Here are the 117 movies set to screen at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Posted on by emandowa

Here are the 119 movies, announced Nov. 28 by the Sundance Institute (and updated Dec. 20, Jan. 9 and 11) that will screen at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The festival runs Jan. 24-Feb. 3 in Park City and at venues in Salt Lake City and the Sundance resort.

Some passes are still on sale at sundance.org. So are 10-ticket packages for the festival’s second half (Jan. 30-Feb. 3), for Salt Lake City screenings, and for Utah students. The schedule of when and where movies will screen will be posted soon on sundance.org.

People who have bought ticket packages will be assigned time slots for ticket selection on Dec. 20, and selections will happen from Jan. 7 to 11. Utah ticket-package buyers will make their selections on Jan. 10 and 11.

Pre-sale of individual tickets for Sundance Institute members starts on Jan. 15. Individual tickets for Utah locals go on sale on Jan. 17. Individual tickets for everyone else go on sale Jan. 22. Individual tickets are $25 each; tickets for the electronic wait-list are $20; tickets for Kids division screenings are $10 each.

U.S. Dramatic Competition

“Before You Know It” • The makers of the web series “Disengaged” created this comedy about adult sisters (played by director/writer Hannah Pearl Utt and writer Jen Tullock) who learn their believed-to-be-deceased mom (Judith Light) is alive and starring in a soap opera. Also starring Mandy Patinkin, Mike Colter and Alec Baldwin.

“Big Time Adolescence” • Jason Orley wrote and directed this coming-of-age comedy about a teen (Griffin Gluck) and the bad influence of his best friend (“Saturday Night Live’s” Pete Davidson), a charismatic college dropout. Also starring Jon Cryer and Machine Gun Kelly.

“Brittany Runs a Marathon” • Comic actor Jillian Bell (“22 Jump Street,” “Idiotsitter”) stars in Paul Downs Colazzo’s comedy as an underachiever who “takes control of her life, one city block at a time.” Also starring Michaela Watkins and Lil Rel Howery (“Get Out,” “Uncle Drew”).

“Clemency” • Alfre Woodard stars in this drama, written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu, as a job-weary prison warden who connects with a death row inmate (Aldis Hodge). Also stars Richard Schiff and Wendell Pierce.

“The Farewell” • Comedian/rapper Awkwafina (“Crazy Rich Asians”) stars in this comedy-drama, written and directed by Lulu Wang, who told the same true story in 2016 on public radio’s “This American Life.” It’s about a Chinese-American woman who returns to China to see her grandmother, whose family sets up an elaborate plan to hide the news that she has a terminal illness.

“Hala” • Writer-director Minhal Baig adapts her 2016 short into a feature, a coming-of-age comedy-drama about a Muslim teenager (Geraldine Viswanathan, from “Blockers”) coming into her own while her family is falling apart.

“Honey Boy” • Lucas Hedges (“Boy Erased”) and Shia LaBeouf star as a child TV star and his father, a hard-drinking ex-rodeo clown, in this drama. LaBeouf wrote the screenplay; the director is documentarian Alma Har’el. Also starring Laura San Giacomo, Maika Monroe, Natasha Lyonne, Martin Starr and FKA Twigs.

“Imaginary Order” • Wendy McLendon-Covey (“The Goldbergs”) stars in writer-director Debra Eisenstadt’s psychological drama about an obsessive-compulsive suburban mom.

“The Last Black Man in San Francisco” • Jimmie Falls plays himself, a man who dreams of restoring the Victorian home his grandfather (Danny Glover) built in the heart of San Francisco — a city rapidly changing and leaving Jimmie behind. Director Joe Talbot co-wrote the screenplay with Rob Richert.

“Luce” • A high-school teacher (Octavia Spencer) makes an alarming discovery about one of her students, Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a star track athlete adopted by suburban parents (Naomi Watts, Tim Roth) from war-torn Eritrea, in this drama about race and identity. Director Julius Onah (“The Cloverfield Paradox”) and writer J.C. Lee adapted the script from Lee’s play.

“Ms. Purple” • Kasie (Tiffany Chu), a karaoke hostess in L.A.’s Koreatown, reconnects with her estranged brother Carey (Teddy Chu) when their father’s hospice nurse quits. Director Justin Chon (“Gook,” SFF ’17) co-wrote with Chris Dinh.

“Native Son” • Richard Wright’s landmark 1940 novel gets a movie adaptation, with Ashton Sanders (“Moonlight”) starring as Bigger Thomas, a young African-American man coming of age on Chicago’s South Side in the 1930s. The cast includes Sanaa Lathan, Nick Robinson, Margaret Qualley and Bill Camp. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks wrote the screenplay; artist Rashid Johnson makes his directing debut. (This is a “Day One” film, which screens on the festival’s opening night.)

“Share” • Mandy (Rhianne Barreto), 16, discovers a disturbing video of herself from a night she doesn’t remember, and furiously tries to learn what happened and how to contain the damage. Writer-director Pippa Bianco expanded her 2015 short film, an award winner at Cannes and SXSW, for this thriller.

“The Sound of Silence” • Director-writer Michael Tyburski and co-writer Ben Nabors adapt their short “Palimpsest” (SFF ’13) for this drama about a New York City “house tuner” (Peter Skarsgaard), who calibrates the sound in people’s homes to adjust their moods, as he meets a client (Rashida Jones) with an unsolvable problem. Also starring Tony Revolori (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) and Austin Pendleton (“The Muppet Movie”).

“Them That Follow” • Britt Poulton and Dan Madison Savage wrote and directed this drama set in a snake-handling Pentecostal church in Appalachia, focusing on a pastor’s daughter (Alice Englert) whose secret could tear her community apart. Also starring Olivia Colman, Walton Goggins, Kaitlyn Dever and Jim Gaffigan.

“To the Stars” • A shy farmer’s daughter (Kara Hayward, from “Moonlight Kingdom”) begins an intimate friendship with a worldly new girl (Liana Liberato) under the gaze of her small-town neighbors in 1960s Oklahoma. The cast includes Jordana Spiro, Tony Hale, Shea Whigham and Malin Akerman. Directed by Martha Stephens (“Land Ho!”, SFF ’14), written by Shannon Bradley-Colleary.

—————

U.S. Documentary Competition

“Always in Season” • Director Jacqueline Olive examines a century of lynching in America, focusing on the 2014 hanging death of a North Carolina teen and his mother’s search for justice and reconciliation.

[embedded content]

“American Factory” • Chinese billionaire Cho Tak Wong aims to turn a shuttered GM plant in Ohio into a new auto-glass factory, promising 2,000 new jobs, but clashes between high-tech China and working-class America bring setbacks. Directors Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (“A Lion in the House,” SFF ’06) got an Oscar nomination for their 2009 documentary short “The Last Truck,” which chronicled the same GM plant’s closure.

“Apollo 11” • “First Man” as a documentary, as director Todd Douglas Miller (“Dinosaur 13,” SFF ’14) uses never-before-published 70mm footage and audio to reconstruct humanity’s first trip to the moon.

[embedded content]

“Bedlam” • Psychiatrist and filmmaker Kenneth Paul Rosenberg visits emergency rooms, jails and homeless camps to chronicle the lives of the seriously mentally ill.

“David Crosby: Remember My Name” • An intensely intimate portrait of musician David Crosby, from his days in Crosby Stills & Nash to today. Directed by A.J. Eaton.

“Hail Satan?” • A look at The Satanic Temple, which has grown in only six years into one of the most controversial religious movements in American history. Directed by Penny Lane, whose animated documentary “Nuts!” played Sundance in 2016.

“Jawline” • Director Liza Mandelup profiles social-media star Austyn Tester, who uses his internet fame to escape a dead-end life in rural Tennessee.

“Knock Down the House” • Director Rachel Lears follows four insurgent woman candidates challenging incumbents for congressional seats. Spoiler alert: One of them is former Bronx bartender Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

[embedded content]

“Midnight Family” (Mexico/U.S.) • Director Luke Lorentzen follows the Ochoa family, who operate a private ambulance in Mexico City’s wealthiest neighborhoods in a cutthroat competition with rival EMTs and try to make ends meet without sacrificing patient care.

