Crossing Borders Documentary Block
Saturday, December 18th
1:00pm-3:00pm
Factory Underground (Downstairs)
Oli Otya?
Feature Documentary
Director: Lucy Bruell
Oli Otya? Life and Loss in rural Uganda is a feature documentary about people facing life threatening illnesses where access to medical care is limited. A team of local nurses provides symptom relief and support to patients in the villages. Every year a pair of palliative care doctors from the US accompany them. Through the lens of their experience, Oli Otya? explores how faith, culture and belief in traditional healers influence how patients understand their conditions and how they care for each other when options are few. The intimacy of medical care is a window into the lives of the people in Naggalama.
Lucy Bruell
Lucy Bruell: Director/Producer labruell.com
Lucy Bruell is a journalist who has worked at Newsweek and ABC. She directed “Speaking with Music,” “Beyond the Practice Room,” and “On A Personal Note” three award winning documentaries on young classical pianists that were distributed by American Public Television. She produced two episodes of “The Babysitters Club,” for Disney and HBO. Her health-related work includes several short-form documentaries on palliative care at NYU Langone Medical Center and Weill Cornell School of Medicine. Lucy is a recipient of multiple grants including support from the National Institutes of Health, the 911 Children’s Fund, and the Littauer Foundation. She was the William Wood Research Fellow in Broadcast Journalism at Columbia University and is currently a faculty member at the NYU School of Medicine and Associate Director of the Humanistic Aspects of Medical Education program.
Lucy met Randi Diamond while filming medical rounds at Weill Cornell and heard about her work in Uganda. She knew almost immediately that she had a rare opportunity to film this world. Over the two years that she has traveled and filmed there, she has forged deep relationships with the hospital staff and the Ugandan people she met. She is also extremely fortunate to work on location with her Ugandan crew who, in addition to being talented filmmakers, acted as her guide into their culture.
90 Days to Leave
Documentary Short
Director: Tanmay Srivastava
This short documentary is about the expulsion of the Asian community from the East African nation of Uganda in 1972. The documentary tells not only of the racial hatred and military hostility that the Asians received from the Ugandan Africans but the difficulty of gaining their British visas, how others headed to America and Asian countries, and the further difficulties that awaited many of those who did get into Britain during the racially charged era of the 1970s, including political opposition to their arrival, discrimination, education, and employment.
Tanmay Srivastava
Tanmay Srivastava is an Indian film director, producer, and editor from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, India. He is best known for his documentaries Black Water, 90 Days To Leave, and The Bund. He started making documentaries in 2015 when he was 11 years old. He has created over 14 documentaries and 3 short films with international cooperation and has won over 10 awards at film festivals around the world. He is a freshman at the University of Cincinnati. He's a member of the British National Youth Film Academy and the Raindance Film Festival. He is the CEO of Synergy Productions and Executive Director at Infinity Pictures United Kingdom.