In the Name of the Family
Chandani: The Daughter of the Elephant Whisperer
Blood in the Mobile
Vanishing of the Bees
The Storytelling Class
Breaking the Silence
The Chocolate Farmer

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In the Name of the Family
Director: Shelley Saywell
Year: 2010
Showing: Saturday, February 11 at 6:00pm
Trailer: www.bisharifilms.com

Film Summary:
On December 10, 2007, a 16-year-old Toronto schoolgirl, Aqsa, was strangled to death; her father and brother are charged with murder. Three weeks later, teenage sisters were shot to death in Dallas; their father is wanted for murder. Six months later, a 19-year-old college student was stabbed by her brother; he was convicted and is now in jail in New York. Friends and family of the murdered girls paint a chilling portrait of the forces that led to their deaths, and Toronto schoolgirls talk about their lives of constant fear. While Muslim women organize to help girls at risk and the imam at a Toronto mosque teaches that violence has no basis in Islam, some men continue to justify these crimes through patriarchal beliefs about family honour. Award-winning director Shelley Saywell brings her consummate documentary skills and passion for human rights to challenge the traditions that lie behind the heartbreaking tragedies committed against young girls caught between two cultures in North America.

BVJFF Conversation Leader: Swati E. Fernando
Swati E. Fernando is native of India and has been living in Calgary, AB Canada for last 31 years. She has one M.A. in Philosophy, psychology and sociology from India and one more incomplete M.A. from Adelaide Australia. She got her Registered Social Worker’s diploma from AB.in 2002. She is also a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher. For the last 27 years she has been working as a social worker in the immigrant community. She knows several languages which is why she is able to serve those who are living in Canada and do not speak any English and thus further at disadvantage to domestic violence. She has served many single women in that past 27 years and seen and heard their cries, who have saved the honour of their families by sacrificing their own self interests. She has started the women’s support group whereby she brings guest speakers from various walks of life and gives them knowledge about their health, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. She is the first woman in Canada to take immigrant women in group setting and do their cervical cancer tests, mammograms and bone density tests, pap tests. She has laid foundation to other immigrants to follow her path in the best interest of women’s health, who otherwise do not go for the vital tests. She deals with crisis domestic violence cases and sees the picture of honour saving from very close proximity. She has been awarded by the Minister of AB for her work for seniors, YMCA peace award, Harmony award by Baha'i community, John Hutton award by ACSW. By her presence in the Indian community she has helped reduce the domestic violence by 33%, so says the community. She sits on the Calgary South Asian Police Advisory Committee for last many years.She was on the Executive board of Project Ploughshares for many years. Currently she is working for the Calgary Community Outreach Services Society under the umbrella of United Nation’s NGO World Job & Food Bank. She has more than 2,000 clients and continues to do her service.

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Chandani: The Daughter of the Elephant Whisperer
Director: Arne Birkenstock
Year: 2010
Showing: Saturday, February 11 at 2:00pm
Trailer: www.zimbio.com
Family Film

Film Summary:
The destiny of a 16-year-old Sri Lankan girl named Chandani is closely bound to a little injured elephant, who has been taken to the elephant orphan hospital of Pinnawela National Park. If she succeeds in feeding the animal, her father - the main mahout of the elephant hospital and known as elephant whisperer throughout the country – will teach her to be the first female mahout in Sri Lanka. If she fails and the animal dies, she will have to bury her dream, not being able to fulfill the mahout tradition of her family.

BVJFF Conversation Leader: Alanna Thompson
Alanna is currently a full time Mom to her beautiful son Karsten. Her background is in wilderness educational programming where she specialized in working with junior high students. Alanna spent a year in Sri Lanka where she worked closely with local female staff learning a lot about the diverse issues facing Sri Lanka's women.

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Blood in the Mobile
Director: Frank Poulsen
Year: 2010
Showing: Saturday, February 11 at 7:30pm
Trailer: www.bloodinthemobile.org

Film Summary:
We love our cell phones, but the production of phones has a dark, bloody side. The minerals used to produce cell phones are coming from mines in the Eastern DR Congo. The Western World is buying these so-called conflict minerals and thereby finances a civil war that has been the bloodiest conflict since World War II. During the last 15 years the conflict has cost the lives of more than 5 million people and 300.000 women have been raped. The war will continue as long as armed groups can finance their warfare by selling minerals.