“Mike Wallace Is Here” • TV journalist Mike Wallace’s long and controversial career as the bulldog investigative reporter on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” and how it influences today’s news coverage, is examined entirely through archival footage. Directed by Avi Belkin.

“Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements” • Director Irene Taylor Brodsky (“Hear and Now,” Audience Award winner, SFF ’07) paints portraits of a deaf boy growing up, his deaf grandfather, and Ludwig von Beethoven the year he went deaf and wrote his famed sonata.

“One Child Nation” (China/U.S.) • Exploring China’s one-child-per-couple policy, Nanfu Wang — who was herself an only child and is now a mother — and Jialing Zhang examine how the social experiment forever affected generations of parents and children.

“Pahokee” • In Pahokee, Fla., a small town in the Everglades, four teens experience heartbreak and more in their senior year. Directors Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan expand on their short doc “The Send-Off” (SFF ’16).

“Tigerland” • Director Ross Kauffman (“E-Team,” SFF ’14; “Born Into Brothels,” SFF ’04) captures footage of tigers in the wild from India to Siberia and profiles the people working to save them from extinction.

“Untitled Amazing Johnathan Documentary” • Director Ben Berman tries to separate truth from illusion in this look at John Edward Szeles, better known as the comedy magician The Amazing Johnathan, who went on what he said would be his final tour in 2013 — because, he said, he had a year to live.

“Where’s My Roy Cohn?” • Attorney Roy Cohn, the dark manipulator who guided Joseph McCarthy and the young Donald Trump, is revealed in this thriller-like exposé by director Matt Tyrnauer (“Studio 54,” SFF ’18).

—————

World Cinema Dramatic Competition

“Dirty God” (Netherlands/United Kingdom/Belgium/Ireland) • A young mother (Vicky Knight) finds her life spiraling out of control after an acid attack leaves her severely burned, and she takes drastic action to reclaim control. Directed by Sacha Polak, who co-wrote with Susanne Farrell.

“Divine Love” (Brazil/Uruguay/Denmark/Norway) • In Brazil, 2027, a religious woman (Dira Praes) uses her position in a notary’s office to keep struggling couples from divorce — until she has a problem in her own marriage. Director Gabriel Mascaro co-wrote the script with Rachel Daisy Ellis and Esdras Bezerra.

“Dolce Fine Giornata” (Poland) • The setting is Tuscany, amid terrorism and eroding democracy, as Maria (Krystyna Janda) finds her stable family life crumbling when she begins a relationship with a young immigrant (Lorenzo de Moor). Director Jacek Borcuch co-wrote the script with Szczepan Twardoch.

“Judy & Punch” (Australia) • In writer-director Mirrah Foulkes’ drama, two puppeteers try to resurrect their marionette show, which is a success thanks to Judy (Mia Wasikowska) and her superior puppetry skills — but is endangered by Punch (Damon Herriman) and his ambition and his drinking.

“Koko-di Koko-da” (Sweden/Denmark) • A couple, mourning the loss of their daughter, take a road trip and become terrorized by a sideshow artist and his entourage in writer-director Johannes Nyholm’s psychological thriller.

“The Last Tree” (United Kingdom) • In writer-director Shola Amoo’s coming-of-age drama, Femi (Sam Adewunmi), a British teen of Nigerian heritage, struggles with culture shock when he must leave his happy rural childhood to live in London with his mum.

“Monos” (Colombia/Argentina/Netherlands/Germany/Sweden/Uruguay) • Eight kids with guns watch over a hostage (Julianne Nicholson) and a milk cow on a mountaintop in this drama directed by Alejandro Landes and written by Landes and Alexis Dos Santos.

“Queen of Hearts” (Denmark) • A woman (Trine Dyrholm) seduces her 17-year-old stepson (Gustav Lindh), putting her family and career in jeopardy, in this drama directed by May El-Toukhy, who co-wrote with Maren Louise Käehne.

“The Sharks” (Uruguay/Argentina/Spain) • Writer-director Lucía Garibaldi’s drama centers on 14-year-old Rosina (Romina Bentancur), the only person in her small beach town not panicked by news that sharks are swimming around.

“The Souvenir” (United Kingdom) • A film student (Honor Swinton Byrne) starts a courtship with an untrustworthy man (Tom Burke), defying her mother (played by the actress’s mum, Tilda Swinton) and worrying her friends, in writer-director Joanna Hogg’s romantic drama.

“This Is Not Berlin” (Mexico) • A misfit teen (Xabiani Ponce de León) is invited to a mythical nightclub, where he finds an underground nightlife scene of punk, drugs and sexual liberty. Director Haro Sana co-wrote with Rodrigo Ordóñez and Max Zunino.

“We Are Little Zombies” (Japan) • Writer-director Makoto Nagahisa — who won Sundance’s 2017 Grand Jury Prize for short films with “And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool” — makes his feature debut with this story of four 13-year-olds who form a band to cope with their emotions after the deaths of their parents.

[embedded content]

—————

World Cinema Documentary Competition

“Advocate” (Israel/Canada/Switzerland) • Filmmakers Rachel Leah Jones and Philippe Bellaiche profile Lea Tsemel, a Jewish-Israeli lawyer who has defended Palestinians of all stripes — feminists to fundamentalists, nonviolent demonstrators and armed militants — for nearly 50 years.

“Cold Case Hammarskjold” (Denmark) • Filmmaker Mads Brügger, who went undercover as a corruptible diplomat in “The Ambassador” (SFF ’12), teams with private eye Göran Bjorkdahl to investigate the still-unsolved death of U.N. Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, whose plane went down in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in 1961.

“The Disappearance of My Mother” (Italy) • Filmmaker Benjamin Baresse turns the camera on his mother, once-iconic fashion model Benedetta Barzini, 73, as she plans to leave Milan for a solitary life on a faraway island.

“The Edge of Democracy” (Brazil) • Director Petra Costa gets insider access to tell a tale of two presidents — Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, aka Lula, the charismatic and now jailed leader of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, and Dilma Rousseff, his chief-of-staff and successor, impeached and removed from office in 2016 — and what their story means for democracy in the South American country.

“Gaza” (Ireland) • Filmmakers Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell aim to get past the headlines and look at the people living in Gaza, leading their lives amid the rubble of never-ending conflict.

“Honeyland” (Macedonia) • Europe’s last female bee hunter is on a mission: to save the bees taken by nomadic beekeepers and restore the natural balance. Directed by Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska.

“Lapü” (Colombia) • In the Guajira Desert, Doris, a member of the indigenous Wayuu people, exhumes her cousin’s remains for a ritual in which Doris confronts death and blends the worlds of dreams and the living. Directed by Juan Pablo Polanco and César Alejandro Jaimes.

“The Magic Life of V” (Finland/Denmark/Bulgaria) • Director Tonislav Hristov follows Veera, who uses live role-playing to become more independent, help her mentally challenged brother and confront the legacy of their abusive father.

[embedded content]

“Midnight Traveler” (U.S./Qatar/United Kingdom/Canada) • Afghan filmmaker Hassan Fazili chronicles his own journey, fleeing the Taliban with his wife and two young daughters, and shows firsthand what refugees face when they seek asylum.

“Sea of Shadows” (Austria) • Environmentalists, the Mexican navy and undercover investigators work to protect the vaquita, the smallest species of whale, which is being destroyed by Mexican cartels and Chinese mobsters harvesting swim bladders of the totoaba fish — called “the cocaine of the sea.” Director Richard Ladkani goes along for the ride.

“Shooting the Mafia” (Ireland) • Documentarian Kim Longinotto (“Dreamcatcher,” SFF ’15) profiles photographer Letizia Battaglia, who for 40 years has captured images of her home in Sicily — in particular, the brutality of the Mafia.

“Stieg Larsson: The Man Who Played With Fire” • Filmmaker Henrik Georgsson uses re-enactments to create a portrait of Stieg Larsson, the author of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” and his battles with right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis.

—————

“Adam” • Director Rhys Ernst and screenwriter Ariel Schrag adapt Schrag’s coming-of-age novel about an awkward teen boy (Nicholas Alexander) who follows his sister (Margaret Qualley) into New York’s lesbian and trans activist scene.

