Sky Blossom – Director Richard Liu

Director Richard Lui’s SKY BLOSSOM is a raw, uplifting window into 24.5 million children and millennials stepping forward as frontline heroes. Caring for family with tough medical conditions, they stay at home doing things often seen only in hospitals. They are cheerleaders, work part time, and go to college – but also live double lives – quietly growing up as America’s next greatest generation. The filmmaker, veteran journalist and award-winning CNN/MSNBC news anchor Richard Lui says the interviews were so honest they genuinely surprised him, as they revealed insights into the lives of young people across America. Troops used to look up and say, “Here come the Sky Blossoms”-paratroopers rushing to their aid. Today, there is a new generation answering that call. These are their stories. First-time director and MSNBC news anchor Richard Liu joins us for a conversation on the reason he began the project, the exploration of these families courage and determination and the historic and spiritual meaning behind the film’s title. 

 

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For news, screenings and updates go to: skyblossom.com

For information on resources available go to: skyblossom.com/resources

Watch during the Virtual Theatre release at: /skyblossom.com/watch-film

Director’s statement – My life changed when my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I stepped back from my work as a cable news anchor, changing to work part-time on weekends. I began a weekly commute from my work in New York and my family in San Francisco. My parents come from military families, and this experience has only brought us closer together. With Sky Blossom, I wanted to show the power of caring for others. To tell stories of positivity despite pain. – Richard Liu

About the Film – Sky Blossom is an Academy Award qualifying film salute to 2020. Filmed over three years, it is a raw, uplifting window into 24.5 million children and millennials stepping forward as frontline heroes. Caring for family with tough medical conditions, they stay at home doing things often seen only in hospitals. They are cheerleaders, work part time, and go to college – but also live double lives – quietly growing up as America’s next greatest generation.

What’s In a Name? – During the Second World War, troops used to look up and say, “Here come the Sky Blossoms” — paratroopers rushing to their aid. Today, there is a new generation answering that call. These are their stories.

Social Media
facebook.com/SkyBlossomFilms
twitter.com/SkyBlossomFilms
twitter.com/RichardLui
instagram.com/skyblossomfilms
instagram.com/richardlui
#skyblossom
@SkyBlossomFilms
@RichardLui

The American Nurse, Director Carolyn Jones

THE AMERICAN NURSE explores some of the biggest issues facing America — aging, war, poverty, prisons — through the work and lives of five nurses. It is an examination of real people that will change how we think about nurses and how we wrestle with the challenges of healing America. Jason Short drives up a creek to reach a homebound cancer patient in Appalachia. Tonia Faust runs a prison hospice program where inmates serving life sentences care for their fellow inmates as they’re dying. Naomi Cross coaches patient Becky, an ovarian cancer survivor, through the cesarean delivery of her son. Sister Stephen runs a nursing home where she uses goats, sheep, dogs and llamas for animal therapy and the entire nursing staff comes together to sing to a dying resident. And Brian McMillion, an Army veteran and former medic, rehabilitates wounded soldiers returning from war. Director and Executive Director Carolyn Jones (Defining Hope), joins us to talk about her own journey to the making of The American Nurse and how she came to know the remarkably compassionate and professional people who have provided comfort and care to all of us.

 

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For news and updates got to: kinolorberedu.com/film/the-american-nurse

Watch The American Nurse: kinonow.com/american-nurse

About the filmmaker(s)

Carolyn Jones / Director and Executive Producer Carolyn Jones is an award-winning photographer and filmmaker who specializes in telling stories that shed light on issues of global concern. From people “living positively” with AIDS to women artisans supporting entire communities and nurses on the front lines of our healthcare system, Carolyn has devoted her career to celebrating invisible populations and breaking down barriers. She founded the non-profit 100 People Foundation which creates educational films and curricula and has students participating in thousands of schools in over 90 countries worldwide. Her most widely acclaimed book publications include Living Proof: Courage in the Face of AIDS and The American Nurse, which led to a feature documentary included in the U.S. State Department’s American Film Showcase. In the spring of 2018 her award-winning documentary Defining Hope, which was the culmination of a journey investigating how we can make better end-of-life choices, was broadcast over 1,000 times on PBS stations nationwide.  carolynjones.com

Lisa Frank – Producer As Director of Programs and Production for the 100 People Foundation, Lisa has traveled the globe to produce award-winning short documentaries on global issues for students worldwide. She founded a trans-Atlantic production company and produced a narrative short that screened at Cannes and the French-language documentary Démocratie en France which premiered in Paris and at the Alliance Française in New York City. She holds a B.S. in Theater from Northwestern University, and certificats des Beaux-Arts from L’Ecole Jacques Lecoq and L’Ecole Philippe Gaulier in Paris, where she also taught movement, dance and acrobatics.

