Moving Images Film Festival

The Clyde Theatre announces four weeks of mid-week films from veteran local filmmakers Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young, of Moving Images in Clinton starting March 15. For almost 40 years, Dworkin and Young have produced documentaries on Whidbey, as well as across North America, in Europe and Central and South America.

Themes they have addressed range from social justice, to war and peace, to the AIDS crisis, sustainable food and farming, and conserving the environment. In nearly every film, the team shows not only potential problems, but the actions of regular people to create just and sustainable solutions. “You might say that Dworkin and Young put a human face on the dynamics of change – individual as well as institutional.” Dianna MacLeod, Whidbey Life Magazine.

Moving Images’ films have won prestigious awards from CINE, Houston, Columbus, Prix Leonardo, International Wildlife, Women in Film/Seattle, Chicago, NW Film and Video Festivals. Six documentaries have been broadcast nationwide on PBS, most recently, SHIFT CHANGE [2014]. A few years ago Moving Images received a Seattle MEANINGFUL MOVIES CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: “In recognition of your 33 years of creating Media that Matters – an outstanding collection of social and environmental justice films that inform and inspire.”

“Melissa Young and Mark Dworkin have devoted the last 37 years to producing moving documentaries that demonstrate another world is possible.  Choosing their own subject matter, unbeholden to outside interests, they have created an influential body of work and a unique lifestyle as back-to-the-land filmmakers.”  John Hoskyns-Abrahall, Bullfrog Films, international distributor of Moving Images films.

Some may have seen Dworkin and Young’s their local productions, CULTIVATING KIDS about the South Whidbey School Farm Program, PLANE TRUTHS about the impacts of Navy growler jets, and most recently EVER GREEN about the Whidbey Environmental Action Network.

All films will screen at 7:30 pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays at The Clyde Theatre. Both evenings in a given week will have the same program. Festival passes, four evenings for $30, are now available at the Clyde ticket office during regular box office hours.

For those with health concerns, the Clyde staff is always masked, and 2/3 of the left side of the theatre is set up for socially distanced seating.

Festival schedule follows:

March 15, 16 – WE ARE NOT GHOSTS (Detroit – revitalizing the city, with urban gardens and other projects, Langston Hughes Film Festival), and SHIFT CHANGE (worker co-ops in Spain and the U.S., aired nationally on PBS)
March 22, 23 – ISLAS HERMANAS (sister islands of Bainbridge and Ometepe in Nicaragua, broadcast on KCTS/9), HOW CAN I KEEP ON SINGING? (stories of settler and indigenous women in Central Washington 100 years ago, aired nationally on PBS, many on Whidbey helped create the film), and EVER GREEN (Whidbey Environmental Action Network)
March 29, 30 – NET LOSS (dangerous impacts of salmon farms in the Pacific Northwest and Chile, aired nationally on PBS), and GOOD FOOD (sustainable food and farming in the NW, aired nationally on PBS)
April 5, 6 – ARGENTINA – HOPE IN HARD TIMES (grassroots responses to a devastating economic collapse, filmed in the streets of Buenos Aires in 2002, International Human Rights Film Festival) and DON’T GIVE UP YOUR VOICE (the most recent Moving Images film about Argentina that shows how grassroots
resistance helped defeat a right wing president)

For a brief taste of many Moving Images films, you can watch a sample reel here: vimeo.com/348713775.