SHORTS: LEGACY
History is made, for better or worse. The Happiness Machine (USA, 24 min., Rebecca B. Blumhagen) profiles philosopher, inventor and farmer, Carl, who grew up a sharecropper on 22 acres in rural Iowa which he now hopes to pass on to his children as a gift of place. Using entirely archival footage, In the Absence (USA, 26 min., Yi Seung-Jun) revisits the 2014 Sewol Ferry Disaster—in which a ferry containing 476 passengers, many of them high school students, sank en route from Incheon towards Jeju in South Korea—making the case that government collusion and ineptitude led to the loss of 304 souls. Father K (USA/Bahrain, 34 min., Judd Ehrlich), Palestinian Lutheran Pastor Khader El-Yateem, ignites his marginalized community’s hopes and dream when he campaigns to become NYC’s first Arab American elected official in his conservative Brooklyn neighborhood, but in the election’s aftermath, an unforeseeable blow threatens the foundation of the movement they began.
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