? This movie cannot say. It's as if Gibney threw up his hands, put the whole mess in the audience's lap and said, "Here, YOU figure this guy out."

A psychological suspense film with an open ending that's more haunting than the tricky climaxes of most post-Hitchcock thrillers.

With an approach that feels like a thriller, Gibney looks at both sides of the debate over the site's purpose and effectiveness.

Smart and opinionated, it's a great introduction to this ongoing story.

Gibney continues his run as the premier nonfiction filmmaker working today.

Arguably furthers WikiLeaks' stated purpose, but with a necessary whiff of the investigative filmmaker's instinctive skepticism.

The film is fascinating and provocative, deftly navigating complex personalities and shifting allegiances.

Who decides what stays secret? This brilliant documentary explores that question, itself a meta-narrative as the documentarian exposes the secrets of the secret-sharers.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/we_steal_secrets_the_story_of_wikileaks_2013/

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Russia rejects US demand for Snowden's extradition

MOSCOW (AP) ? Russia's foreign minister on Tuesday bluntly rejected U.S. demands to extradite National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, who has apparently stopped in Moscow while trying to evade U.S. justice, saying that Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border.

Sergey Lavrov insisted that Russia has nothing to do with him or his travel plans. Lavrov wouldn't say where Snowden is, but he angrily lashed out at the U.S. for demanding his extradition and warnings of negative consequences if Moscow fails to comply.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said. "There are no legal grounds for such conduct of U.S. officials, and we proceed from that."

U.S and Ecuadorean officials said they believed Snowden was still in Russia, where he fled Sunday after weeks of hiding out in Hong Kong following his disclosure of the broad scope of two highly classified counterterror surveillance programs to two newspapers. The programs collect vast amounts of Americans' phone records and worldwide online data in the name of national security.

Lavrov claimed that the Russian government has only found out about Snowden's flight from Hong Kong from news reports.

"We have no relation to Mr. Snowden, his relations with the American justice or his travel around the world," Lavrov said. "He chooses his route himself, and we have learned about it from the media."

Snowden booked a seat on a Havana-bound flight from Moscow Monday en route to Venezuela and then possible asylum in Ecuador, but he didn't show up on the plane. Russian news reports said he has remained at a transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, but he hasn't been seen there by the media.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has embraced Snowden and WikiLeaks experts are believed to be assisting him in arranging asylum.

Assange on Monday declined to discuss where Snowden was but said he was only passing through Russia and had applied for asylum in Ecuador, Iceland and possibly other countries.

Ecuador's foreign minister hailed Snowden on Monday as "a man attempting to bring light and transparency to facts that affect everyone's fundamental liberties."

The decision whether to grant Snowden the asylum he has requested is a choice between "betraying the citizens of the world or betraying certain powerful elites in a specific country," Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino told reporters while visiting Vietnam. He said Tuesday that he didn't know Snowden's exact whereabouts.

A high-ranking Ecuadorean official told The Associated Press that Russia and Ecuador were discussing where Snowden could go, and the process could take days. He also said Ecuador's ambassador to Moscow had not seen or spoken to Snowden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said the U.S. had made demands to "a series of governments," including Ecuador, that Snowden be barred from any international travel other than to be returned to the U.S. The U.S. has revoked Snowden's passport.

Secretary of State John Kerry urged Moscow to "do the right thing" and turn over Snowden.

"We're following all the appropriate legal channels and working with various other countries to make sure that the rule of law is observed," President Barack Obama told reporters when asked if he was confident that Russia would expel Snowden.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S. was expecting the Russians "to look at the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden back to the United States to face justice for the crimes with which he is charged."

Some experts said it was likely the Russian spy agencies were questioning Snowden on what he knew about U.S. electronic espionage against Moscow.

"If Russian special services hadn't shown interest in Snowden, they would have been utterly unprofessional," Igor Korotchenko, a former colonel in Russia's top military command turned security analyst, said on state Rossiya 24 television.

The Kremlin has previously said Russia would be ready to consider Snowden's request for asylum.

Snowden is a former CIA employee who later was hired as a contractor for the NSA. In that job, he gained access to documents that he gave to The Guardian and The Washington Post to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.

Snowden also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." He is believed to have more than 200 additional sensitive documents in laptops he is carrying.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-rejects-us-demand-snowdens-extradition-092352868.html

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Advocates in California, among several states, fighting ...

