For the 18th time, the Arts Arena presents UNAFF and its Traveling Film Festival (TFF) with a curated series of documentary films. Founded in 1998, by longtime Stanford University educator and film critic Jasmina Bojic, UNAFF has screened documentaries dealing with human rights, the environment, women’s issues, children, refugee protection, homelessness, racism, disease control, universal education, war and peace. Many selections have gone on to win Oscars and other major awards.
A Double Life is a documentary particularly relevant to political currents today wherein activists and the lawyers who defend them are coming under exceptional threat. The film unveils the gripping true story of Stephen Bingham, a lawyer accused of passing a gun to prisoners’ rights leader George Jackson in 1971. Forced into a life on the run, Bingham spends 13 years underground, eluding capture while fiercely determined to clear his name.
Catherine Masud is an award-winning filmmaker with over 25 years of experience in producing, directing, writing and editing, working in both documentary and fictional genres. She produced, co-wrote, and edited the acclaimed feature The Clay Bird, which won the International Critics’ Prize at Cannes. She also co-directed and edited the feature-length documentaries Song of Freedom and Words of Freedom, both groundbreaking films in Bangladesh, which treated the 1971 Liberation War and its aftermath.
Abby Ginzberg is a Peabody award-winning director who has been producing compelling documentaries about race and social justice for over 30 years. Among her many films is And Then They Came for Us, about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, which was screened at the Arts Arena several years ago. Ginzberg was the Consulting Producer on The Barber of Birmingham, which was nominated for an Oscar.