OPENING NIGHT FILM
The riveting, captivating and inspiring "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" opens CalDocFest, the first full-scale documentary film festival in California's 400-mile Central Valley.
SYNOPSIS
In "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" filmmakers Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler explore the life of their father, the late radical civil rights lawyer. In the 1960s and 70s, Kunstler fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and represented the famed “Chicago 8” activists who protested the Vietnam War. When the inmates took over Attica prison, or when the American Indian Movement stood up to the federal government at Wounded Knee, they asked Kunstler to be their lawyer. To his daughters, it seemed that he was at the center of everything important that had ever happened. But when they were growing up, Kunstler represented some of the most reviled members of society, including rapists and assassins. This powerful film not only recounts the historic causes that Kunstler fought for; it also confronts a man that even his own daughters did not always understand, a man who believed that, however unpopular, justice should serve all.
FESTIVAL HISTORY
"William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" held its World Premiere at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival in January, where it was honored with the L'Oreal Women of Worth Vision Award. It went on to screen and be honored at major international film festivals across America, including Special Mention for the Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award at the Full Frame Documentary Festival, runner-up for the Golden Space Needle Audience Award for Best Documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival, and won the Special Jury Prize for Best New Documentary Filmmaker at Michael Moore's Traverse City Film Festival.
DIRECTOR'S BIOGRAPHY
Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler (producers / directors) run Off Center Media (www.off-center.com), a production company that produces documentaries exposing injustice in the criminal justice system. The sisters founded Off Center Media in 2000, and have produced, directed, and edited a number of short documentaries, including "Tulia, Texas: Scenes from the Drug War" (2002), which won Best Documentary Short at the Woodstock Film Festival, and was instrumental in winning exoneration for 46 wrongfully convicted people; and "Getting Through to the President" (2004), which has aired on the Sundance Channel.Other notable Off Center Media projects include "A Pattern of Exclusion: The Trial of Thomas Miller-El" (2002), a documentary about racism at the trial of Miller-El, who had been on death row in Texas since 1985; "The Norfolk Four: A Miscarriage of Justice" (2006), about four young men in Norfolk, Virginia, who falsely confessed to a rape-murder that they did not commit; and "Executing the Insane: The Case of Scott Panetti" (2007). These films have contributed to campaigns to secure pardons, stay executions and convince decision makers to reopen cases. "William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe" is the sisters’ first documentary feature.
Emily Kunstler graduated in 2000 from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film and Video. She was a video producer for Democracy Now!, an independent national television and radio news program, and a studio art fellow with the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2004.
Sarah Kunstler graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in Photography in 1998 and from Columbia Law School with a Juris Doctorate in 2004. She is currently a criminal defense attorney practicing in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York.
The sisters were awarded the L'Oreal Women of Worth Vision Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize for Best New Filmmakers at the Traverse City Film Festival.
PRESS / MEDIA
To download high-resolution images, visit: http://www.disturbingtheuniverse.com/Press.html
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SHOWTIME
FRI. 10/02 at 7:00PM
Stockton Empire Theatre
TICKETS
Film
$12.00 General
$11.00 Senior 65+, Student with ID
$10.00 Film Society Members
• order tickets online
CAST AND CREW
Production Company: Off-Center Media
Screenwriter: Emily Kunstler, Sarah Kunstler
Producer: Jesse Moss, Susan Korda
Editor: Emily Kunstler
Music: Shahzad Ismaily
Principal Cast: William Kunstler, Herman Badillo, Harry Belafonte, Clyde Bellecourt, Daniel Berrigan, Julian Bond, Jimmy Breslin, Alan M. Dershowitz, Phil Donahue, Elizabeth M. Fink, Fred Hampton, Madonna Thunder Hawk,
Website Photography Credits: Maddy Miller, David Fenton, The Associated Press
SOURCES
Print Source:
info@off-center.com |