“The Death of Dick Long” • Two guys try to keep private the details of how their friend Dick died, a tough task in a small Alabama town where news travels fast. Directed by Daniel Scheinert (“Swiss Army Man,” SFF ’16), written by Billy Chew.

“Give Me Liberty” • A medical transport driver has to choose between transporting a group of elderly Russians and helping a young black woman with ALS, all while a riot breaks out in America’s most segregated city, Milwaukee. Kirill Mikhanovsky directed this comedy-drama about immigrants and the American dream, which he co-wrote with Alice Austen.

“The Infiltrators” • A group of undocumented Dreamers deliberately gets detained by U.S. Border Patrol to get inside a mysterious for-profit detention center. Directed by Alex Rivera (“Sleep Dealer,” SFF ’08) and Cristina Ibarra; written by Rivera and Aldo Velasco.

“Light From Light” • Shelia (Marin Ireland), a single mom and part-time paranormal investigator, looks into a possible “haunting” at a widower’s farmhouse in Tennessee in this ghost story written and directed by Paul Harris.

“Paradise Hills” (Spain/U.S.) • Spanish filmmaker/photographer Alice Waddington makes her feature debut with this science-fiction thriller, starring Emma Roberts as a woman who is sent to a high-class reform facility with a dark secret. The cast includes Danielle Macdonald (“Patti Cake$,” SFF ’17), Awkwafina, Eiza González, Milla Jovovich and Jeremy Irvine. Written by Nacho Vigalondo (“Colossal,” SFF ’17) and Brian DeLeeuw.

“Premature” • Ayanna (Zora Howard) is preparing to leave Harlem for college when she meets Isaiah (Joshua Boone), a mysterious outsider, in this coming-of-age drama directed by Rashaad Ernesto Green (“Gun Hill Road,” SFF ’11) and written by Green and Howard.

“Selah and the Spades” • Writer-director Tayarisha Poe dissects the power politics of a prestigious boarding school, where Selah Summers (Lovie Simone) is feared and loved as leader of the most powerful faction, The Spades.

“Sister Aimee” • Samantha Buck and Marie Schlingmann wrote and directed this fictionalized look at the life of Aimee Semple McPherson (Anna Margaret Hollyman), the famed evangelist who in 1926 is looking for a way out of the spotlight — and ends up on a wild road trip toward Mexico.

“The Wolf Hour” • Naomi Watts stars as June E. Leigh, a former counterculture figure who in 1977 — the “Summer of Sam” — is living alone in the South Bronx, tormented by someone who knows how to find her weaknesses. Written and directed by Alistair Banks Griffin; the cast includes Emory Cohen, Jennifer Ehle and Kelvin Harrison Jr.

—————

“After the Wedding” • Michelle Williams stars as Isabel, who courts a New York benefactor, Theresa (Julianne Moore), to donate to her orphanage in India. An invitation to a wedding causes Isabel’s past and present to collide. This drama by writer-director Bart Freundlich (“The Myth of Fingerprints,” SFF ’97) is remake of a 2006 Danish Oscar nominee by writer-director Susanne Bier (“In a Better World,” SFF ’11). (This is a “Day One” film, screening on the festival’s opening night.)

“Animals” (United Kingdom/Ireland/Australia) • Laura (Holliday Grainger) and Tyler (Alia Shawkat) have been hard-partying pals for a decade, but Laura’s new romance and her focus on her novel are straining that friendship. Sophie Hyde (“52 Tuesdays,” SFF ’14) directs a screenplay by Emma Jane Unsworth.

“Blinded by the Light” (United Kingdom) • Bend it like the Boss? “Bend It Like Beckham” director Gurinder Chadha (“What’s Cooking?” SFF ’00) returns with this coming-of-age comedy set in Thatcher-era England, about a teen (Viveik Kalra) who tries to understand his world through the music of Bruce Springsteen. Chadha co-wrote with Sarfraz Manzoor and Paul Mayeda Berges. The cast includes Hayley Atwell and Rob Brydon.

“The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” (United Kingdom) • Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) makes his feature debut as a writer and director in this true story of William Kamkwamba (Maxwell Simba), a 13-year-old Malawi boy who sought to save his family and village from famine by building a wind turbine. Ejiofor also stars as William’s father.

“Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” • Zac Efron plays serial killer Ted Bundy, whose exploits through Washington state and Utah are seen from the vantage point of his girlfriend Liz Kloepfer (Lily Collins), who refused to believe the truth for years. Documentarian Joe Berlinger (“Brother’s Keeper,” SFF ’92; “Paradise Lost,” SFF ’96, among others) directs a script by Michael Werwie. The cast includes Haley Joel Osment, Kaya Scodelario, John Malkovich, Jim Parsons and Metallica’s James Hetfield.

“Fighting With My Family” • Stephen Merchant (co-creator of “The Office”) wrote and directed this comedy, about an English teen (Florence Pugh) whose dreams of being a pro wrestler leads to an audition with the WWE. Nick Frost (“Shaun of the Dead” and Lena Heady “Game of Thrones”) play her parents, Vince Vaughn co-stars, and Dwayne Johnson plays himself.

[embedded content]

“I Am Mother” (Australia) • In this dystopian science-fiction drama, a teen girl (Clara Rugaard) is raised by a robot, Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne), designed to repopulate Planet Earth — until a stranger (Hilary Swank) arrives with alarming news. Directed by Grant Sputore, written by Michael Lloyd Green.

“Late Night” • Mindy Kaling wrote and stars in this comedy as the first female staff writer for a legendary late-night talk show host (Emma Thompson), whose differences are bridged by their shared love of a sharp joke. Directed by Nisha Ganatra, a veteran TV director, the movie also stars John Lithgow, Paul Walter Hauser, Reid Scott and Amy Ryan.

“The Mustang” • Roman Coleman (Matthias Schoenaerts), a violent convict, is given a chance at redemption in a rehabilitation program to train wild mustangs. Directed by French actor Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who wrote with Mona Fastvold and Brock Norman Brock. The cast includes Connie Britton, Bruce Dern, Jason Mitchell, Gideon Adlon and Josh Stewart.

[embedded content]

“Official Secrets” (U.S./United Kingdom) • Keira Knightley stars in this true-life drama as British Intelligence whistleblower Katharine Gun, who before the 2003 Iraq invasion leaked a top-secret NSA memo exposing a U.S./U.K. spying operation against members of the U.N. Security Council — with the intent of blackmailing countries into supporting the war. Gavin Hood (“Ender’s Game”) directed, and co-wrote the screenplay with husband-and-wife writers Sara and Gregory Bernstein. The cast includes Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans.

“Paddleton” • In writer-director Alex Lehmann’s comedy-drama, Mark Duplass and Ray Romano play misfit neighbors who become unlikely friends when the younger man is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Also starring Christine Woods.

[embedded content]

“Photograph” (India) • Director-writer Ritesh Batra (“Our Souls at Night,” “The Lunchbox”) returns to his native Mumbai for this romance about a street photographer (Nawazuddin Siddiqi) who asks a shy stranger (Sanya Malhotra) to pose as his fiancée to get his family off his back.

“Relive” • After a man’s family dies in an apparent homicide case, he (David Oyelowo) gets a phone call from his niece (Storm Reid, from “A Wrinkle in Time”) — one of those killed. Is she a ghost? Is he going mad? Or will her calls help him rewrite history? Director Jacob Estes (“The Details,” SFF ’11) co-wrote with Drew Daywalt. The cast includes Mykelti Williamson, Alfred Molina and Bryan Tyree Henry.

“The Report” • Adam Driver stars in writer-director Scott Z. Burns’ true-life political drama as Daniel Jones, lead investigator of the U.S. Senate’s study of the CIA program to detain, interrogate and torture detainees during the Iraq War. Also starring Annette Bening, Jon Hamm, Ted Levine, Maura Tierney, Tim Blake Nelson, Jennifer Morrison and Michael C. Hall.

“Sonja: The White Swan” (Norway) • A biopic of Sonja Henie, the 1930s Olympian who invented modern figure skating and who sacrificed everything to become a Hollywood star. Ine Marie Wilmann plays Henie, reteaming with director Anne Sewitsky (“Homesick,” SFF ’15). Written by Mette Marit Bølstad and Andreaas Markusson.