To learn about the American Nurse Project, visit americannurseproject.com

About The American Nurse Project sponsor FRESENIUS KABI: Fresenius Kabi was inspired to launch an endeavor that celebrates nurses in this country– an undertaking that acknowledges the nurse’s critical role at the bedside, and their pivotal role within our healthcare system. The American Nurse Project, which includes the book The American Nurse as well as the forthcoming documentary, seeks to tell a story that needs telling. Capturing intimacy, rare beauty, and refreshing frankness with journalistic objectivity, we hope to celebrate the crucial role that care can have in all our lives, and to celebrate the people that care the most. We are proud to be the sole sponsor of the book and the production of the documentary. Fresenius Kabi is a global health care company that specializes in lifesaving medicines and technologies for infusion, transfusion and clinical nutrition.  Our products are used to help care for critically and chronically ill patients. To learn more, please visit us at www.fresenius-kabi.us. For more information about our support of The American Nurse Project, please contact geoffrey.fenton@fresenius-kabi.com.

Social Media
facebook.com/americannurseproject
twitter.com/amnurseproject
instagram.com/carolynjonesproductions

 

“A compassionate and psychologically revealing doc.” – The Hollywood Reporter

“Carolyn Jones’s portrait of five medical caregivers walks us through day-in, day-out sacrifices without ever coming off as sentimental or aggrandizing.” – The Village Voice

“A solid, worthwhile documentary…Elegantly clear-eyed.” – The New York Times

“Intellectually and emotionally engaging. This is one of the best films you’ll see this year, documentary or otherwise.” – Aisle Seat

Jim Allison: Breakthrough, Director Bill Haney

JIM ALLISON: BREAKTHROUGH is the astounding, true story of one warm- hearted, stubborn man’s visionary quest to find a cure for cancer. The film traces Allison’s remarkable life from his school-boy days in Friday Night Lights, Creationist Texas all the way to Stockholm where, in December of 2018, he accepted the Nobel Prize in Medicine. Director Bill Haney is an award-winning documentarian, serial inventor and entrepreneur, who has founded more than a dozen companies, two of which develop drugs to cure cancer and neurological diseases. Meeting Allison in the labs of MD Anderson, Haney was immediately captivated by Jim’s empathy and pathos as much by his scientific accomplishments. Today, Jim Allison is a name to be reckoned with throughout the scientific world — a 2018 Nobel Prize winner for discovering the immune system’s role in defeating cancer but for decades he waged a lonely struggle against the skepticism of the medical establishment and the resistance of Big Pharma. Using intimate interviews with Allison and a set of scientific leaders, paired with the use of graphics and archival material, JIM ALLISON: BREAKTHROUGH takes us into the inspiring and dramatic world of cutting-edge medicine, and into the heart of a true American pioneer, in a film that is both emotionally compelling and deeply entertaining. Director Bill Haney (The Price of Sugar, The Last Mountain, A Life Among the Whales) stops by to talk about this highly entertaining, informative story about an innovator, free-thinker, honky-tonk musician and a true iconoclast.

 

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For news and updates go to: breakthroughdoc.com

For Jim Allison: Breakthrough screenings go to: breakthroughdoc.com/screenings

Jim Allson: Breakthrough opens in LA on Friday 9/27 at the Laemmle Monica Film Center

Social Media:

facebook.com/CancerCureDoc

twitter.com/CancerCureDoc

instagram.com/CancerCureDoc

“Breakthrough remains loyal to its academic source material in a way that’s clear enough for any viewer to follow… [and] Haney seems to have made all the right filmmaking choices, from balancing the science and sentimental to picking his subject at the perfect time…” ~ Nathan Mattise, Ars Technica

“In a time when cynicism and skeptics run rampant, Breakthrough looks to offer a moment of comfort and hope via the story of Jim Allison.” ~ Dino-Ray Ramos, Deadline Hollywood

“In a field you’d never think of as having rock stars, Allison is a rock star of immunology. The filmmaker, Bill Haney, is a rock star among documentarians for bringing us this wonderful, hopeful film about a man and a Breakthrough achievement.” ~ Bradley Gibson, Film Threat

“Breakthrough demonstrates that the treatment is not a miracle, but the result of some wild but meticulous thinking by a true medical hero.” ~ Caryn James, The Hollywood Reporter

“Breakthrough is an engaging and entertaining film because Allison is a fascinating subject. He’s blunt and honest and colorful.” ~ Sophie Novack, Texas Observer