Independent Film Night Pollard Library |

BEFORE YOUR EYES (2010)
Thursday, May 10 @ 6:30PM
Pollard Memorial Library
401 Merrimack Street, Lowell
Free admission!

Every second Thursday of the month is Independent Film Night at Pollard Memorial Library here in downtown Lowell, giving all us film lovers a great opportunity to stretch our indie film wings and enjoy great foreign fare and film fest titles. Indie Film Night comes to all of us FREE of charge, courtesy of the Friends of the Pollard Library, so mark your calendars for the second Thursday of every month for an indie film fix right here in the Mill City!

ABOUT THE FILM
Ten year old Gulistan and her brother Firat live in the heart of Turkish Kurdistan. Tragedy strikes when their parents are shot down by paramilitary gunmen before their very eyes. Traumatized and orphaned, Gulistan and Firat try to care for their infant sister, but their money soon runs out and they’re forced onto the street. It is there that Gulistan meets the part-time escort Dilara. Accompanying her on a hotel call one day, Gulistan is shocked to recognize Dilara’s client as the murderer of her parents, and she devises a method of revenge. Miraz Bezar’s award-winning film will be presented in Turkish & Kurdish with English subtitles.

Click here to view the film trailer and to learn more about Bezar’s remarkable film.

ALAMAR (2009, Mexico)
(Spanish and Italian with English subtitles)
Thursday, November 4 @ 6:30PM
Pollard Memorial Library
401 Merrimack Street, Lowell
Free admission!

Please note that this week’s Independent Film Night is taking place the first Thursday of the month due to the Veterans’ Day holiday. It will resume its regular schedule of the SECOND Thursday of the month in December. Keep up with the Pollard Library’s monthly Independent Film Night and the library’s other great offerings on their newly created blog.

This month’s Independent Film Night at the Pollard Library features the 2009 release Alamar (“To the Sea”), edited, written and directed with great compassion by Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio. A father-son journey of seemingly mythic proportions, Alamar captures the final days of togetherness between a Mexican fisherman, Jorge Machado, and his young son, Natan, born from a chance encounter with a cosmopolitan Italian woman. Machado spends his days living off the land and sea, and it is this pure simplicity that he shares with Natan before he returns the boy to his mother for a very different upbringing in the city. The film not only captures the overwhelming beauty of Mexico’s Banco Chinchorro, the largest coral reef in the country, but also that of an intensely deep father-son relationship that will not have the chance to grow and flourish past their enchanting journey to the sea.

Read the New York Times review (“A Boy’s Slice of Paradise is Time Alone with Dad”) of this remarkable film, which also received glowing reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Lowell indie and foreign film buffs can now rejoice because of the library’s licensing membership with Film Movement, which features a membership component for both individuals and institutions that allows you to enjoy a different award-winning independent and foreign film every month for a reasonable fee. These are incredible, acclaimed films that for the most part rarely make it past film festivals and into the theaters due to their smaller budgets and foreign flare. For those that do make it to wide release, a membership with Film Movement allows you to preview (and own) the film before its theatrical release. Don’t miss this month’s Alamar and other great films to come at the Pollard!