2020 Digital Festival Program
Opening night: Thursday, June 11, 2020 | 7:00pm
Eastern (free)
2016, Documentary. Canada, 43 min
As a historic Toronto high school basketball program is ending, four Eastern Commerce students find themselves competing for the school’s last chance at championship glory.
Screening with Far From Home (on demand)
Friday, June 12, 2020 | 7:00pm
Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
2016, documentary, US, 80 min, dir: Deborah Riley Draper
Jesse Owens was the star of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, winning four gold medals and challenging notions of Aryan supremacy. But he was not alone eighteen African-American athletes challenged Jim Crow America and represented a country that considered them second-class citizens. While America was torn over boycotting Hitler’s Olympics, these men and women competed in an atmosphere of Aryan superiority and anti-Semitism, in a seminal precursor to the Civil Rights Movement.
Screening with Run 4 All Women
Friday, June 12, 2020 | 9:30pm
Killer Bees
2018, documentary, US, 82 min, dir: Benjamin Cummings & Orson Cummings
The Bees basketball team from Bridgehampton High School defies stereotypes of The Hamptons, the seaside playground for New York’s wellto-do. Preparing to defend their state championship, the Bees are a symbol of hope for an historic African-American community that is struggling to survive racial discrimination and absurd income inequality in one of the wealthiest districts in the country.
Screening with Run 4 All Women
FREE
Saturday, June 13, 2020 | 1:00pm
Kids Screening – 6 Short Films
Free
Saturday, June 13, 2020 | 4:00pm
Althea
2014, documentary, US, 83 min, dir: Rex Miller
Althea Gibson’s life and achievements transcend sports. A truant from the rough streets of Harlem, Althea emerged as a most unlikely queen of the highly segregated tennis world in the 1950s.
Screening with Baseball in the Time of Cholera
Free
Closing night: Saturday, June 13, 2020 | 7:00pm
Wrestle
2018, documentary, US, 96 min, dir: Suzannah Herbert & Lauren Belfer Manuel Tera
J.O. Johnson High School in Huntsville, Alabama, has long been on the state’s list of failing schools. The school’s wrestling team is one bright spot. Yet, while four young wrestlers pursue their dreams of a state championship, splintered family lives, drug use, teenage pregnancy, mental health struggles, and run-ins with the law all threaten to derail their success on the mat in a deeply affecting depiction of growing up disadvantaged in the American South.
Screening with Ride for Promise
Free