Quincy Wright, right, is hugged by a friend during a breaking the silence gathering at True Colors in Hartford, Conn., on April 19. True Colors, a non-profit organization working to help the needs of sexual and gender minority youth, has a mentoring program for more than 75 gay foster youth. Advocates in a handful of states including Florida, California, Connecticut and Massachusetts are starting a national dialogue to take steps to make sure gay foster youth are treated equally by foster parents, caseworkers and fellow foster kids. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

By Kelli Kennedy, Associated Press

MIAMI ? Sixto Cancel says his ultra-religious foster family frequently talked about their disdain for his homosexuality at the dinner table, trashed his room and called him homophobic slurs. While he was still a teenager, he says, they kicked him out of their Connecticut home after he had lived there for nearly a decade.

?I?ve had foster homes who completely said you can?t live here if you?re gay,? said Cancel, a 21-year-old student at Virginia Commonwealth University who bounced between half a dozen foster homes while in care. ?For a long time I had that self-hatred and uncomfortableness with who I am.?

Discrimination against gay and lesbian youths in foster care is prevalent enough around the country that federal health officials sent a letter in 2011 encouraging states to develop training for caseworkers and foster parents on the issue.

Advocates in a handful of states including Florida, California, Connecticut, Illinois and Massachusetts have increased efforts to train caseworkers, recruit foster parents and assign mentors. Officials don?t want to force youths to disclose their sexuality, but must try to create environments where they feel safe to come out when ready. Without such support, the federal government memo says, gay and lesbian youths who leave the foster care system can wind up homeless

?I?ve had conversations with many youth in the system who will not come out because they saw how staff treated their friends in the system after they came out,? said Kamora Herrington, mentoring program director of True Colors, an organization that helps gay foster youths in Connecticut.

Last year, a lesbian girl who Herrington worked with was kicked out of a Connecticut foster home after the family?s grandmother, who was very opposed to homosexuality, moved in. Herrington said the last time she heard from the girl, she was hitch-hiking across the country.

The nonprofit True Colors has a mentoring program for more than 75 young people, as well as a policy program that works closely with Connecticut child welfare workers. DCF also has a program liaison in every office where caseworkers can get referral services if they are working with a gay child or need help educating a foster family.

In California, the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center received a $13.3 million, five-year grant from the federal government to ultimately find permanent homes for gay foster youths. The center has already trained about 500 child welfare workers on gay and transgender issues this year and is creating a curriculum that can be duplicated nationally.

The second part of the program links the youth with services from family counseling to education assistance, and makes sure each service is sensitive to their sexual orientation.

Massachusetts was one of the first states to open a co-ed group home for gay foster teens after child welfare officials said they were seeing too many of the young people living on the streets. Roughly 100 foster youths have lived in the home which is run by gay and straight staffers. Child welfare officials there also recently started mentoring program along with life skills classes that teach things like cooking and budgeting.

But officials in Massachusetts, Illinois and many states say recruiting foster parents and mentors is one of the biggest challenges.

?What is typical across the country is also typical here, in that LGBT couples are more interested in adoption than becoming foster families so we have a dearth in interest in foster families,? Colby Swettberg executive director of Adoption & Foster Care Mentoring, which contracts with the Massachusetts child welfare system.

Finding adoptive homes for gay youths in foster care is part of a national push for all children in the system, but advocates say many are still left out.

?Many of our kids have been told they?re not family appropriate: ?We?re not even going to look for a family for you. We?re going to look for a group home,?? said Robin McHaelen, executive director of True Colors.

Illinois child welfare officials began hiring 29 new recruiters this year. Part of their job will be finding foster families and mentors for young gay people. The department estimates that about 450 gay youths come into the system each year.

Efforts in Florida include a regional task force on gay foster youths started by the Village Counseling Center in the northern part of the state and increased training for Department of Children and Families caseworkers in a 20-county region that includes Jacksonville and Daytona Beach.

David Abramowitz, a regional director for the Florida Department of Children and Families, sent a memo to staff in December saying he?s also heard stories that gay youths facing discrimination in foster care. Abramowitz said he mentors a young man ?who tells me horror stories of how he was treated? while living with a foster family that forced him to shave his head and tried to turn him straight. Abramowitz said he?s also encountered difficulties trying to help gay youths in foster care in his region because many aren?t disclosing.

After being kicked out of one foster home, Cancel went to live in another, but when his foster mother found out he was gay, she said she didn?t want him living there because it conflicted with her religious beliefs. A few days later, she relented, explaining she hadn?t changed her mind on the issue, but he could still live in the home as long as his sexuality wasn?t discussed.

For Cancel, who was about to graduate, it was a condition he accepted, but he said he realizes it?s an unfair burden placed on many other foster youths.

?It?s not OK for some people to live in a home where they know they?re not welcome and they?re not part of the family because of that specific aspect,? he said.