“The Sunlit Night” (Germany/Norway) • An American painter (Jenny Slate) and a Russian émigré (Alex Sharp) meet under the midnight sun north of the Arctic Circle in this romantic drama directed by David Wnendt and written by Rebecca Dinerstein, based on her novel. The cast includes Zach Galifianakis, Gillian Anderson, Fridjov Sáheim and David Paymer.

“The Tomorrow Man” • Music-video director Noble Jones wrote and directed this love story between two people with a lot of stuff: Ed (John Lithgow), preparing for a disaster that may never come, and Ronnie (Blythe Danner), who shops for things she may never use.

“Top End Wedding” (Australia) • Lauren (Miranda Tapsell) and Ned (Gwylim Lee, from “Bohemian Rhapsody”) are getting married in 10 days — if they can find Lauren’s missing mom (Kerry Fox) in northern Australia, reunite her parents and pull off their dream wedding. Wayne Blair directs this comedy, written by Tapsell and Joshua Tyler.

“Troop Zero” • A misfit girl (McKenna Grace) in rural Georgia in 1977 dreams of outer space, and a national competition to be included on NASA’s Golden Record gives her a chance to make that dream come true — with the help of a makeshift group of Birdie Scouts. The female directing duo Bert & Bertie makes its feature debut, with a script by Lucy Alibar (“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” SFF ’12). The cast includes Viola Davis, Jim Gaffigan, Mike Epps, Charlie Shotwell and Allison Janney.

[embedded content]

“Velvet Buzzsaw” • Artists and collectors collide in Los Angeles’ contemporary art scene in this Netflix-produced horror-thriller, which reunites star Jake Gyllenhaal with “Nightcrawler” writer-director Dan Gilroy. Also starring Rene Russo, Toni Collette, Zawe Ashton, Tom Sturridge and Natalia Dyer (“Stranger Things”).

—————

Documentary Premieres

“Ask Dr. Ruth” • Director Ryan White (“The Case Against 8,” SFF ’14) gets Dr. Ruth Westheimer, at 90 years old, to look back on her past as a Holocaust survivor and as America’s best-known sex therapist.

“The Brink” • Director Alison Klayman (“Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” SFF ’12) far-right political advisor Steve Bannon in his days after leaving Donald Trump’s White House, as self-appointed leader of the “populist movement,” spreading a hardline anti-immigration message across America and around the world.

“The Great Hack” • The team behind the Arab Spring documentary “The Square” (SFF ’13), Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, examines the Cambridge Analytica Facebook hack — and how control of one’s data is becoming the newest human right.

“Halston” • French director Frédéric Tcheng continues his chronicles of the fashion world (after documentaries on Diana Vreeland and the house of Dior) with this rags-to-riches story of America’s first superstar designer, who saw his name become a tradable commodity that he could not control.

“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” • Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” SFF ’05) looks at the rise and fall of Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes and her too-good-to-be-true invention that promised to change the way blood is tested.

“Love, Antosha” • The too-short but extraordinary life of actor Anton Yelchin — from indie glory (such as “Like Crazy,” Grand Jury Prize winner, SFF ’11) to mainstream success (Chekov in the “Star Trek” reboot) — is examined by director Garret Price.

“Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love” • Director Nick Broomfield (whose “Kurt & Courtney” almost screened at Sundance in 1998) chronicles the unconventional love story of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian muse, Marianne Ihlen.

“Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen” (New Zealand) • Director Merata Mita, a pioneer in bringing Maori stories to the screen and inspiring indigenous filmmakers around the world, is shown in archival footage from the perspective of her children. Her youngest, Heperi Mita, is the film’s director.

[embedded content]

“Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool” • Sundance regular Stanley Nelson (“Tell Them We Are Rising,” SFF ’17, among others) presents a portrait of jazz innovator and icon Miles Davis.

“Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins” • Texas journalist, political columnist and social critic Molly Ivins — who took on Reagan, Clinton and two Bushes in defense of the Bill of Rights — gets the documentary treatment from director Janice Engel.

“Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” • Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (“The Black List,” “The Trans List”) looks at the life and career of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, author of “Beloved,” “God Help the Child” and other novels.

“Untouchable” • Harvey Weinstein isn’t buying movies at Sundance anymore, but he is featured in one: Ursula Macfarlane’s examination of how the movie mogul acquired and protected his power as charges of sexual assault became too loud for even Hollywood to ignore.

“Words From a Bear” • Jeffrey Palmer’s documentary — produced for PBS’ “American Masters” series — connects the words of Kiowa author and Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday to his American Indian experience.

—————

“Corporate Animals” • A team-building trip in New Mexico turns into an underground test of survival for an egotistical CEO (Demi Moore), her long-suffering assistants (Jessica Williams and Karan Soni), their clueless guide (Ed Helms) and others. The horror-comedy is directed by Patrick Brice (“The Overnight,” SFF ’15) and written by Sam Bain.

“Greener Grass” • In this dark comedy by writer-director-stars Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, soccer moms compete in their personal lives while their kids battle on the field.

“The Hole in the Ground” (Ireland) • A troubled mom (Seána Kerslake) panics when her son (James Quinn Markey) disappears in the woods behind their rural house — and becomes more distraught when he returns seemingly OK, but somehow different. Director Lee Cronin co-wrote this horror tale with Stephen Shields.

[embedded content]

“Little Monsters” (Australia) • In writer-director Abe Forsythe’s horror-comedy, a down-on-his-luck musician (Alexander England) chaperones his nephew’s kindergarten field trip and must team up with the teacher (Lupita Nyong’o) and a kids-show personality (Josh Gad) to protect the children from a sudden zombie outbreak.

“The Lodge” (U.S./United Kingdom) • A bride-to-be (Riley Keough) is snowed in with her future stepchildren (Jaden Martell, Lia McHugh) when demons from her strict religious childhood come out to torment them. Directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala share screenwriting credit with Sergio Casci. Alicia Silverstone and Richard Armitage also star.

“Memory: The Origins of ‘Alien’ ” • Documentarian Alexandre O. Phillippe, who dissected the “Psycho” shower scene in “78/52” (SFF ’17), ties together the threads of mythology and art that inspired Ridley Scott’s 1979 horror/science-fiction classic “Alien.”

“Mope” • A “mope,” the synopsis for director Lucas Heyne’s comedy-drama explains, is the lowest-level male performer in the porn industry. The question the film asks is whether two “mopes” can become porn “stars.” Heyne co-wrote with Zack Newkirk.

“Sweetheart” • In this horror-thriller, Kiersey Clemons stars as a woman who washes up on a tropical island and must battle the elements, loneliness and the malevolent force that comes out at night. Director J.D. Dillard (“Sleight,” SFF ’16) co-wrote with Alex Theurer and Alex Hyner.

“Wounds” • A bartender (Armie Hammer) in New Orleans picks up a phone left behind at his bar, and then disturbing and mysterious things start to happen. Dakota Johnson, Zazie Beetz, Karl Glusman and Brad William Henke co-star in this horror thriller written and directed by Babak Anvari (“Under the Shadow,” SFF ’16).

—————

“Anthropocene: The Human Epoch” (Canada) • From concrete seawalls in China to giant machines in Germany, from psychedelic potash mines in the Ural Mountains to conservation sanctuaries in Kenya, filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky — the team behind “Manufactured Landscapes” (SFF ’07) — travel to 20 countries on six continents to document how humans dominate the planet. Alicia Vikander narrates.

[embedded content]

“The Biggest Little Farm” • John Chester, the film’s director, chronicles eight years in which he and his wife, Molly, attempted to start a 200-acre farm in Ventura County, on land depleted of nutrients as California suffered a major drought.

“Birds of Passage” (Colombia) • This drama chronicles the growth of Colombia’s drug trade in the 1970s though the prism of Rapayet (José Acosta), a member of the indigenous Wayuu tribe that is caught in the middle of the violence. Directed by Ciro Guerra (“Embrace of the Serpent,” SFF ’16) and Christina Gallego; written by Maria Camila Arias and Jacques Toulemonde.

