Directed by:

Geoffrey Smith

Executive Producers:

Greg Sanderson, Nick Fraser, Sally Jo Fifer

Producers:

Geoffrey Smith, Rachel Wexler

Camera:

Graham Day

Editor:

Kathy O'Shea

Music:

Nick Cave, Warren Ellis

Screening Format:

35 mm

Awards and Honors:

Grierson Award documentary nomination 2008, Best International Feature at Hotdocs 2008, Best World Feature Documentary at Silverdocs 2008.

English Surgeon could be titled or subtitled, "Henry goes to the Ukraine" but that would smack of the frivolous. This serious, funny, sometimes intense, but always loving, documentary chronicles the efforts of a British doctor, Henry Marsh, and his overseas counterpart, Igor Kurilets, to save lives. It represents not an easy task. Faced with limited equipment and supplies, as well as bureaucracy and jealousies, they nonethless press forward. The level of equipment can be stupifying; forced to use a handyman drill for brain surgery, they do. They must. At one point the surgeon replies: "Hope is more important than anything in life." "I'll be dead and gone long before I'm disillusioned," author George Garrett quotes in another context. Indeed, these selfless, dedicated medical practitioners, like counterparts everywhere, carry forth against all odds. "The brain itself does not feel," we learn. But the film does. Watch the trailer for The English Surgeon.

Contemporary Arts Alliance wishes to acknowledge the partnership of Eyeline Films in presenting The English Surgeon.

Preceded by

Open Your Eyes

(USA, 2008, 13 mins.)

Written and directed by

Susan Cohen

With

Traci Dinwiddie, Suzy Nakamura, Eric Lange, Teresa Huang

Producers:

David Newsom, Amy Sommer, Alisa Wiegers

Executive Producers:

Mark Goodstein, Erick Herring, John Stein

Camera:

Stephanie Martin

Editor:

Steven Ansell

Production Design:

Fontaine Beauchamp Hebb

Sound Design:

Seann Dougherty, Brett Voss

Casting:

Monika Mikkelson

Music:

Wolfram de Marco, Leslie Stevens

Screening Format:

Digi Beta

Awards and Honors:

Best Short Film, Anchorage International Film Festival 2008; Alexis Award for Most Promising Student Filmmaker, Palm Springs International ShortFest 2008; Jean Picker Firstenberg Award for Excellence DWW 2008, American Film Institute.

Struggling to come to terms with her life and marriage after breast cancer, Julia gets more than she bargained for when she attends a bridal shower and finds herself locked in a bathroom with the frank-talking sister of the bride-to-be. Open Your Eyes is a poignant and humorous look at our complex relationship with breasts, each other and what it really means to be whole.

Contemporary Arts Alliance wishes to acknowledge the partnership of the makers of Open Your Eyes.

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