Please join us for a weekend of film dedicated to the seminal question, "Who are we?"  What is the America Dream?  Is that dream singular or plural?   Past, present or future?   Who is included?   What does it take to obtain it?  The shocking assault on the World Trade Center has sparked national soul searching.  Is our freedom a threat to others?   What about our way of life so enraged our enemies?  How far are we willing to go to defend our rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?" 

Movies serve as a key creator and promoter of the American Dream.   The Jewish immigrants who founded our film studios came to America in search of opportunity.  They faced persecution and racism, yet found riches way out west.  The irony of their experience, America as a land of false promises and yet tremendous potential, informs our weekend.  We look to films as a conversation starter, an entre into the myths, legends and truths within our diverse American Dreams.

Friday, November 1st, we open with the competing ideals of Field Of Dreams and Wall Street.   Why does a baseball diamond immediately inspires notions of innocence, purity, and fair play?  How do major league baseball's current crossroads mirror our national soul searching?   Oliver Stone's incendiary film Wall Street seemed to overstate the greed that fuels certain American Dreams.   Yet, recent headlines have only made Stone's dynamic portrait of corporate America even more prescient. 

On Saturday afternoon, we offer two classic ruminations on our national ideals and our notions of government.   In Frank Capra's 1939 Oscar winner, MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, Jimmy Stewart stands in for all Americans who believe one person can make a difference in a representative democracy.   Yet, twenty years later, questions of representation and justice sparked a civil rights movement.   Lorraine Hansberry's haunting play, powerfully directed by Daniel Petrie, A Rasin In the Sun, became a riveting 1961 film with a fantastic cast that included Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee.  What becomes of a dream deferred?   Find out on November 2.

Saturday night, we present two divergent takes on affluence and boredom.   What happens when the American Dream seems like a false promise?   What lengths will a generation go to feel something/anything?  Wes Anderson's refreshing first film, Bottle Rocket, begins as a comedic road trip and spirals into complications utterly sublime.   Bored rich kids find love in 
unlikely places, at a hotel in the middle of Texas, with a Central American immigrant struggling to speak English.   David Fincher's graphic Fight Club offers a brutal struggle for authenticity, for something tangible, for human connections.  It stands as a controversial purging of the American Dream, a literal blood letting and purification ritual. 

Sunday starts with an extended conversation.  Our Critical Issues Forum will address, Writing the American Dream.   As part of the Hollywood "dream factory", what kind of stories are we telling?  Can we separate our myths, fantasies and realities?    The Focolare Movement offers a chance to discuss the international implications of the stories we spin.

If you can only catch one film this weekend, I heartily recommend George Washington.   The lush cinematography, the meditative pacing, and the authentic portrayals of poor kids in rural North Carolina will feed your soul in a way words cannot describe.    David Gordon Green's debut film offers a haunting and hopeful commentary on the promise of an America where anyone can still grow up to be president. 

Thelma & Louise has been prodding audiences and provoking debate for a decade.   Callie Khouri's story of female empowerment/revenge/self-defensepushes all kinds of buttons.   In a festival dedicated to the art of conversation, what other "mainstream" Hollywood film could stir up such passionate responses on a Sunday afternoon?

Green Dragon is a hidden gem, a tender remembrance of coming to America.   How appropriate to close with a paean to immigration, to the lure of American supermarkets, to the tangled legacy of Vietnam.   Foreigners, aliens and strangers forge a home in a land of opportunity.   And American Dreams continue to evolve into the 21st century. 

Craig Detweiler 
Producer