[embedded content]

“Maiden” (United Kingdom) • Documentarian Alex Holmes tells the story of Tracy Edwards, the 24-year-old who skippered the first all-woman international crew in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

“The Mountain” • Andy (Tye Sheridan), a young man whose mother is committed to an institution in the 1950s, takes a job as photographer for a doctor (Jeff Goldblum) touring asylums to advocate for his controversial lobotomy procedure. Director Rick Alverson (“The Comedy,” SFF ’12) co-wrote with Colm O’Leary and Salt Lake City native Dustin Defa.

“The Nightingale” (Australia) • Writer-director Jennifer Kent, who brought forth “The Babadook” (SFF ’14), returns with this thriller set in 1825, where an imprisoned Irishwoman (Aisling Franciosi), aided by an Aboriginal tracker (Baykali Ganambarr), chases a British officer (Sam Claflin) through Tasmania, seeking revenge for what he did to her family.

—————

“Abe” (Brazil) • One 12-year-old Brooklyn kid (Noah Schnapp, from “Stranger Things”), mentored by an Afro-Brazilian chef (singer Seu Jorge), tries to use cooking to settle the long-simmering fight between the Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Muslim sides of his family. Directed by Fernando Grostein Andrade; written by Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader.

“The Elephant Queen” (United Kingdom/Kenya) • Athena, a mother elephant, must lead her herd across the African savannah to find a new watering hole. This documentary is directed by husband-and-wife nature filmmakers Mark Deeble and Victoria Stone, and narrated by Chiwetel Ejiofor.

“The Witch Hunters” (Serbia/Macedonia) • Jovan (Mihajlo Milavic), a shy 10-year-old with mild cerebral palsy, is enlisted by a new classmate, Milica (Silma Mahmuti), for a mission: to prove that Milica’s dad’s new girlfriend is a witch. Rasko Miljkovic directs this adventure-drama, with screenwriters Milos Kreckovic and Marko Manjlovic adapting Jasminka Petrovic’s novel.

[embedded content]

—————

From the Collection

“The Blair Witch Project” • A 20th anniversary screening of directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’ 1999 horror thriller — about three college students (Heather Donohue, Joshua Leonard, Michael Williams) who get lost in the woods while shooting a documentary — that broke ground for do-it-yourself filmmaking and spawned a generation of “found footage” imitators.

[embedded content]

“The Hours and Times” • Christopher Munch’s landmark 1992 film, which imagines what might have happened when a young John Lennon (Ian Hart) and the Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein (David Angus), took a trip to Spain in spring 1963, as the band was on the brink of stardom.

American Bishop T.D. Jakes revels in his Nigerian ancestry

Posted on by emandowa
American Pastor TD Jakes
Thomas Dexter Jakes Sr., known as T. D. Jakes, is a pastor, author and filmmaker. He is the pastor of The Potter’s House, a non-denominational American megachurch

“If I reach back far enough I can touch my own family slavery in a very personal way.” – Bishop T.D. Jakes

DALLAS – Inside a provocative exhibit about Thomas Jefferson and slavery, Bishop T.D. Jakes was reminded of his own enslaved ancestors.

Jakes, who has visited Africa many times, proudly talked about his Nigerian roots. He said Dr. Henry Louis Gates, a professor of African and African-American research at Harvard University, arranged a DNA test which confirmed that Jakes’ ancestors were from Nigeria.

“Going back there recently, I went into an area that was predominantly Ibo and it was kind of emotional to me,” Jakes said. “Because they made presentations to me – my house is decorated with a lot of African art – and they were telling me this is what your language sounds like.”

Jakes said he has a vivid recollection of his great-grandmother who was once enslaved. He was just 10 years old but said he remembers listening to his great-grandmother talk about slavery and his family’s history

“And I think of how so many people look at Africa and they talk about poverty but when I looked at it I thought they are so rich in ways that we are poor.” Jakes said. “They know who they are, they know whose they are, they know where they came from, they proudly understand their languages, and in that way we are very poor and so there needs to be a greater exchange between us as people because for me it was like regaining a part of myself that was lost.”

Jakes is the honorary co-chair of a new traveling exhibit, “Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty,” which will run through Dec. 31 at Dallas’ African American Museum. The exhibit, which premiered at Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, breaks new ground by focusing in more detail on the life of Sally Hemings who was enslaved with an estimated 400 other men, women and children on Jefferson’s 5000-acre Monticello plantation. The exhibit showcases more than 300 artifacts.

Some of the artifacts that appear in the exhibit include, nails made at the nailery, which was run by the enslaved families an became an extremely profitable industry for Jefferson; a tombstone of Priscilla Hemmings that was hand-carved by her husband, Michael Hemmings; and china and pottery purchased by the enslaved families at the market. Though all are related, the last names have multiple spellings.

Some of Jefferson’s items on display include a finely carved chess set, his eyeglasses and bookstand. Also, a medicine bottle from Paris that may have been brought back by Sally Hemings during her time in France; a portion of a black pot (Jefferson encouraged his slaves to marry and gave them a black pot as a wedding gift) and an arm chair used in the house that is believed to have been made by John Hemings, (correct spelling) a gifted furniture maker.

Meanwhile, Jakes reflected on the artifacts, which conjured images of enslaved Africans aboard slave ships heading from West Africa to the Americas.

“All of the people who got on the boat were not the same people but they had to unify in order to survive under stress.” Jakes said. “It’s an amazing story when you think about it. They didn’t even speak any other’s language so well that was a certain amount of distrust under the planks of the ship there was a huge enemy above and so in that sandwich dimension of history we survive nonetheless.”

“We learn how to communicate with each other,” Jakes said. “We learned how to become a people. We struggle with what to call ourselves – ‘darkies’ and ‘coloreds’ and ‘niggers’ and negroes’ and all of these names that were thrust upon us is a reflection of trying to identify who am I,” Jakes added.

Dallas is the first city to host the exhibit that will feature additional objects that have never left Monticello. Other stops for the exhibit include Detroit, Richmond, V.A. and the West Coast in 2019.[embedded content]

Jakes said slavery was also about survival, people who were forced into a violent life and stripped of everything, including their names. He added that slavery and contemporary issues of race are forever intertwined, and he stressed the significance of the Dallas exhibition.

After Jakes completed a tour of the exhibit, he sat inside one of the museum’s upstairs galleries, glanced at a panel about enslaved African people, and spoke philosophically about slavery’s 300-year impact on the world.

“I think that no matter what the color of the people are anytime we allow one group of people to have that much power, abuse perpetuates itself,” Jakes said, “whether you are talking about some of the atrocities that have happened in the history of the Jews or whether you’re talking about the apartheid in South Africa, or whether you’re talking about slavery and Jim Crow in America.”

Source: insightnews

:

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

Global Health: An Island Nation’s Health Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone

Posted on by emandowa

In the village of Cook’s Bay, on the remote side of the remote island of Erromango, in the remote South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, 1-month-old Joy Nowai was given shots for hepatitis and tuberculosis that were delivered by a flying drone on Monday.

It may not have been the first vial of vaccine ever delivered that way, but it was the first in Vanuatu, which is the only country in the world to make its childhood vaccine program officially drone-dependent.

“I am so happy the drone brought the stick medicine to Cook’s Bay as I don’t have to walk several hours to Port Narvin for her vaccines,” her mother, Julie Nowai told a Unicef representative. “It is only 15 minutes’ walk from my home.”

Even paradise can be tough on vaccinators. Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 volcanic islands. Many villages are reachable only by “banana boats,” single-engine skiffs that 12-foot waves sometimes roll over or smash into cliffs. Other villages are at the end of mountain footpaths that become bogs when it rains, which it does a lot.

Also, many vaccines need refrigeration, and most villages have no electricity.

For those reasons, about 20 percent of Vanuatu’s 35,000 children under age 5 do not get all their shots, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

So the country, with support from Unicef, the Australian government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, began its drone program on Monday. It will initially serve three islands but may be expanded to many more.

In the future, that expansion may run into some unusual turbulence — Vanuatu is one of the few places where “cargo cults” are still active, and the drones match their central religious dogma: that believers will receive valuable goods delivered by airplane.

That will have to be handled carefully, a Unicef representative said.

Unlike military drones — which fly high and sometimes fire missiles — commercial drones must venture in low, dodge trees, land gently and even return with payloads, such as blood samples.

As drones have improved, their potential uses in global health have rapidly increased, and many countries and charitable groups are considering them.