Source: http://blogs.presstelegram.com/outinthe562/2013/06/23/advocates-in-california-among-several-states-fighting-discrimination-toward-gay-foster-kids/

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House investigators: Disability judges are too lax (The Arizona Republic)

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Sony and Disney Trial Home Streaming While Movies Are in the Theater

In the ongoing battle against piracy, Disney and Sony have made a bold step: they're both testing an on-demand service (in, um, South Korea) which allows people to rent movies and stream them in their own homes while they're still playing in theaters.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Sony and Disney are the first of the US studios to ever offer viewers with the option to either buy a ticket for the theater or just watch it in their own home using cable or internet. So far Django Unchained, Wreck-it Ralph, and Brave have all been offered up under the scheme.

While it's the first time that streaming and theater options have been available from the off, the exclusive 90-day play window has been broken before in the past. In May, Upstream Color went hit iTunes and Amazon Instant Video after a month in the theaters, and there have been a handful of European trails along similar lines.

Whether the trial will prove successful remains to be seen, of course?but if it is, it might not be too long before the other major Hollywood studios try something similar. If that happens, it might be time for theaters to start worrying. [WSJ]

Image by Pinkcandy/Shutterstock

Source: http://gizmodo.com/sony-and-disney-trial-home-streaming-while-movies-are-i-554744778

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High court sends back Texas race-based plan

People wait outside the Supreme Court in Washington as key decisions are expected to be announced Monday, June 24, 2013. At the end of the court's term, several major cases are still outstanding that could have widespread political impact on same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

People wait outside the Supreme Court in Washington as key decisions are expected to be announced Monday, June 24, 2013. At the end of the court's term, several major cases are still outstanding that could have widespread political impact on same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

People wait outside the Supreme Court in Washington as key decisions are expected to be announced Monday, June 24, 2013. At the end of the court's term, several major cases are still outstanding that could have widespread political impact on same-sex marriage, voting rights, and affirmative action. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

People line up in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Monday, June 24, 2013, before it opened for its last scheduled session. The Supreme Court has 11 cases, including the term's highest profile matters, to resolve before the justices take off for summer vacations, teaching assignments and international travel. The court is meeting Monday for its last scheduled session, but will add days until all the cases are disposed of. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court has sent a Texas case on race-based college admissions back to a lower court for another look.

The court's 7-1 decision Monday leaves unsettled many of the basic questions about the continued use of race as a factor in college admissions.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, said a federal appeals court needs to subject the University of Texas admission plan to the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

The compromise ruling throws out the decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the Texas admission plan.

Kennedy said the appeals court did not test the Texas plan under the most exacting level of judicial review.

He said such a test is required by the court's 2003 decision upholding affirmative action in higher education.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the lone dissenter.

Justice Clarence Thomas, alone on the court, said he would have overturned the high court's 2003 ruling.

Justice Elena Kagan stayed out of the case, presumably because she had some contact with it at an earlier stage when she worked in the Justice Department.

Abigail Fisher, a white Texan, sued the university after she was denied a spot in 2008. She has since received her undergraduate degree from Louisiana State University.

The challenge to the Texas plan gained traction in part because the makeup of the court has changed since the last time the justices ruled on affirmative action in higher education in 2003. Then, Justice Sandra O'Connor wrote the majority opinion that held that colleges and universities can use race in their quest for diverse student bodies.

O'Connor retired in 2006, and her replacement, Justice Samuel Alito, has shown himself to be more skeptical of considerations of race in education.

Another factor fueling Fisher's lawsuit was that the university has produced significant diversity by automatically offering about three-quarters of its spots to graduates in the top 10 percent of their Texas high schools, under a 1990s state law signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush. The admissions program has been changed so that now only the top 8 percent gain automatic admission.

More than 8 in 10 African-American and Latino students who enrolled at the flagship campus in Austin in 2011 were automatically admitted, according to university statistics. Even among the rest, both sides acknowledge that the use of race is modest.

In all, black and Hispanic students made up more than a quarter of the incoming freshmen class. White students constituted less than half the entering class when students with Asian backgrounds and other minorities were added in.

The university said the extra measure of diversity it gets from the slots outside automatic admission is crucial because too many of its classrooms have only token minority representation, at best. At the same time, Texas argued that race is one of many factors considered and that whether race played the key role in any applicant's case was impossible to tell.

The Obama administration, 57 of the Fortune 100 companies and large numbers of public and private colleges that feared a broad ruling against affirmative action backed the Texas program. Among the benefits of affirmative action, the administration said, is that it creates a pipeline for a diverse officer corps that it called "essential to the military's operational readiness." In 2003, the court cited the importance of a similar message from military leaders.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-24-US-Supreme-Court-Affirmative-Action/id-859313ea60ff426f9a8607d5d3bf67ba

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