We are pleased close the 28th Annual Film Festival with the area premiere of director/producer Richard LeMay's (2010 festival closer Children of God, 200 American) stunning family drama Naked As We Came. Shot entirely in Massachusetts and staring a stunning ensemble including Ryan Vigilant of Gossip Girl and Karmine Alers, (Mimi in Rent), Naked As We Came is a story about letting go of the past and recreating family relationships. After an unexpected phone call, Laura and her brother Elliot rush to their family's country estate to find their mother, Lilly, gravely ill and living with a handsome young stranger named Ted. Their mother's condition sets Laura and Elliot on a path to realizing where their own lives have gone wrong. Love, loss and hope are all explored in this powerful drama, which asks the question: What is your dream?

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In June 2003, the Episcopal Church in New Hampshire came under fire when it became the first to elect an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, as a bishop. Since that flash point, Robinson has been at the center of the contentious battle for LGBT people to receive full acceptance in the faith. Director Macky Alston (whose film, Family Name, won the Freedom of Expression Award at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival) follows Robinson into the breach in the struggle for equality. While resolute in his calling, Robinson grows increasingly critical of the central role that religious institutions have played in fostering homophobia and hatred. He is pointedly not invited to a once-a-decade convocation of bishops and courts controversy by attending. His presence the next year for the Episcopal General Convention underscores the impact of its impending decisions about the church’s stance on the consecration of future gay bishops and the performance of same-sex marriage ceremonies. While Robinson never intended to be the poster boy for gay bishops, Love Free or Die demonstrates that he has become a beacon of hope for millions. His history-making church provides a model for other communities of faith to treat all people with dignity and respect, regardless of their sexuality. (Description courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.) Winner, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for An Agent of Change, Sundance Film Festival.

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According to Audre Lorde’s own description of herself she was: ‘a lesbian, a feminist, black, a poet, mother and activist’. In the 1980s Dagmar Schultz, who at the time was lecturing at the John F. Kennedy Institute at Berlin’s Freie Universität, invited Lorde to Berlin as a visiting professor. This move was to have an enduring influence, for Lorde soon became co-founder and mentor of the AfroGerman movement. In her documentary portrait, Dagmar Schultz distills hitherto unpublished and often very personal material of Lorde that portrays her among her Berlin women friends, fellowtravellers and students, many of whom she encouraged to begin writing.

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