Roving Eye International Film Festival features 30 free films - includes local "Coming Home"

We received this announcement today:  

FLICKERS: Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF) and Roger Williams University (RWU) are proud to present the seventh annual Roving Eye International Film Festival™. The popular and acclaimed event, celebrating global cinema and artists, will take place April 22-26th, where more than 30 international films will be showcased, many United States premieres. All screenings are free to the general public. Screenings will take place on the campus of Roger Williams University at the Global Heritage Hall in Bristol, RI.

The 7th Annual Roving Eye International Film Festival will cover themes ripped from the headlines: returning veterans from the war on terror; facing PTSD and mental stress; global human rights, international relations and issues addressing sustainability and ecology. The Festival's slogan for 2012 is "You Know You Want to Look." [Editor's note: Yes, that's the same slogan WSBE chose for Haunted RI in 2011.]

Many of the film's directors will be in attendance including recent Academy Award nominee, James Spione, director of "Incident in New Baghdad." Panel/roundtable discussions include "The War on Terror: Coming Home"* with Providence Journal writer G. Wayne Miller; Dr. Frank DiCataldo, assistant professor of psychology at Roger Williams University; John Freidah, Providence Journal photographer and producer; Coleman Nee, Massachusetts Secretary of Veterans' Services; Lt. Col. Denis Riel, Rhode Island National Guard; and Jonathan Shay, MD, clinical psychiatrist, author and MacArthur Foundation "genius grant" recipient for his work with veteran, and "HOLLYWOOD EAST: MAKING IT IN THE FILM INDUSTRY IN RHODE ISLAND" featuring Edward J. "Ted" Delaney, author, journalist, filmmaker and educator; Michael Drywa, Jr. Esq. Entertainment Law specialist; Steven Feinberg, Executive Director, RI Film and Television Office; Duncan Putney, SAG Representive; and Chris Sparling, writer/director author of the Ryan Reynolds feature "Buried."

Click HERE to see a listing of this year's programming and to learn more about the Roving Eye Festival. For more information about films, dates, and venues for the Roving Eye Film Festival™, please call 401-861-4445, email info@film-festival.org.

*WSBE Rhode Island PBS will re-broadcast Coming Home on Saturday, May 26 at 7 P.M. and Sunday, May 27 at 11 P.M.

Iraq War Veterans "Coming Home" a documentary by The Providence Journal

**UPDATE** 

Veterans and Family Assistance Resources

are listed at the end of this blog

The September 11th attacks on America in 2001 left a shared scar on the American psyche.

Even so, there are Americans, New Englanders, Rhode Islanders, whose scars are not shared by most Americans. Those experiences are only shared among the small group of American soldiers who have served in the "war on terror" in the decade that followed September 11.

In those ten years, 43 New Englanders lost their lives. Thousands of veterans have returned, forever changed. Coming Home is about four of them. WSBE is proud to present Coming Home, a documentary by The Providence Journal, on Monday, March 26 at 8 P.M. on Rhode Island PBS (digital 36.1, Cox 08/1008HD, Verizon 08/508HD, FullChannel 08, Comcast 819HD, DirecTV 36, Dish Network 7776).



Reaching Out
Following the broadcast, WSBE presents a live panel discussion hosted by (pictured left top) The Providence Journal's G. Wayne Miller, with Dr. Jennifer Lambert, acting chief of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic, and coordinator of the Returning Veterans Program at the Providence VA Medical Center; Dr. Thomas O’Toole (center photo), director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs National Homeless PACT program; and Iraq veteran Sergeant First Class Amy Slater (bottom photo) of the Rhode Island National Guard.

Representatives of the Veterans Administration and the Rhode Island Guard will be in the WSBE studios to staff an off-camera phone bank, answering questions and making referrals to services available to veterans. Viewers – especially veterans and their family members – are invited to call in anytime during the 90-minute program.

Coming Home
In October and November of 2011, The Providence Journal published an extraordinary series titled, "War on Terror: Coming Home." The eight-part series by Journal staff writer G. Wayne Miller chronicled the stories of several soldiers who served and the after-effects of war.

