| Summary: | A compilation of documentary excerpts and rough cuts from the winning projects of the February 1999 Docket of the Soros Documentary Fund. The ten sponsored films were: 1. “Os Carvoeiros (The Charcoal People of Brazil),” Nigel Noble: A documentary exploring the lives of thousands of migrant laborers employed to cut down Brazilian forests and produce charcoal for the multi-national pig-iron industry 2. “Our house in Havana,” Stephen Olsson: A film that follows a wealthy Cuban American exile on a first time pilgrimage, after more than thirty years, back to the haunts of her youth and early adulthood in Havana. 3. “The Resilient Spirit,” Sharon Greytak: A film that travels on a cross-cultural world tour from New York to Siberia, Italy to Brazil and on to Hong Kong to reveal the aspirations and realities of people living with physical disability. 4. “Twenty Years to Life,” Jonathan Stack: The film searches for the truth behind the accusation, trial, and conviction of Vincent Simmons, an inmate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary who already served 20 years in prison for a crime he supports he did not committed. 5. “Sound and Fury,” Josh Aronson and Roger Weisberg : The film documents one family's struggle over whether or not to provide two deaf children with cochlear implants, devices that can stimulate hearing. 6. “American Gypsy,” Jasmine Dellal: A film that pierces the veil of tradition-bound secrecy surrounding Roma communities and the web of prejudice in which they are ensnared. 7. “Children Underground,” Edet Belzberg: The film observes the lives of several Romanian street children in Bucharest's Piata Victoriei metro station. 8. “Banana Tourists,” Aldo Lee: The film explores the interactions of two cultures in Northern Mozambique – white right-wing farmers escaping from post-apartheid south Africa and the small nomadic, indigenous tribes whose way of life their large farms are suddenly threatening. 9. “Witches in Exile,” Allison Berg: A documentary that travels through a corner of the Ghanaian society, the so-called “witch villages,” inhabited by banished women who have in many ways became an emblem of the debates in Africa over issues of tribalism versus modernization, and the establishment of new orders of gender, civil, and human rights. 10. “The Pinochet Case,” Patricio Guzman: An inquiry into the legacy and fate of General Augusto Pinochet featuring interviews with family members of the disappeared ones.
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