THE TERRITORY, Season 34
Monday Nights @ 10pm beginning August 8 on Channel 8, HoustonPBS

Program 1 - August 8 @ 10pm

THE SUITCASE (LA VALISE)
(Kaveh Bakhtiari, Switzerland, 2007, 10:30, French w/ English subtitles)
For the first time, Jeanne is about to leave for a three week holiday on her own as Michael, her husband of 50 years, locks himself in the bathroom in protest.

A GIRL LIKE YOU WITH A BOY LIKE ME
(Ruben Amar, New York, 2009, 10 minutes)
A man determined to finally put an end to his doubts, announces to the one he has always loved that he wants to end the relationship.

THE IMPERFECTIONIST (Andrew Clarke, UK, 2009, 3:00)
Drawing out his frustrations, a young man resists his mother’s attempts to influence his love life.

Program 2 - August 15 @ 10pm

KATRINA’S SON (Ya’ke Smith, Texas, 2010, 13:30 minutes)
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a boy is forced to search for the mother who abandoned him years earlier.

ARUBA (Hubert Davis, Canada, 2005, 11:00 minutes)
A young boy survives a world of urban violence and abuse through the power of his imagination.

Program 3 - August 22 @ 10:00pm

SIDE EFFECTS (Chuck Rose, California, 2008, 7:30 minutes)
Stopping at the drugstore for a refill, an unhappy man gets an unexpected prescription for heartbreak.

HOW TO BE ALONE (Andrea Dorfman, Canada, 4:30 minutes)
In this poetic tutorial, a young woman shares her insights on how to embrace loneliness and find happiness within it.

THIS IS HER (Katie Wolfe, New Zealand, 2008, 12:00 minutes)
Through childbirth and a loving marriage, a woman looks back on her fairy tale life; while down the street, a little girl plays with her dolls.

Program 4 - August 29 @ 10:00pm

MNEMOSYNE RISING (Miguel Alvarez, Texas, 2010, 20:00 minutes)
A solitary deep-space transmitter pilot begins to experience unusual flashbacks when he learns he’s being sent back to Earth.

SPACE TRAVEL ACCORDING TO JOHN
(Jamie Stone, Scotland, 2008, 3:00 minutes)
Sand animation is used to tell the story as a 10-year-old boy discusses his theories on the requirements and consequences of space travel.

IAMBR (Steven Day, California, 2009, 4:00 minutes, no dialog)
William Gibson’s Neuromancer and cyberpunk influence this integration of animation and live performance to explore identities in real and virtual space.

Program 5 - September 5 @ 10pm

MINOTAUROMAQUIA, PABLO IN THE LABYRINTH
(Juan Pablo Etchverry, Spain, 2004, 10:00 minutes, no dialog)
Inspired by Pablo Picasso’s work and mythology, this stop motion animation takes us on a journey into labyrinth of artistic creation.

WITHOUT YOU (Tal Rosner, UK, 5:00 minutes, no dialog)
Following colors and surfaces into abstraction, this visual exploration of London’s industrial suburbia reveals the complexity of apparently simple forms.

NOTEBOOK (Noteboek)
(Evelien Lohbeck, The Netherlands, 2008, 4:00 minutes, no dialog)
A Dutch artist challenges our expectations as she blurs the line between what is real and what is not in this fantastic animation.

LOST/IN MEMORIAM
(Anita Thacher, New York, 2006, 7 minutes, no dialog)
The splendid sensuality of stylized images of tulips and waving grasses are an apt elegy for creative lives of friends loved and lost.

Program 6 - September 12 @ 10PM

RETURN TO STOLOWICZE (Marek Dojs, Texas, 2008, 9:00 minutes)
The tragedy of war and displacement is recounted as the filmmaker traces his personal history in a lovely, poetic tribute to family and survival.

CHEEESE
(Huseyin Tabak, Germany/Austria, 2008 11:56 minutes, Arabic with English subtitles)
During the Iraq war, a Kurdish family waits for help from American troops in the basement of their collapsed house.

STRANGER’S POEM (Geer Dubois, 2009, USA, 5:15 minutes, no dialog)
Unaware that isolation has shaped their perception of reality, two strangers come to know each other through shared experiences

Program 7 - October 3 @ 10PM

HONORARIUM (Steve Mims, Texas, 12:30 minutes)
When a professor with controversial views arrives to speak at a university conference, he is met by more than he bargains for.

IMPASSE
(Bram Schouw, Netherlands, 2008, 4:40 minutes , no dialog)
Without words, we’re left to consider whether love and attraction can break through the impasse of human intolerance.

JOURNEY OF THE OPPORTUNIST
(Mark and Angela Walley, Texas, 2008, 7:00 minutes)
Human movement and migration bind the lives of thirteen characters as they move through daily life and love in the sweet poetry of this experimental film.

Program 8 - October 10 @ 10PM

VILLAGE OF IDIOTS (Eugene Fedorenko & Rose Newlove, Canada, 1999, 12:40 minutes, Yiddish with English subtitles)
Weary of daily life in his native village, a man sets out to find a new life in this animated version of a classic Jewish folk tale.