If you ask the phone companies where their suppliers get minerals from, none of them can guarantee that they aren’t buying conflict minerals from the Congo. Director Frank Poulsen travels to DR Congo to see the illegal mine industry with his own eyes. He gets access to Congo’s largest tin-mine, which is being controlled by different armed groups, and where children work for days in narrow mine tunnels to dig out the minerals that end up in our phones.

BVJFF Conversation Leader: Ed Wittingham
Ed Whittingham is the executive director of the Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental think tank whose mission is to advance sustainable energy solutions through research, advocacy, consulting and education.

Ed has led a variety of stakeholder, policy and technical analysis projects around sustainable energy production and consumption. These projects have been for provincial and federal governments departments and corporate clients in energy, energy services, utilities, pipelines, financial services, pulp and paper and real property. He also regularly assists Pembina's policy research projects in areas around low-carbon transportation policies, carbon capture and storage, cap-and-trade system design and heavy oil extraction.

Though his work Ed has served in an advisory capacity to companies, industry associations, government bodies and research networks on sustainable energy solutions. He regularly speaks to Canadian and American audiences on climate change, corporate sustainability, energy strategy and oil sands issues. Ed is also a faculty member of Leadership Development at The Banff Centre, a board member of Carbon Management Canada, an advisory board member of the Network for Business Sustainability, and an advisory council member of the Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business at the Schulich School of Business.

An avid outdoorsman who enjoys hiking, paddling, hunting, backcountry skiing and both playing and coaching hockey, Ed, his wife Yuka, and children Beck and Alice live happily in Banff.
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Vanishing of the Bees
Director: George Langworthy
Year: 2009
Showing: Saturday, February 11 at 4:00pm
Trailer: www.vimeo.com

Film Summary:
Honeybees have been disappearing across the planet. Colony Collapse Disorder has brought beekeepers to crisis in an industry responsible for pollinating crops that make up one out of every three bites of food on our tables.

The film follows David Hackenberg and Dave Mendes as they strive to keep their bees healthy, fulfill pollination contracts and struggle to plead their case on Capital Hill. Filmed across the US, in Europe, Australia and Asia, this film investigates the alarming disappearance of honeybees and the greater meaning it holds about the relationship between mankind and our earth.

BVJFF Conversation Leaders: Julie and Nathan Ryan
Julie and Nathan Ryan are a local couple committed to conservation and the life of bees. Julie is a park interpreter with Alberta Parks based out of Kananaskis Country and has been educating children and adults alike - local and otherwise - about the wildlife of Kananaskis Country. When not in the park, during the winter months, with musical theatre and artefacts as her tools, she travels school to school helping students understand how one person making a small change can have a large impact. Nathan Ryan has bees in his blood. His father Kevin Ryan, has been a beekeeper for 40+ years. Nathan finds beekeeping fascinating and would love to be a beekeeper; however, he has to keep a safe distance as he is severely allergic to bees. Not able to keep bees, Nathan made his way into the family business regardless - by opening Fallentimber Meadery. Mead is the oldest fermented beverage on earth and is a wine made from honey. Thanks to his love of bees and of course honey, Nathan has taken the family business to a new level.
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The Storytelling Class
Directors: John Paskievich and John Whiteway
Year: 2009
Showing: Saturday, February 11 at 12:30pm
Trailer: www.mcnabbconnolly.ca

Film Summary:
Gordon Bell High School in Winnipeg is comprised of rich and poor, aboriginals, Afghans, Arabs, Africans, refugees for war-torn countries, immigrants, and a recent influx of Burmese students. Marc Kuly, a teacher, set out to bring students together. In an effort to build bridges of friendship and belonging across cultures and histories, Marc initiated an after-school storytelling project whereby the immigrant students would share stories with their Canadian peers. By turns poignant, uplifting, angry and humorous, The Storytelling Class is a remarkable testament to the resilience of the human heart and its infinite capacity for forgiveness and redemption.