Image
Dr. Ridwan Gustiana, right, with Roslinda Narawayan and Dominic Bule, both nurses, demonstrated how to pack vaccines for a test flight of one of the drones on Vanuatu.CreditJason Chute/Unicef Pacific

Since 2016, Zipline, a California company, has piloted more than 8,000 flights over Rwanda, delivering blood for transfusions. Its drones are launched by catapult and do not land at their destinations, but fly low overhead and drop their payloads by paper parachute.

Zipline has plans to start delivering vaccines in Rwanda within weeks and in Ghana early in 2019.

Emergency drops of rabies vaccine for children bitten by dogs will be the first priority, said Dr. Seth F. Berkley, chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which joined the package delivery company U.P.S. in supporting the Rwandan effort.

Since last year, Unicef has run a “drone test corridor” in the southern African nation of Malawi to test delivery of humanitarian supplies, including vaccines.

But this is the first commercial contract for routine childhood vaccines. Swoop Aero, an Australian start-up, will be paid only for shipments that arrive safely, Unicef said.

Swoop won the contract after proving its drones could fly 30 miles over islands and land within a six-foot target circle. The drones can hold just over five pounds of vaccine, ice packs and a temperature monitor to prove the vials stayed cold in flight.

As the drone arrived on Monday after a 25-minute flight, Cook’s Bay villagers did a welcoming dance around it waving banana leaves.

Vanuatu is “the perfect environment for this,” said Sheldon Yett, Unicef’s Pacific islands representative.

Its population is small and widely spread out, the government is enthusiastic, and there are “no issues with crowded skies,” as in bigger island countries like Indonesia, he said.

But “we don’t want to over-promise,” he added. “We want to start slowly.”

Miriam Nampil, the 55-year-old nurse who gave the shots, lives in Port Narvin, a coastal town whose clinic has a solar-powered refrigerator.

“This drone will change my life,” she said through a translator. “Normally, I must trek about two hours over the mountain each way, and the vaccine carriers are heavy.”

Round trip by boat is about $70 — too much for the health ministry budget, she said, and only safe on calm days.

With its eight-foot wingspan, the white Swoop drone resembles a robot albatross. But it lacks that bird’s calm, ghostly floating flight pattern.

Instead, it shrieks with the enraged buzz of a disturbed hornets’ nest as it shoots straight up in the air and zooms off at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour.

It can maintain 500 feet of altitude in the hot tropical climate and can handle rain and 30-mile-an-hour gusts, said Eric Peck, a former Australian Air Force pilot who founded Swoop with Josh Tepper, a drone racer and robotics expert.

The drone will soon be doing 80-mile round trips, Mr. Peck said, and because it communicates with the Iridium satellite network, it can be piloted from anywhere in the world and will fly even if local cell networks go down, which happens frequently.

Dr. Gustiana showed the Swoop Aero drone’s return-to-base button, which sends the drone back to where it originated.CreditJason Chute/Unicef Pacific

Eventually, he said, Swoop will train local pilots and help the health ministry build its own drones by attaching mail-order engines to carbon-fiber wings that can be produced on a 3-D printer.

To introduce Vanuatu’s drone era, nurses are meeting local villagers, and national aviation officials invite them to watch test flights.

“We need to make sure people aren’t spooked by a buzzing thing in the sky descending on them,” Mr. Yett said. “We want to make sure some kid with a catapult doesn’t shoot it down.”

Swoop’s drones are fairly hardy, Mr. Peck said. In Australia, aggressive wedge-tailed eagles have knocked large mapping drones out of the sky, but Vanuatu has no birds of prey that big.

Another issue that will require gentle handling: Vanuatu still has adherents of the John Frum movement, one of the South Pacific cargo cults whose adherents pray for valuables arriving from the sky.

The cults date back more than 100 years, but reached their zenith during and after World War II.

Islanders whose ancestors had been kidnapped by whites to work on plantations in Australia and Fiji watched “silver birds” flown in by the Japanese and American militaries disgorge vast amounts of “cargo” — food, medicines, tools and weapons — which was sometimes shared with them.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

The legend spread that the cargo was gifts from the ancestors, but that it had been intercepted and stolen by the foreigners. After the war ended, the cults built airstrips and model planes to lure the “birds” back.

John Frum, a messianic figure, is sometimes portrayed as a black American sailor or sergeant (“John from America”) whose symbol is a red cross like that on military medical tents and whose return will trigger an apocalypse, deliver vast piles of cargo, and make whites and Melanesians change places in the power hierarchy.

On Vanuatu’s Tanna Island, the Frum movement was so powerful that it spawned a political party. During the 1970s independence movement, it opposed the creation of a national government and espoused a return to traditional Melanesian customs.

The health ministry plans to eventually fly drones on Tanna, which may provoke unpredictable responses.

“We’ll go gingerly, very carefully, introducing people to the technology and looking at their reactions,” Mr. Yett said.

But the right people to do that “are local leaders, not Americans with fancy degrees,” he said. “Our goal isn’t to put our thumb on the scale of local belief systems; it’s to make sure kids are immunized.”

An Island Nation’s Health Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone

Posted on by emandowa

In the village of Cook’s Bay, on the remote side of the remote island of Erromango, in the remote South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, 1-month-old Joy Nowai was given shots for hepatitis and tuberculosis that were delivered by a flying drone on Monday.

It may not have been the first vial of vaccine ever delivered that way, but it was the first in Vanuatu, which is the only country in the world to make its childhood vaccine program officially drone-dependent.

“I am so happy the drone brought the stick medicine to Cook’s Bay as I don’t have to walk several hours to Port Narvin for her vaccines,” her mother, Julie Nowai told a Unicef representative. “It is only 15 minutes’ walk from my home.”

Even paradise can be tough on vaccinators. Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 volcanic islands. Many villages are reachable only by “banana boats,” single-engine skiffs that 12-foot waves sometimes roll over or smash into cliffs. Other villages are at the end of mountain footpaths that become bogs when it rains, which it does a lot.

Also, many vaccines need refrigeration, and most villages have no electricity.

For those reasons, about 20 percent of Vanuatu’s 35,000 children under age 5 do not get all their shots, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

So the country, with support from Unicef, the Australian government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, began its drone program on Monday. It will initially serve three islands but may be expanded to many more.

In the future, that expansion may run into some unusual turbulence — Vanuatu is one of the few places where “cargo cults” are still active, and the drones match their central religious dogma: that believers will receive valuable goods delivered by airplane.

That will have to be handled carefully, a Unicef representative said.

Unlike military drones — which fly high and sometimes fire missiles — commercial drones must venture in low, dodge trees, land gently and even return with payloads, such as blood samples.

As drones have improved, their potential uses in global health have rapidly increased, and many countries and charitable groups are considering them.

Image
Dr. Ridwan Gustiana, right, with Roslinda Narawayan and Dominic Bule, both nurses, demonstrated how to pack vaccines for a test flight of one of the drones on Vanuatu.CreditJason Chute/Unicef Pacific

Since 2016, Zipline, a California company, has piloted more than 8,000 flights over Rwanda, delivering blood for transfusions. Its drones are launched by catapult and do not land at their destinations, but fly low overhead and drop their payloads by paper parachute.

Zipline has plans to start delivering vaccines in Rwanda within weeks and in Ghana early in 2019.

Emergency drops of rabies vaccine for children bitten by dogs will be the first priority, said Dr. Seth F. Berkley, chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which joined the package delivery company U.P.S. in supporting the Rwandan effort.

Since last year, Unicef has run a “drone test corridor” in the southern African nation of Malawi to test delivery of humanitarian supplies, including vaccines.

But this is the first commercial contract for routine childhood vaccines. Swoop Aero, an Australian start-up, will be paid only for shipments that arrive safely, Unicef said.

Swoop won the contract after proving its drones could fly 30 miles over islands and land within a six-foot target circle. The drones can hold just over five pounds of vaccine, ice packs and a temperature monitor to prove the vials stayed cold in flight.

As the drone arrived on Monday after a 25-minute flight, Cook’s Bay villagers did a welcoming dance around it waving banana leaves.

Vanuatu is “the perfect environment for this,” said Sheldon Yett, Unicef’s Pacific islands representative.

Its population is small and widely spread out, the government is enthusiastic, and there are “no issues with crowded skies,” as in bigger island countries like Indonesia, he said.