The stories upon which the newspaper series was based were woven into a compelling 50-minute documentary, Coming Home. Produced by Journal photographer John Freidah, Journal video editor Cecilia Préstamo, and Miller, narrated by Journal columnist Bob Kerr, and funded by The Providence Journal, the film also includes archival photos and video taken by the soldiers themselves.

In Coming Home, Army veteran Derek Pelletier and National Guard veterans John DiRaimo, Brian Santos, and Sean Judge share their combat experiences, and their lives back in the civilian world. Fall River resident Pelletier, twice honored with the Bronze Star, continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, as do Johnston native DiRaimo and Narragansett native Judge. Santos, who served with Judge, has followed a different path, becoming a New Jersey state trooper and marrying. Their interwoven stories illustrate the human toll of a war fought by a tiny fraction of Americans serving in an all-volunteer military.

Encore Broadcasts
A replay of the Coming Home and the panel discussion will air Wednesday, March 28 at 12:30 A.M. The phone bank will not be available during this replay, but referral phone numbers will be displayed on the TV screen. The documentary alone will also air on Saturday, March 31 at 7 P.M. as part of the ongoing Rhode Island PBS series, Rhode Island Stories.

Additional replays are scheduled for the Memorial Day weekend, Saturday, May 26 at 7 P.M. and Sunday, May 27 at 11 P.M.

To view the film anytime, and to read the original series of stories by G. Wayne Miller published in The Providence Journal, visit providencejournal.com/cominghome.

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Veteran and Family Assistance

VA Crisis Hotline 

1-800-273-TALK (8255) Press “1

The Providence VA Medical Center’s OEF/OIF/OND Clinic 

401-273-7100, x 6401 or
401-273-7100, x 6137

Rhode Island Army and Air National Guard Family Assistance Center 

401-275-4194 or
877-440-7994 

Rhode Island National Guard Family Assistance Center online

The Rhode Island Veterans Affairs 

401-254-8495

Rhode Island Veterans Affairs online

On The Lake: Life and Love in a Distant Place March 25th

After more than a year of work, filmmakers David Bettencourt and G. Wayne Miller have released their feature-length documentary ON THE LAKE: Life and Love in a Distant Place, an emotionally powerful look at the tuberculosis epidemic in 1900s America and globally today.

Told with never-before-seen footage and stills, and the on-camera accounts of TB survivors – including Barbara Parkos of Newport; Emily Martineau and Sheila O'Brien, both of Harrisville; John Lynes of Pascoag; Russ Denham, who summers in the Ocean State winters in Florida; and 80-year-old Frank Beazley, who has been a patient at Zambarano for almost 42 years – ON THE LAKE makes its television premiere WSBE Rhode Island PBS at 8 PM on March 25 (digital 36.1; Cox, Verizon, Full Channel 8 in RI; MA cable subscribers should check local listings for channel number; DirecTV36; Dish 7776).

Much of ON THE LAKE is based at Zambarano Hospital on remote Wallum Lake in Pascoag, R.I., which opened in 1905 as a TB sanatorium. But what started as a local story about the institution unfolded into a much larger story about tuberculosis worldwide and that led the filmmakers to sanitoria around the country. Segments were filmed in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Maryland, Colorado, and Saranac Lake, N.Y. – a community actually built around the disease.

ON THE LAKE has been endorsed by prominent health care activist Dr. Paul Farmer, professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Partners in Health in Boston. Farmer, one of the world’s foremost health care activists in the fight against global TB and AIDS, endorsed and applauded ON THE LAKE for its “human story of the tuberculosis epidemic.”

Even before it premiered on the big screen on February 13, the film had already become part of a worldwide initiative to stem the epidemic rise of TB and has been recognized by the Stop TB Partnership, a Geneva, Switzerland-based healthcare organization that includes members of the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the US Agency for International Development.

But the power of the film is its story. Through letters, postcards, and on-camera interviews with survivors, the moving stories - interwoven throughout - put a human face on the epidemic.

For additional insight, read The Providence Journal review by Michael Janusonis and the movie review for WJAR NBC10 by Jim Taricani