BVJFF Conversation Leader: Jeff Horvath
Jeff Horvath is a teacher at Canmore Collegiate High School. He has taught in several First Nations in Alberta. During the summer, he has worked for Outward Bound Canada guiding multi-week wilderness adventures for Aboriginal youth at risk. He is a member of the Ojibways of Onegaming in northwestern Ontario. He lives in Canmore, Alberta with his wife Genevieve Soler and their two children, Naashkii (3) and Zaagaate (1).

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Breaking the Silence
Directors: Pierre Mignault and Hélène Magny
Year: 2009
Showing: Friday, February 10 at 8:25pm
Trailer: www.informactionfilms.com

Film Summary:
Film directors clandestinely enter one of Burma’s most dangerous zones, penetrating to the heart of the Karen Nation, where civil war has been waging for 60 years. We travel to the country’s interior to meet peasants, as well as clandestine networks of armed resistance living in exile in Thailand, where determined political and human rights activists are working to combat one of the world’s bloodiest military dictatorships.

Breaking the Silence demonstrates the strength of the Burmese people’s resistance against one of the world’s worst dictatorships. We travel to the country’s interior to meet peasants, as well as clandestine networks of armed resistance living in exile in Thailand, where determined political and human rights activists are working to combat one of the world’s most bloody military dictatorships.

BVJFF Conversation Leaders: Shauna Jimenez & Chit Maung
Since working for UNHCR on the Thai-Cambodian border in 1982-1983, Shauna Jimenez has encouraged the private sponsorship of refugees to rural B.C., and to Calgary. Her group has sponsorship agreement holder status enabling them to sponsor refugees to Canada. The East Kootenay Friends of Burma, have privately sponsored over 200 refugees. This group managed a successful rural resettlement pilot project allowing 19 refugees to begin new lives in Kimberley BC. Three new Karen families will arrive in Calgary in late 2011, due to the effort of the recently formed group Calgary Friends of Burma.

Chit Maung is of Mon ethnic nationality from Burma and is a supporter of the Calgary Friends of Burma. He is grateful to participate in efforts by groups who are willing to help refugees from Burma and around the world. Chit is a political refugee who escaped arrest from the Burmese military regime after the nationwide general uprising for democracy and human rights in 1988. Chit believes that human rights are everyone's birthright, no one can force a man against his own will, and he will continue the struggle, along with his ethnic brothers and democratic forces, to achieve the ultimate goal: freedom!
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The Chocolate Farmer
Producer: Rohan Fernando
Year: 2010
Showing: Friday, February 10 at 7:00pm
Trailer: www.nfb.ca

Film Summary:
In an unspoiled corner of southern Belize, cacao farmer Eladio Pop works his plantation in the tradition of his Mayan ancestors—as a steward of the land. A tender and poetic tale, director Rohan Fernando’s lush cinematic journey captures the life of the Pop family as they struggle to preserve their values in a world that is dramatically changing. When the promise of land ownership suddenly replaces a communal approach to cultivating this beautiful land, which is naturally rich with cacao trees, new ideals of capitalism are introduced. Soon, greed ensues and the time-honoured methods of farming, proven sustainable over centuries, are under threat. With profound insight, Eladio Pop understands what is at stake—even while his family becomes as divided as his once united, strong community. The Chocolate Farmer challenges our deeply held assumptions of progress.

BVJFF Conversation Leader: Carlos R. Garcia
Carlos R. Garcia is a Central American native who specializes in rural community development and conservation research throughout the region. He has held many appointments with community based groups, environmental organizations, international development agencies and academic institutions including: The United Nations-Mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica), The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (Nicaragua) and the Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg Band Office (Quebec, Canada). He has lived and/or worked professionally in: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panamá. He currently resides in Canmore, Alberta where he works for the Water Matters Society of Alberta and also serves as lead instructor for the Wildlands Studies field projects (affiliate of California State University, Monterey Bay Extended Education) in Costa Rica and Guatemala.