But “we don’t want to over-promise,” he added. “We want to start slowly.”

Miriam Nampil, the 55-year-old nurse who gave the shots, lives in Port Narvin, a coastal town whose clinic has a solar-powered refrigerator.

“This drone will change my life,” she said through a translator. “Normally, I must trek about two hours over the mountain each way, and the vaccine carriers are heavy.”

Round trip by boat is about $70 — too much for the health ministry budget, she said, and only safe on calm days.

With its eight-foot wingspan, the white Swoop drone resembles a robot albatross. But it lacks that bird’s calm, ghostly floating flight pattern.

Instead, it shrieks with the enraged buzz of a disturbed hornets’ nest as it shoots straight up in the air and zooms off at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour.

It can maintain 500 feet of altitude in the hot tropical climate and can handle rain and 30-mile-an-hour gusts, said Eric Peck, a former Australian Air Force pilot who founded Swoop with Josh Tepper, a drone racer and robotics expert.

The drone will soon be doing 80-mile round trips, Mr. Peck said, and because it communicates with the Iridium satellite network, it can be piloted from anywhere in the world and will fly even if local cell networks go down, which happens frequently.

Dr. Gustiana showed the Swoop Aero drone’s return-to-base button, which sends the drone back to where it originated.CreditJason Chute/Unicef Pacific

Eventually, he said, Swoop will train local pilots and help the health ministry build its own drones by attaching mail-order engines to carbon-fiber wings that can be produced on a 3-D printer.

To introduce Vanuatu’s drone era, nurses are meeting local villagers, and national aviation officials invite them to watch test flights.

“We need to make sure people aren’t spooked by a buzzing thing in the sky descending on them,” Mr. Yett said. “We want to make sure some kid with a catapult doesn’t shoot it down.”

Swoop’s drones are fairly hardy, Mr. Peck said. In Australia, aggressive wedge-tailed eagles have knocked large mapping drones out of the sky, but Vanuatu has no birds of prey that big.

Another issue that will require gentle handling: Vanuatu still has adherents of the John Frum movement, one of the South Pacific cargo cults whose adherents pray for valuables arriving from the sky.

The cults date back more than 100 years, but reached their zenith during and after World War II.

Islanders whose ancestors had been kidnapped by whites to work on plantations in Australia and Fiji watched “silver birds” flown in by the Japanese and American militaries disgorge vast amounts of “cargo” — food, medicines, tools and weapons — which was sometimes shared with them.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

The legend spread that the cargo was gifts from the ancestors, but that it had been intercepted and stolen by the foreigners. After the war ended, the cults built airstrips and model planes to lure the “birds” back.

John Frum, a messianic figure, is sometimes portrayed as a black American sailor or sergeant (“John from America”) whose symbol is a red cross like that on military medical tents and whose return will trigger an apocalypse, deliver vast piles of cargo, and make whites and Melanesians change places in the power hierarchy.

On Vanuatu’s Tanna Island, the Frum movement was so powerful that it spawned a political party. During the 1970s independence movement, it opposed the creation of a national government and espoused a return to traditional Melanesian customs.

The health ministry plans to eventually fly drones on Tanna, which may provoke unpredictable responses.

“We’ll go gingerly, very carefully, introducing people to the technology and looking at their reactions,” Mr. Yett said.

But the right people to do that “are local leaders, not Americans with fancy degrees,” he said. “Our goal isn’t to put our thumb on the scale of local belief systems; it’s to make sure kids are immunized.”

Global Health: An Island Nation Starts an Experiment: Vaccines Delivered by Drone

Posted on by emandowa

In the village of Cook’s Bay, on the remote side of the remote island of Erromango, in the remote South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, 1-month-old Joy Nowai was given shots for hepatitis and tuberculosis that were delivered by a flying drone on Monday.

It may not have been the first vial of vaccine ever delivered that way, but it was the first in Vanuatu, which is the only country in the world to make its childhood vaccine program officially drone-dependent.

“I am so happy the drone brought the stick medicine to Cook’s Bay as I don’t have to walk several hours to Port Narvin for her vaccines,” her mother, Julie Nowai told a Unicef representative. “It is only 15 minutes’ walk from my home.”

Even paradise can be tough on vaccinators. Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 volcanic islands. Many villages are reachable only by “banana boats,” single-engine skiffs that 12-foot waves sometimes roll over or smash into cliffs. Other villages are at the end of mountain footpaths that become bogs when it rains, which it does a lot.

Also, many vaccines need refrigeration, and most villages have no electricity.

For those reasons, about 20 percent of Vanuatu’s 35,000 children under age 5 do not get all their shots, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund.

So the country, with support from Unicef, the Australian government and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, began its drone program on Monday. It will initially serve three islands but may be expanded to many more.

In the future, that expansion may run into some unusual turbulence — Vanuatu is one of the few places where “cargo cults” are still active, and the drones match their central religious dogma: that believers will receive valuable goods delivered by airplane.

That will have to be handled carefully, a Unicef representative said.

Unlike military drones — which fly high and sometimes fire missiles — commercial drones must venture in low, dodge trees, land gently and even return with payloads, such as blood samples.

As drones have improved, their potential uses in global health have rapidly increased, and many countries and charitable groups are considering them.

Image
Dr. Ridwan Gustiana, right, with Roslinda Narawayan and Dominic Bule, both nurses, demonstrated how to pack vaccines for a test flight of one of the drones on Vanuatu.CreditJason Chute/Unicef Pacific

Since 2016, Zipline, a California company, has piloted more than 8,000 flights over Rwanda, delivering blood for transfusions. Its drones are launched by catapult and do not land at their destinations, but fly low overhead and drop their payloads by paper parachute.

Zipline has plans to start delivering vaccines in Rwanda within weeks and in Ghana early in 2019.

Emergency drops of rabies vaccine for children bitten by dogs will be the first priority, said Dr. Seth F. Berkley, chief executive officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which joined the package delivery company U.P.S. in supporting the Rwandan effort.

Since last year, Unicef has run a “drone test corridor” in the southern African nation of Malawi to test delivery of humanitarian supplies, including vaccines.

But this is the first commercial contract for routine childhood vaccines. Swoop Aero, an Australian start-up, will be paid only for shipments that arrive safely, Unicef said.

Swoop won the contract after proving its drones could fly 30 miles over islands and land within a six-foot target circle. The drones can hold just over five pounds of vaccine, ice packs and a temperature monitor to prove the vials stayed cold in flight.

As the drone arrived on Monday after a 25-minute flight, Cook’s Bay villagers did a welcoming dance around it waving banana leaves.

Vanuatu is “the perfect environment for this,” said Sheldon Yett, Unicef’s Pacific islands representative.

Its population is small and widely spread out, the government is enthusiastic, and there are “no issues with crowded skies,” as in bigger island countries like Indonesia, he said.

But “we don’t want to over-promise,” he added. “We want to start slowly.”

Miriam Nampil, the 55-year-old nurse who gave the shots, lives in Port Narvin, a coastal town whose clinic has a solar-powered refrigerator.

“This drone will change my life,” she said through a translator. “Normally, I must trek about two hours over the mountain each way, and the vaccine carriers are heavy.”

Round trip by boat is about $70 — too much for the health ministry budget, she said, and only safe on calm days.

With its eight-foot wingspan, the white Swoop drone resembles a robot albatross. But it lacks that bird’s calm, ghostly floating flight pattern.

Instead, it shrieks with the enraged buzz of a disturbed hornets’ nest as it shoots straight up in the air and zooms off at speeds of up to 60 miles an hour.

It can maintain 500 feet of altitude in the hot tropical climate and can handle rain and 30-mile-an-hour gusts, said Eric Peck, a former Australian Air Force pilot who founded Swoop with Josh Tepper, a drone racer and robotics expert.

The drone will soon be doing 80-mile round trips, Mr. Peck said, and because it communicates with the Iridium satellite network, it can be piloted from anywhere in the world and will fly even if local cell networks go down, which happens frequently.

Dr. Gustiana showed the Swoop Aero drone’s return-to-base button, which sends the drone back to where it originated.CreditJason Chute/Unicef Pacific

Eventually, he said, Swoop will train local pilots and help the health ministry build its own drones by attaching mail-order engines to carbon-fiber wings that can be produced on a 3-D printer.

