2015 Sunday Night at the Movies at St. Francis in the Foothills

Every year the good folks at St. Francis in the Foothills (4625  E. River Rd.) hosts a movie series with a pot luck dinner followed by a provocative, thoughtful movie of some political or cultural/ethnic concern.  Here’s the upcoming list for 2015, always 2nd Sunday of the month (EXCEPT for May) .  Pot luck starts at 5:30 p.m. with the movie about 6 p.m.

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Sunday, Jan.11th
My afternoons with Marguerite – My Afternoons with Marguerite is the story of life’s random encounters. In a small French town, Germain, a nearly illiterate man in his 50’s and considered to be the village idiot by his friends at the local bistro, takes a walk to the park one day and happens to sit beside Marguerite, a little old lady who is reading excerpts from her novel aloud. She’s articulate, highly intelligent and frail. Between Germain and Margueritte, there are 40 years and 200 pounds difference. Germain is lured by Marguerite’s passion for life and the magic of literature from which he has always excluded. As Marguerite broadens his mind via reading excerpts from her novel, Germain realizes that he is more of an intellectual than he has ever allowed himself to be. Afternoons spent reading aloud on their favorite  bench transform their lives and start them both on a new journey — to literacy and for Germain, and to the deepest friendship for Marguerite.

Sunday, Feb.8th
Why We Fight -Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life? Jarecki’s shrewd and intelligent polemic would seem to give an affirmative answer to each of these questions.

Sunday, March 8th
Twenty Feet From Stardom – Rich, insightful, and occasionally heartbreaking, 20 Feet From Stardom is documentary about African American female backup singers, an energetic tribute to their passion,
talent, and hard work their compromises, their desires for stardom and connections that work or don’t. Beautiful singing!

Sunday, April 12th
The Cherokee Word for Water – Based on the true story of the Bell Waterline Project, the movie is about a community coming together to improve its life condition. Led by Wilma Mankiller, who went on
to become the first woman chief of the Cherokee Nation, and fullblood Cherokee organizer Charlie Soap, they join forces and build nearly twenty miles of waterline using a community of volunteers. In the
process, they inspire the community to trust each other, and reawaken universal indigenous values of reciprocity and interconnectedness. The successful completion of the waterline sparked a movement of
similar self-help projects across the Cherokee nation and in Indian country that continues to this day.

Sunday, May 17th
Maria Full of Grace – A bright, spirited 17-year old, Maria Alvarez, lives with three generations of her family in a cramped house in rural Colombia and works stripping thorns from flowers in a rose
plantation. The offer of a lucrative job involving travel–in fact, becoming a drug “mule”–changes the course of her life. Far from the uneventful trip she is promised, Maria is transported into the risky and
ruthless world of international drug trafficking. Her mission becomes one of determination and survival and she finally emerges with the grace that will carry her forward into a new life.

Sunday, June 14th
Emerald Forest (1985) – Construction engineer in Brazil loses his son to a native tribe, later finds him as civilization encroaches on tribal area. The Emerald Forest is based on a true story, as related by Los
Angeles Times correspondent Leonard Greenwood. Powers Boothe stars as Bill Markham, a US engineer working on a dam project in the Amazonian jungles. Bill’s young son, Tomme (played by director John Boorman’s son Charley Boorman) is kidnapped in the rain forest by a tribe called “The Invisible People” because of their skills at camouflage – a group that has reportedly never experienced contact with
Caucasians. The authorities give up the boy for lost, but Bill perseveres in searching for his son, for over 10 years. While fleeing for his life from The Fierce People – enemies of The Invisible People – he’s
rescued at the last minute by Tomme, now an adoptee of The Invisible People’s chief. To Bill’s frustration, Tomme initially refuses to join his biological dad and return to civilization, but when The
Fierce People swing in and abduct all of the women in the Invisible People tribe, Tomme seeks his dad’s help in rescuing them.

Sunday, July 12th
We are Legion (2012) – A documentary about the hacking group Anonymous, & others. Has more meaning now with the release of NSA documents. The Story of the Hacktivists, takes us inside the
complex culture and history of Anonymous. The film explores early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic Disturbance Theater, and then moves to Anonymous’ own raucous and unruly
beginnings on the website 4Chan. Through interviews with current members – some recently returned from prison, others still awaiting trial – as well as writers, academics and major players in various “raids,” WE ARE LEGION traces the collective’s breathtaking evolution from merry pranksters to a full-blown, global movement, one armed with new weapons of civil disobedience for an online world.

Sunday, Aug, 9
Citizen Koch – The story of how the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for dark money to be spent in our elections. The film was originally set to air on PBS. But fearing reaction
from a certain PBS donor — David Koch himself — public television executives withdrew their support for the film

Sunday, Sept. 13th
The Impossible Spy – This is the true story of an Israeli civilian who was recruited into Israel’s Secret Intelligence Agency to become a spy in Damascus, where he spent years infiltrating the Syrian political
establishment. Israel’s national hero, Eli Cohen, successfully entered the upper echelons of the Syrian government as a double-agent. The secrets he obtained became crucial in Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six Day War.

Sunday, Oct.11th
Europa, Europa (1991) – This drama was based on the true story of a young German Jew who survived the Holocaust by falling in with the Nazis. Solomon Perel (Marco Hofschneider) is the son of a Jewish
shoe salesman coming of age in Germany during the rise of Adolf Hitler. In 1938, a group of Nazis attack Solomon’s family home; his sister is killed, and 13-year-old Solomon flees to Poland. Solomon winds up
in an orphanage operated by Stalinist forces; when German forces storm Poland, Solomon’s fluent German allows him to join the Nazis as a translator, posing as Josef Peters, an ethnic German. In time,
“Peters” is made a member of the elite Hitler Youth, but since Solomon is circumcised, he can be easily revealed as a Jew, and he lives in constant fear that his secret will be discovered. Solomon’s close calls
include an attempted seduction by Robert Kellerman (André Wilms), a homosexual officer, and his relationship with Leni (Julie Delpy), a beautiful but violently anti-Semitic woman who wants to bear his
child for the glory of the master race.

Sunday, Nov.8th
Enemy of the Reich – The Noor Inayat Khan Story is the story of one woman’s extraordinary courage, tested in the crucible of Nazi-occupied Paris. With an American mother and Indian Muslim father, Noor Inayat Khan was an extremely unusual British agent, and her life spent growing up in a Sufi center of learning in Paris seemed an unlikely preparation for the dangerous work to come. Yet it was in this place
of universal peace and contemplation that her remarkable courage was forged.

Sunday, Dec. 13th
Oranges and Sunshine – Oranges and Sunshine tells the story of Margaret Humphreys (Emily Watson), a social worker from Nottingham, who uncovered one of the most significant social scandals of recent times; the mass deportation of children from the United Kingdom to Australia. Single-handedly and against overwhelming odds, Margaret reunited thousands of families and drew worldwide attention to an extraordinary miscarriage of justice. Children as young as four had been told that their parents were dead and sent to children’s homes on the other side of the world, where many were subjected to appalling abuse. These forgotten children were promised Oranges and Sunshine but they got hard labour and life in institution.