White Pine Pictures - News

Toronto – “If our film gets nominated, writers like myself will be unable to cross the picket line of our colleagues to attend the ceremony,” observed author Ariel Dorfman, on his way to New York for a special screening of the feature documentary A Promise to the Dead: The Exile Journey of Ariel Dorfman Tuesday January 8 at IFC Center at 8 pm. (http://www.ifccenter.com).

Dorfman, a defender of human rights who, along with hundreds of other writers, has devoted years to the support of Amnesty International and PEN, finds himself in a unique position.  He and the documentary’s director, Peter Raymont, one of Canada’s premiere social issues documentary filmmakers, wanted to make sure what is a kind of homecoming for Dorfman, included time spent with colleagues on the WGA picket lines.

“For documentary filmmakers the point is truth-telling in all its forms,” said Raymont, whose first foray into drama, The Border, a doc-based series inspired by the troubling issues of policing the world’s longest undefended border between Canada and the United States, premieres tonight on CBC TV in Canada.

“We are honoured to be invited to present our film at the IFC Center in New York,” added Raymont, whose film brings together through Dorfman the themes and resonance of both the September 11 coup in 1973 in Chile, and the September 11 of 2001 which has changed world geopolitics and of which Dorfman has written.

A Promise to the Dead, directed and produced by Raymont (who won an Emmy this year for his documentary Shake Hands With The Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire, ) opens the popular Stranger Than Fiction documentary Series at the IFC Center (http://www.ifccenter.com) Tuesday night January 8 at 8:00 p.m.

Dorfman and Raymont will be in attendance, fresh from picketing with WGA colleagues at Rockefeller Center at NBC headquarters.  Later this month, Dorfman will be at the New York opening of his play Widows, at 59E59 Theatre January 10-February 3.

Audiences have been emotional throughout the Festival screenings of A Promise to the Dead on two continents, struck by Dorfman’s passion about the need for hope, and his determination to reject fear, in a post-9/11 age.

“We are all in a battle to defeat fear—to not let something or someone control us.  People say, what can I do, how can I change a government, how can I change the world?” said an emotional Dorfman to a packed crowd at the film’s World Premiere screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. “Well, in Chile after 16 years people voted to put out a dictator when that dictator was still in power. If you think you cannot change things—that is fear and that is defeat.”

news - courtesy of V Kelly & Assoc.