documentaries

Maryann De Leo

USA | 2003 | 39mins | Beta | Colour | Subtitled

On 26th April 1986 the worst nuclear accident in history occurred when a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, releasing 90 times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 16 years later, filmmaker Maryann De Leo took her camera to document the continuing fallout. In hospitals, orphanages, mental asylums and evacuated villages, Chernobyl Heart shows the invisible trail radiation leaves behind.

Following Adi Roche, founder of the Chernobyl Children's Project (an organisation which has been providing support to children affected by the disaster). Chernobyl Heart opens in the exclusion zone, the most radioactive environment on earth. From there, Roche travels to Belarus, home to many of the children she seeks to aid. The film reveals those hardest hit by radiation poisoning, including thyroid cancer patients, and children suffering unfathomable congenital birth and heart defects. The film also documents the work of a Tennessee heart surgeon whose organisation, The International Children's Heart Foundation, operates on children born with heart defects, a condition referred to as 'Chernobyl heart'.

Academy Award Winner - Short Documentary

Liam McGrath

Ireland | 2004 | 60mins | Beta | Colour

Set against the backdrop of New York's failing public school system, Coach is a journey through the blood, sweat and tears of a High School sporting season. Players battle for a future as coaches act as mentors and guides in their fight to teach their student lessons that will help them in their future lives.

Coach Martin Jacobson was a successful college coach before becoming a heroin addict, losing all of his possessions and nearly his life through drugs. Being a High School coach for Jacobson is some sort of redemption. He works with some of New YorkÕs poorest and most needy immigrant kids.

Coach Larry Major has worked in Paul Robeson High School in Brooklyn for the past 10 years. After a crushing defeat in the City Championship final he passes on the school's main coaching position to an ex-student Todd Myles. Myles was enroute to a lucrative NBA career when a serious back injury changed his career path last year. Myles has a lot to learn. Coach Major will have to do everything in his power to guide Myles through his first year of coaching.

Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott

Canada | 2004 | 145mins | 35mm| Colour

In the mid- 1800s the corporation emerged as a legal 'person', but at what cost? According to the diagnostic tools used by the World Health Organisation the corporation's'personality' of ruthless self-interest accompanied by callous indifference toward harmful externalities, fully meets the criteria of a psychopath. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives.

The film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a quest to reveal the corporation's inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures.

A who's who of interview subjects includes Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein and many others. Levity is added via meticulously assembled B-film footage from archival educational documentaries, broadcast television and classic creature features. The Corporation charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this appar-ently invincible force.

Audience Award - Sundance Film