McNally Jackson Flicks

Operation Filmmaker (2007) Nina Davenport

In 2004, American actor Liev Schreiber saw an MTV segment on Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed, whose dreams of becoming a filmmaker had been thwarted by the bombing of his university during "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Schreiber, then preparing to film his directorial debut, Everything is Illuminated, in Prague, invited Muthana to work as a production assistant on the film.

Nina Davenport was hired to document Muthana's experience as an intern on the Hollywood movie. But Schreiber's well-intentioned gesture doesn't result in the inspiring story everyone had hoped for, as differing expectations and agendas clash. In particular, Muthana begrudgingly performs or shirks responsibility for the tasks assigned to him, repeatedly squandering a golden opportunity

For OPERATION FILMMAKER, Davenport chronicled Muthana's story over a two-year period, from his work in Prague as a P.A. on Schreiber's Holocaust drama and later on Doom, a sci-fi film starring "The Rock," to a stint at a London film school, periodically contrasting his experiences abroad with scenes of Muthana's family and friends in wartorn Baghdad.

The Substance  (2011) Martin Witz

Martin Witz's THE SUBSTANCE: ALBERT HOFMANN'S LSD is an informative and entertaining investigation into the history of a drug so potent that mere fractions of a milligram can alter a subject's perception of reality.

The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear  (2012) Tinatin Gurchiani

A filmmaker puts out a casting call for young adults, aged 15- to 23. The director wants to make a film about growing up in her home country, Georgia, and find commonalities across social and ethnic lines. She travels through cities and villages interviewing the candidates who responded and filming their daily lives.

The boys and girls who responded to the call are radically different from one another, as are their personal reasons for auditioning. Some want be movie stars and see the film as a means to that end; others want to tell their personal story. One girl wants to call to account the mother who abandoned her; one boy wants to share the experience of caring for his handicapped family members; another wants to clear the name of a brother, currently serving a jail sentence.

Szamanka (1996) Andrzej Zulawski

Far from Vietnam (1967) Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, and Alain Resnais.

Initiated and edited by Chris Marker, FAR FROM VIETNAM is an epic 1967 collaboration between cinema greats Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch and Alain Resnais in protest of American military involvement in Vietnam--made, per Marker's narration, "to affirm, by the exercise of their craft, their solidarity with the Vietnamese people in struggle against aggression."

DIsco & Atomic War (2009) Jaak Kilmi

Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Warsaw International Film Festival, this witty, charming, and provocative film recounts how in the mid 1980's, the nation of Estonia still lay firmly in the grip of the Soviet Union, and the repressive authorities controlled virtually all aspects of Estonian life. The totalitarian government's power was derived in no small part from their ability to censor cultural life and keep Western culture on the other side of the border. Rock and Roll was but a rumor and the only television shows on the air were dreary propaganda. But one day everything changed. Just a few miles across the border in Finland, a huge new television antenna was built that broadcast western signals in all directions--including directly into the heart of the Talinn, the capital of Estonia.