BIG HANDS (Aaron Holloway, Texas, 2009, 9:30 minutes)
When a tightly knit family is torn apart by new love interests, the youngest child devises a plan to take her back to the way things once were.

WHAT’S VIRGIN MEAN? (Michael Davies, UK, 2008, 3:00 minutes)
Much to her dismay, a mother discovers that sometimes little questions need big answers.

Program 9 - October 17 @ 10PM

IN COLD LOVE (Franck Blaess, Canada, 2009, 10:00 minutes)
Doing what he has to do, collecting whoever has to be; a lonely, dispossessed man is sentenced to carry an extraordinary burden.

CENTIGRADE (Madison Graie, Canada, 2007, 15:00 minutes)
In this intense contemporary thriller, a man taken hostage aboard a rolling nightmare will have to use his wits in order to survive.

Program 10 - October 24 @ 10PM

NEW MEDIA (J.J. Adler, New York, 2010, 19:00 minutes)
Living in luxury, through no achievement of his own, an out-of touch, middle-aged poseur tries to get in on the latest Internet craze.

VOICE ON THE LINE (Kelly Sears, Texas, 2009, 6:40 minutes)
This collage animation of figures cut out of archival ephemeral films from the 1950s, mixes historical events with reflections on relationships between national security, civil liberties, and telephone companies.

Program 11 - October 31 @ 10PM

LAREDO, TEXAS (Topaz Adizes, New York, 2010, 10:30 minutes)
Training a new employee to fix pay phones, tensions begin to boil when Sam suspects that Juan is an undocumented worker.

TRECE ANOS (Topaz Adizes, New York, 2009, 7:30 minutes, Spanish with English subtitles)
When he returns to his family in Cuba for the first time in 13 years, Guillermo experiences a greater divide than just distance.

ENTRE SOMBRAS (BETWEEN SHADOWS) (Fernanda Segura, Mexico, 2009, 4:30 minutes, no dialog)
Deceptively simple, this extraordinary stop motion animation tells the story of Yupilda whose experience of violence by other women leads to her destruction.

LEV (Laura Yilmaz, California, 2009, 2:30 minutes, no dialog)
Drowned out by the music of strangers, a lonely janitor longs for connection.

Program 12 - November 7 @ 10PM

THE TERMS
(Jason LaMotte, 2010, Texas/UK, 10:00 minutes, English subtitles)
A struggle between father and son plays out against a timeless, barren landscape of youthful dreams and aged resignation.

A HIRED MAN (UN HOMME DE MAIN)
(Martin Talbot, Canada, 17:12 minutes, English subtitles)
Taking a turn in the wrong direction, a man finds himself enrolled in a dance class he did not choose.

Program 13 - November 14 @ 10PM

OPEN SEASON (Raquel Chapa, Texas, 2009, 14 minutes)
This documentary painfully recounts the moving stories of indigenous survivors of sexual assault in the United States.

THE DRIFT (Kelly Sears, Texas, 2007, 8:15 minutes)
Reminiscent of Lost in Space, frame by frame animation is used to weave an absurd fable about our country’s unflinching frontier-ism and the desire to push too far, too fast.

CIVILIAN (Seaton Lin, California, 2009, 3:00 minutes )
This film offers a glimpse into the hypnosis sessions that took place between Dr. Benjamin Simon and Betty Hill shortly after her abduction in 1961.

CREDITS:
Executive Producers:

Mary M. Lampe
Southwest Alternate Media Project

Judith Sims
Austin Museum of Art

Co-Producers:

Alfred Cervantes
Houston Film Commission

Ed Hugetz
The University of Houston

Celia Lightfoot
Independent Producer, Houston

Marian Luntz
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Dr. Tom Schatz
The University of Texas at Austin

Editor:
Joe Brueggeman
HoustonPBS

Director of Programming:
Ken Lawrence
HoustonPBS

Director of Operations:
Steve Pyndus
Houston PBS

Opening Title Design:
The Art Guys, Houston

Production Assistance
Caleb Rogers
Monique Andy

Special Thanks to:
Be FILMS, Brussels
Clermont Ferrand Short Film Festival
Flickerfest Short Film Festival, Australia
FutureShorts, London
Houston Film Commission
Interfilm Berlin
International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen
Locomotion Films, Montreal
Michelle Mower
National Film Board of Canada
Network Ireland Television, Dublin
New Zealand Film Commission
Phi Group, Montreal
Radio-TV-Film Department, University of Texas, Arlington
Radio-TV-Film Department, University of Texas, Austin
Shorts International LTD
SND Films, Amsterdam
Scottish Screen, Glasgow
UK Film Council
Dept. de Comunicacion, Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City
USC School of Cinematic Arts
Worldwide Short Film Festival, Toronto

For more information and to post your comments, please visit THE TERRITORY website, theterritory.tv.

THE TERRITORY is funded jointly by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Houston Endowment, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance.