Paramedics on Scene

Can you go from one side of the city to another without using the car? 'Sweat, Pedal, Feel the Wind' explores the feasibility of using the bicycle as a means of transportation in the city; in this case San Juan, Puerto Rico. Is the city designed for its use? Does the bicycle have the potential of making a city more sociable? The documentary is narrated from the perspective of four different cyclists from different social backgrounds, age and gender who use and need the bicycle for different reasons. But, for all of them the bicycle has become a way of life, a way of feeling the city.

SPECTRUM OF HOPE is the story of 10 musical theater students, their families, and their teachers as they go on a journey from their special needs school in New York City's Lower East Side to the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a beautiful moment in all of their lives - a celebration of the power of arts education, musical theater, and what can be accomplished when students are allowed to flourish on their own terms.

Fall in with the Kent County Community Marching Band and stride with the oil truck driver, the town mayor, the clerk of court, the au pair from China, the grandma, the preschooler, and the guy who owns a tire store. Small, medium, and large; this is one band that fits all. Collectively they march through small towns - individually they march through life. Through hip replacement, heart attack, and tragedy, they play on. As they pass spectators stand to cheer, some salute, many well up. Band Together - the cure for the common cynic.

This film documents the time shared by four high school students and four elderly mountain sages. The students are typical Japanese teenagers who share a deep anxiety about the future. The sages represent a rural, mountain-based life that Japan has all but discarded in search of rapid economic development and material prosperity. The eight lives sketched herein provide us with a window on the fundamental contrasts to be found in Japan - urban vs. rural, modern vs. traditional, the young and the old - and show us what can happen when these radically different worlds meet.

Sharon and Sharona Galsulkar are the last educators of their Indian Jewish community, the Bene Israel, which has been residing in the Bombay region for 2000 years and is now disappearing. Genuinely Zionists and concerned by their daughters' future, they are also committed to their community's needs. Whose education will they sacrifice?