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REDCAT Presents the Los Angeles Premiere of Two Documentaries by Ellen Bruno

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November 16, 2005, Los Angeles--REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, presents Ellen Bruno: Stories of Death and Survival, Monday December 5, 2005, at 8:00 p.m., the next film in the Jack H. Skirball Screening Series, curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.

Noted for her unflinching documentation of social, economic and human rights issues in East Asia, 2001 Alpert Award-winning filmmaker Bruno comes to REDCAT to screen two new films: Leper (2005) provides a rare, intimate and compassionate glimpse into a contemporary society of lepers in Nepal, while >Sky Burial (2005) depicts the ritual of jha-tor (giving alms to birds) in a northern Tibet monastery. The films will be followed by Sacrifice (1998), the final installment of Bruno's "Asian Trilogy" (1990-1998).

Bruno is a San Francisco-based documentary filmmaker whose works have won more than 25 national and international awards. A recipient of the Guggenheim, Rockefeller and The Herb Alpert Foundation Fellowships, Bruno has focused her attention on homelessness, Burmese prostitution, Tibetan nuns, health care in Cambodia, and other issues on the forefront of human rights.

Release Print magazine says, "The individuality of Bruno's work lies in the way she bridges experimental film techniques with documentary, creating dreamlike impressionistic portraits. Each film tries to explore a fundamental contradiction: how do you speak the unspeakable?"

Bruno's "Asian Trilogy" began with Samsara, her Master's thesis at Stanford (1990), which documents Cambodian life in the aftermath of Pol Pot's killing fields. It was followed by Satya: A Prayer for the Enemy, which looks at the repression suffered by Tibetan nuns at the hands of Chinese authorities. Bruno serves on the Board of Directors of the Buddhist Film Festival, The Pacific Pioneer Fund, and as an artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Ellen Bruno will be present at the REDCAT screening.

Jha-tor, the ritual depicted in Sky Burial (2005, 15 min), "offers the bodies of the dead to vultures as a final act of kindness to living beings." At the Drigung Monastery in Northern Tibet, lamas chant to call the consciousness from the body. Juniper incense is burned to summon the vultures. Special body breakers, or rogyapas, unwrap the bodies and cut away the flesh. The bones are crushed and mixed with tsampa, roasted barley flour. The bodies are completely consumed by the birds. "I was given the unusual consent to document a sky burial by the head lama," says Bruno. "The Tibetans believe the vultures to be Dakinis, which means "sky dancers"; like angels, they take the soul into the heavens."

Leper (2005, 25 min) was shot in a remote Nepalese village inhabited by a community of lepers. Villagers speak openly and emotionally about their relationship to their sickness, the "healthy" community outside the village boundaries, and the myriad of stigmas and misunderstandings that surround the disease. They describe how, after much struggle and hardship, they build new lives for themselves, recreating family and community in the context of the disease that has marked their bodies and their lives. Their poignant and revealing stories offer heartfelt reflections on societal fears and aversions to sickness, bodily differences, and death.

Sacrifice (1998, 50 min) examines the social, cultural, and economic forces at work in the trafficking of Burmese girls into prostitution in Thailand. Each year thousands of young girls are recruited from rural Burmese villages to work in the Thai sex industry. Held for years in debt bondage in illegal brothels, they suffer extreme abuse by pimps, clients, and the police. Human rights abuses, war and ethnic discrimination have displaced hundreds of thousands of families, leaving them with no means of livelihood. An offer of employment in Thailand is a rare chance for many families to escape extreme poverty. At great personal risk, Bruno entered Thai brothels and gained access to the teenage girls, listening to their stories and witnessing their efforts to survive a personal crisis born of economic and political repression.

These REDCAT screenings mark the Los Angeles Premiere of both Leper and Sacrifice. The evening's film presentation is organized in collaboration with The Herb Alpert Foundation.

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, performing and media arts, is located at the corner of W. 2nd St. and S. Hope St., inside the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex. Tickets are $8 for the general public, $6 for students with valid ID. Seating is general admission. Tickets may be purchased at the REDCAT box office -- located at the corner of 2nd and Hope Streets, by calling 213.237.2800, or by clicking here.

Upcoming Jack H. Skirball Screening Series, Fall 2005
Monday, November 28: First-Person Africa: An Evening with Jean-Marie Teno
Monday, December 5: Ellen Bruno: Stories of Death and Survival
Monday, December 12: Joseph Cornell: Film Constructions and Fantasies

REDCAT benefits from an endowment created through the generosity of The Walt Disney Company; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Robert B. Egelston; Lee and Lawrence J. Ramer; and Dorothy R. Sherwood.

REDCAT's 2005-06 season programming is generously supported by The Herb Alpert Foundation; American Composers Forum of Los Angeles; The Annenberg Foundation; Anonymous; Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund; California Community Foundation; The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation (Corporate matching gift); CEMAT (Centri Musicali Attrezzati, Rome); City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department; CONACULTA; Margit Sperling Cotsen and Lloyd Cotsen; Cultural Services of the French Embassy; Delphi Capital Management, Inc.; e-flux; Étant Donnés, The French-American Fund for the Visual Arts, a program of the French American Cultural Exchange; The French-American Fund for Contemporary Music, a program of FACE; French Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Harriett and Richard Gold; Lenore S. and Bernard A. Greenberg; Elyse and Stanley Grinstein; Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater; IIC (Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles); The Japan Foundation Performing Arts JAPAN; La Colección Jumex; kurimanzutto; L.A. Louver Gallery, Inc.; The Sharon D. Lund Foundation; Steve Martin; National Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; E. Nakamichi Foundation; Phaedrus Foundation; Vicki Reynolds Pepper and Murray Pepper; The Puffin Foundation, Inc.; V. Joy Simmons; The Skirball Foundation; SONORA, in collaboration with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Italy; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and White Cube Gallery, London.

As CalArts' downtown center for innovative visual, media and performing arts, REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, introduces diverse audiences, students and artists to the most influential developments in the arts from around the world, and gives artists in the Los Angeles region the creative support they need to achieve national and international stature. REDCAT is a center for experimentation, discovery and charged civic discourse.

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