Academy award-nominated filmmaker Sam Green will bring his collection of short films What We Need Is The Impossible! to Monmouth University’s Pollak Theatre on Monday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. The film is free and open to the public and there will be a Q & A with the filmmaker following the screening.
This program gathers together for the first time an evening length program of Green’s short films, ranging from a portrait of the world’s largest shopping mall in Southern China, which is actually completely empty (Utopia PT.3), to an elegy for Meredith Hunter, the young man who was killed by Hells Angels at the notorious 1969 Altamont concert (lot 63, grave c). Other films from the program include:The Fabulous Stains: Behind The Movie, the remarkable story of the cult film directed by Lou Adler in 1982; and The Universal Language, a portrait of Esperanto, an artificial language that was created in the late 1800s with the hope of creating world peace, and the worldwide movement of people who still speak it. Running through Green’s films is a celebration of idealism and the search for meaning along with the often humorous realities of human folly.
Sam Green is a New York City-based documentary filmmaker. His film The Weather Underground was nominated for an Academy Award in 2004, broadcast nationally on PBS, and included in the Whitney Biennial. Green’s most recent documentary The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller features a live score by legendary indie rock band Yo La Tengo and is currently screening widely. Green received his master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied documentary with acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs. He has received grants from Creative Capital, the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The event is sponsored by Monmouth University’s Department of Communication and the Center for the Arts, and part of the “On Screen: In Person” film series, which brings six films and filmmakers to Monmouth University as part of a tour of the Eastern seaboard. On Screen: In Person is made possible in part through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Regional Touring Program.