Red Rock Film Festival 2008

Film-makers Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto set off around the world to capture and weave together as much musical, philosophical, artistic and spiritual inspiration as the world had to offer, and to examine, through their many diverse encounters, the extent of humanity’s collective insanity, insatiable desire, obsessions, fixations, desperations and above all, our inability to stop thinking. ‘What About Me?’ fuses opinions and insights, both alarming and inspirational, from 50 global locations - hundreds of interviews with writers, market-sellers, brain surgeons, criminals, grave diggers and gurus, some famous, most unknown…as the artists and singers express from their deepest truths the universal themes of Love, Pain, Surrender, and Gracein the most wide-reaching and diverse musical, philosophical and spiritual collaboration ever created.

A young woman struggles to come to terms with reality when she misses taking her medication.

24 Frames is a stop-motion animated black comedy mockumentary about a stop-motion animated film production at an art college in the southern U.S. The crew, which consists mainly of ambitious animation students, aspires to adapt a children's book into an animated film to impress the school's president, who also happens to be the director's mother-in-law. Incompetence, artistic differences, and a series of grisly mishaps soon cause the production to spiral out of control as the would-be filmmakers struggle to finish the project.Directed by stop-motion animator and teacher Brad Pattullo, '24 Frames' is a razor-sharp satire of academia, politics, and the animation industry. This puppet film represents three and a half years of work in a kerosene-heated garage in northwest Pennsylvania. Packed with quirky characters, shocking twists, and self-referential film-industry jokes, '24 Frames' is truly a unique and engaging animated short.

Amal, a multi-layered portrait of contemporary India, follows an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi (Amal [played by Rupinder Nagra]) who is content with his small, but vital role in life. One day he drives an eccentric billionaire (G.K. Jayaram [played by Naseeruddin Shah]) who, disguised as a vagabond, is searching the streets for the last morsel of humanity, and someone he can leave all his money to, and [Amal's] life may change forever. Amal serves up a visual feast for audiences. Filmed on location in New Delhi, India, this modern day fable asks the important question of what success means to each individual and ultimately reveals that the poorest of men are sometimes the richest.

Twenty-two year old David Braddock is floundering - stuck in that lazy period between college and ‚"What am I going to do with the rest of my life?‚" Even David‚'s best friend, Sha is concerned with David's aimless attitude. David‚'s parents pressure him to either choose a career path or join the family business. David decides to follow his father‚'s urging to "Go East Young Man.‚" Once in China, he finds that it is much different from what he imagined: full of bustling modern cities as well as charming little villages. He travels to a town that the modern world hasn‚'t yet altered and meets Mei: a beautiful, ambitious young girl who works two jobs in order to save enough money to follow her dream of going to the prestigious Beijing University. Despite their differences, a romance blossoms during the few short weeks that David is with Mei. He returns home to San Francisco to find that his family‚'s business is in even more difficulty than when he left. Sha encourages David to return to China and see things though: both business and romance, and together they head back to the middle kingdom. This coming of age, fish out of water story takes us on a fascinating journey to a world full of strange customs and people. But cultural differences, politics or distance cannot change the fact that we all share the same basic desire: to love and be loved.

The Watergate Building took away Willie Stewart‚'s left arm twenty-five years ago. In an instant, the 18-year old went from Virginia State Wrestling Champion to amputee. Now faced with rehab, depression, and discrimination, he fell into a black hole. Years later, he was invited to speak to amputee children. He founded his life‚' s passion, and what ‚"One-arm‚" Willie has accomplished after his accident is the real story.So far in his one-armed career, Willie has won 15 national championships in skiing, three world championships in triathlon, and has also won national and world championships in XTERRA. He was the world‚'s first disabled athlete to complete a four-day adventure race. And he‚'s kayaked the extreme rapids of the Colorado River, 200 miles from Lake Powell to Lake Mead.More than that, he is an advocate for the disabled. About one in seven Americans is disabled, and of those, 80 percent are unemployed. Willie is set to make a difference. He directs the PossAbilities program out of Loma Linda University Medical Center. Its goal is to offer disabled individuals a sense of community and provide activities and practical help to integrate them back into life‚ - once again becoming valuable members of our communities.‚ "Armed for the Challenge" features a week in the life of ‚"One-arm‚" Willie while training for the physically challenged triathlon USA championships. Determined to help others with disabilities, this world-class athlete takes you on a ride through humor and passion, proving that disability doesn‚'t mean inability.

Beach Access focuses an unblinking eye on a caregiver whose wife is suffering from a mental illness. Stan takes his agoraphobic wife, Mary, to their special beach, hoping it will help her take a small step toward recovery. If she can just get out of the car, Stan will have the glimmer of hope that he desperately needs to hang on. Stan is worn, broken by four years of caring for someone who looks like the woman he loves, but just isn't Mary. She is caught in the grip of the disease and resistant to therapy. Stan has become her crutch‚ - she is helpless without him. This is the moment when Stan realizes that he just can‚'t go on.

There are over six million Maya today. They have a rich and vibrant culture, and have guarded their traditions with great care. But for four centuries they have been a people cut off from the written record of their own extraordinary past.For almost 2000 years, the ancient Maya recorded their history and ideas in an intricate and beautiful script. Then, in the 16th century, Spanish invaders burned their books and ruthlessly extinguished hieroglyphic literacy. By the 18th century, when stone inscriptions were discovered buried in the jungles of Central America and bark-paper books began to surface in the libraries of Europe, no one on earth could read them.Breaking the Maya Code is the story of the struggle to unlock the secrets of the hieroglyphs, arguably one of the most complex writing systems ever created. It is based in large part on the book by archaeologist and historian Michael Coe, himself intimately involved in the decipherment story. His book has been called by the New York Times "one of the great stories of twentieth century scientific discovery". This is a detective story filled with misunderstandings and false leads, rivalries and colliding personalities. It leads us from the jungles of Guatemala to the bitter cold of Russia, from ancient Maya temples to the dusty libraries of Dresden and Madrid.Through one of the great intellectual achievements of the past 200 years, the words of the ancient Maya scribes have begun to speak once more.

Buddha was born into royalty but rejected it because he could not stand the poverty and suffering around him. However now his present day followers have returned him to royalty, the one thing he despised and abandoned. Although the temples and shrines made for him are dazzling, if Buddha came back today, would he view them as being against his teachings of simplicity and freedom from materialism? And would he be disheartened to see his teachings make poor people sacrifice vast amounts of much needed money to his worship?