Take One Action Film Festival comes to Stornoway

This February and March, Scotland’s global cinema project, Take One Action Film Festival, supported by The Co-operative, will hit the road, taking the best of their annual festival on tour with screening events taking place at a variety of venues across Scotland. On offer is a fantastic selection of international cinema that celebrates “the people and movies that are changing the world”.

Take One Action links audiences, movies, campaigners and communities to inspire shared responses to issues of global concern.  All film screenings are followed by discussions with experts on subjects ranging from climate change to poverty, providing insight into the actions ordinary people can take to make a difference.

Quotes

Palm D’or winning British filmmaker and Festival patron, Ken Loach said: “These are fantastic films, and Take One Action’s focus on empowering local audiences to engage with global and environmental issues through them is unique in the UK.”

Programme and Events Manager, Abbe Robinson, said: “The Take One Action Film Festival tour is a fantastic opportunity for these critically acclaimed films to be seen outside Edinburgh and Glasgow, and we are really excited to be presenting them to new audiences across Scotland.”

Films

On the bill are five inspiring, world-class, films including Even The Rain, penned by Glasgow-based screenwriter and Take One Action Film Festival patron, Paul Laverty. Hailed by theHollywood Reporter as “Intensely moving… at once subtle and shattering”, Even the Rain stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Sebastian, a filmmaker caught up in Bolivia’s mass protests of spring 2000 against the government’s decision to privatise the national water company. As Sebastian vainly tries to tell the story of Columbus’ colonisation of the new world, his cast and crew get drawn into a contemporary version of events, blurring the boundary between past and present, fiction and reality.

The hit documentary Blood in the Mobile takes investigative journalist Frank Poulsen on a very personal journey linking the minerals we find in our mobile phone and computers with the civil war in Congo, responsible for the deaths of millions of people.  Reaching the dangerous and normally inaccessible Bisie mine area of the DRC, Poulsen’s extraordinary journey reveals child labourers in death-defying conditions, before he returns home to ask his phone company, Nokia, the largest in the world, just what they are doing to halt the cycle of poverty and conflict.

American documentary, Homegrown, tells the true story of a family living ‘off the grid’ on an organic urban homestead in the heart of Pasadena City, California.  On less than a quarter of an acre, they harvest over 6000 pounds of produce every year, feeding themselves and their friends, making their own biodiesel, and harnessing solar power for pretty much everything else.  An inspiring example to those of us who feel that modern city life can limit the possibilities for changing the way we live and what we consume.

Described by Greenpeace as “a rare gem among climate change movies”, Briar March’s multi award winning film, There Once Was An Island, is a beautiful and moving account of the effects of climate change. Exploring the fate of Takku, a unique Pacific Island community facing the first devastating effects of climate change, the cameras follow the islanders as they make the crucial decision whether to stay in their idyllic, but fated home, or move to a new and unfamiliar land, leaving their culture and language behind forever.

Take One Action films don’t just tell incredible stories from far flung corners of the globe.  The Daily Mail called Scottish filmmaker Anthony Baxter’s film, You’ve Been Trumped “an explosive documentary”. The film was the winner of this year’s Take One Action Film Festival Audience Award, and is proving to be a runaway success at film festivals all over the world.  Funny, inspiring and shocking in equal measures, this David and Goliath story for the 21st century, follows a group of proud Scottish homeowners as they take on billionaire celebrity tycoon Donald Trump who buys up one of Scotland’s last wilderness areas to build an enormous golf resort.

Tour dates and venues

Fri 17^th Feb      Macrobert Centre, Stirling                   Even The Rain

Sat 18^th Feb     Ashfield Village Hall, Dunblane           There Once was an Island

Sat 18^th Feb     Ashfield Village Hall, Dunblane           Even The Rain

Mon 20^th Feb   Macrobert Centre, Stirling                    Homegrown

Tues 21^st Feb   Rob Roy Visiter Centre, Callander        You’ve Been Trumped

Wed 22^nd Feb  Comrie Village Hall, Comrie                 You’ve Been Trumped

Thur 23^rd Feb   Belmont Picturehouse, Aberdeen        Even The Rain

Fri 24^th Feb      Woodend Barn, Banchory                    Homegrown

Sat 25^th Feb     Tullynessle & Forbes Hall, Alford        Blood In the Mobile

Mon 27^th Feb   Eden Court, Inverness                         Blood In the Mobile

Tues 28^th Feb  The Little Theatre, Nairn                      Even The Rain

Wed 29^th Feb   The Old Brewery, Cromarty                 Homegrown

Thurs 1^st Mar   Macphail Centre, Ullapool                    You’ve Been Trumped

Fri 2^nd Mar       An Lanntair, Stornaway, Lewis             You’ve Been Trumped

Sat 3^rd Mar      Duirnish Media Club, Dunvegan          There Once Was an Island

Sat 3^rd Mar      Duirnish Media Club, Dunvegan          You’ve Been Trumped

Hebrides Today brings you the latest news from the Western Isles