To introduce Vanuatu’s drone era, nurses are meeting local villagers, and national aviation officials invite them to watch test flights.

“We need to make sure people aren’t spooked by a buzzing thing in the sky descending on them,” Mr. Yett said. “We want to make sure some kid with a catapult doesn’t shoot it down.”

Swoop’s drones are fairly hardy, Mr. Peck said. In Australia, aggressive wedge-tailed eagles have knocked large mapping drones out of the sky, but Vanuatu has no birds of prey that big.

Another issue that will require gentle handling: Vanuatu still has adherents of the John Frum movement, one of the South Pacific cargo cults whose adherents pray for valuables arriving from the sky.

The cults date back more than 100 years, but reached their zenith during and after World War II.

Islanders whose ancestors had been kidnapped by whites to work on plantations in Australia and Fiji watched “silver birds” flown in by the Japanese and American militaries disgorge vast amounts of “cargo” — food, medicines, tools and weapons — which was sometimes shared with them.

[Like the Science Times page on Facebook. | Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.]

The legend spread that the cargo was gifts from the ancestors, but that it had been intercepted and stolen by the foreigners. After the war ended, the cults built airstrips and model planes to lure the “birds” back.

John Frum, a messianic figure, is sometimes portrayed as a black American sailor or sergeant (“John from America”) whose symbol is a red cross like that on military medical tents and whose return will trigger an apocalypse, deliver vast piles of cargo, and make whites and Melanesians change places in the power hierarchy.

On Vanuatu’s Tanna Island, the Frum movement was so powerful that it spawned a political party. During the 1970s independence movement, it opposed the creation of a national government and espoused a return to traditional Melanesian customs.

The health ministry plans to eventually fly drones on Tanna, which may provoke unpredictable responses.

“We’ll go gingerly, very carefully, introducing people to the technology and looking at their reactions,” Mr. Yett said.

But the right people to do that “are local leaders, not Americans with fancy degrees,” he said. “Our goal isn’t to put our thumb on the scale of local belief systems; it’s to make sure kids are immunized.”

Malawi Parliament approves Dual citizenship Act

Posted on by admin

ATLANTA – Finally After many years of promises administration after administration, Malawi Parliament on Wednesday made amendment to the Citizenship Act to allow for the concept of dual citizenship.The House approved changes to the Citizenship Act that will allow Malawians to hold dual citizenship, a move that brings Malawi in line with much of the world.

Malawian citizenship can now hold a citizenship of another country.

South African-based legal scholar Danwood Chirwa added his voice to the campiagn by saying there is need for dual citizenship to be recognised as it makes it possible for people with multi-national identities to retain those identities
He said it also makes it possible for such people to fulfill obligations to the countries they are affiliated to.

Professor Adamson Muula of the University of Malawi’s College of Medicine is also on record to have said he supports dual nationality.

Before the amendment, the Malawi Constitution did not allow Malawian citizens and foreign nationals of Malawian descent above the age of 18 to hold dual citizenship, as read in the Malawi Citizenship and Immigration Actof 1966.

Malawian Organizations in The U.S. Release Statement in Support of Dual Citizenship in Malawi

This has been long in the making.

Malawians in Texas Organization (MITO), and Malawians in Washington (MWA) together with other organizations in the diaspora are speaking with one voice in support of the announcement to draft new dual citizenship legislation in Parliament by His Excellency Peter Mutharika on July 16, 2016. Pursuant to the Malawi Citizenship and Immigration act of 1966, the Malawian constitution does not presently accommodate for Malawian citizens and foreign nationals of Malawian descent above the age of 21 to hold dual citizenship. The proposed legislation aims at extending this right to all people of Malawian origin. The current legislation change is not only welcome news, but a step in the right direction by the Mutharika administration on behalf of Malawians everywhere.

It is imperative that this great initiative move forward, so that both Malawians at home and abroad can benefit from an ever expanding global society. Therefore, Malawian organizations are working together in support of this initiative. Pursuant to the agreement set forth by MWA and MITO, we are advocating that all people of Malawian descent support this cause. As such, we have delivered advocacy statement in support of this initiative that states our support of the initiative and calls on the backing of comprehensive dual citizenship laws from all Malawians to the Malawian government through their official representatives at the U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C. We have also delivered letters to Members of Parliament, NGOs and other stakeholders. We have contacted media houses in Malawi to request that our joint statement be printed and published on all Malawian media platforms in order to sensitize the general public about the issues surrounding dual citizenship.

Having made the request for a redress of the citizenship laws in the past, the release of the statement is the most recent move by the Diaspora organizations in the U.S. to support the revision of dual citizenship legislation. Earlier advocacy activities have included hosting forums, making direct appeals to every Malawian President that followed the Hastings Banda administration, and the creation of an online platform in order to sensitize the public to the issues and debates surrounding dual citizenship on the web and on social media. MITO and MWA hope that dual citizenship will be treated as a matter of urgency and will continue to support the enactment of laws that are in the best interest of all Malawians.

ABOUT:

MWA is a registered non-profit organization in the Washington DC area that serves to unify Malawians in the U.S., assist Malawians in times of hardship, promote Malawian culture in the U.S., and advocate for issues of interest to Malawians.

MITO is a community-based 501c3 not-for-profit that serves to provide educational, medical, and general support to the Malawian diaspora both domestically and abroad.

As organizations in the Diaspora representing Malawians and friends of Malawi, we have long requested our government to enact more comprehensive, inclusive and forward-looking dual citizenship laws over the past few years. Malawian organizations in the United States are therefore speaking with one voice in support of the announcement to draft new dual citizenship legislation in Parliament by His Excellency, President Peter Mutharika.

Pursuant to the and Immigration act of 1966, the Malawian constitution does not presently accommodate for Malawian citizens and foreign nationals of Malawian descent over 21 years of age to hold dual citizenship. Therefore, the current legislation change is not only welcome news, but a step in the right direction by the Mutharika administration on behalf of Malawians everywhere. We believe dual citizenship would be a tremendous benefit to the government and to all people of Malawian origin. We believe such a system would provide the following advantages:

ECONOMIC GROWTH:

It will encourage economic investments in Malawi from Malawians abroad.
It will allow an estimated $40M USD in remittances or money that the Diaspora sends annually to transfer through the formal sector, thus increasing foreign currency flow and development projects they contribute towards.
It will encourage capital investments into creation of businesses that generate jobs, goods and services, thereby facilitating increasing trade between the host countries which is important in a new globalized environment.

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCEMENTS:

It will provide a platform to mitigate the effects of the brain drain because those that leave seeking education will be more likely to return due to legally being allowed to seek employment.
It will support Malawians that have an understanding of the culture and are returning home since they are in a unique position to exchange ideas, knowledge, expertise and training that is suitable for Malawi.

CULTURAL PRESERVATION:

It will help Malawians keep a sense of personal identity and national pride.
It will promote a culture inclusive of all Malawians, thereby redefining divisions created by colonial borders. ➢ It will prevent future generations of Malawians from assimilating their host countries to the point of losing ties or linkages to Malawi.

Malawian organizations in the United States believe that dual citizenship is a right for all people of Malawian descent. As organizations, we will work tirelessly to support initiatives that will have the greatest impact to the nation and the Diaspora. We will continue advocating both the Embassy in the United States and the Malawi government to implement dual citizenship which advances Malawi’s socio-economic prosperity.

We hope to do our part to contribute to a better, stronger, unified Malawi and think a commitment to inclusive dual citizenship laws will facilitate this in several ways. Our website, www.dualcitizenshipmalawi.org provides more information about the debate surrounding dual citizenship and its benefits. We hope that we can count on the support of our Malawian brothers and sisters in the movement towards this realization.

For more information about the Movement for Dual Citizenship for Malawi, can be obtained at www.dualcitizenshipmalawi.org, or by contacting MWA at president@malawiwashington.org or MITO at malawiansintexas@gmail.com.

Media Contacts: Agnes Nkhata (MITO) malawiansintexas@gmail.com 469-709-0258, Sitinga Kachipande (MWA) president@malawiwashington.org 240-338-4479

This entry was posted in News and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.