UPDATE 2: Watch Alias Ruby Blade online - one week only (until April 28). Details here
UPDATE: Alias Ruby Blade is also showing at the Montclair (NJ) Film Festival, Saturday, May 4, 2013, 1 pm. Also showing is the Act of Killing, the widely acclaimed documentary about the killings in 1965-66 Indonesia: Sunday, May 5, 6:15 pm.
A Story of Love and Revolution
SCREENINGS
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Q and A with Director Alex Meillier after all screenings.
SYNOPSIS
Veteran documentary editor and producer Alex Meillier takes a turn in the director’s chair to tell the remarkable story of documentarian-turned-activist Kirsty Sword Gusmão. Beginning with only a simple curiosity in the islands to the north of her native Australia, she becomes a forceful advocate for the tiny nation of Timor-Leste and a lynchpin in its harrowing, decade-long struggle for independence. Meillier turns Gusmão and her team’s firsthand footage of the revolution into an insider’s guide to the personalities and secret networks that kept it alive. Along the way, we meet the charismatic leader of the resistance, Xanana, whose relationship with Kirsty would redefine the cause for which they both were fighting.
Alias Ruby Blade is an engaging portrait of a revolution with deep resonance in the events of the Arab Spring. By focusing his film on the movement’s most unlikely member, who in turn becomes one of its most indispensable agents, Meillier gives a personal edge to the individual sacrifices and courage needed to create a new democracy in modern times. --Arthur Ryel-Lindsey
Program: World Documentary Competition
2012 | 78 minutes | Documentary Feature
Directed by: Alex Meillier
Premiere: North American
Cinematographer Shane Sigler
Cast Kirsty Sword Gusmão, Xanana Gusmão, José Ramos-Horta
Director Alex Meillier
Screenwriter Tanya Ager Meillier, Alex Meillier
Producer Tanya Ager Meillier, Richard Keddie
Editor Tanya Ager Meillier, Alex Meillier
Director of Photography Shane Sigler
Executive Producer Abigail E. Disney, Gini Reticker, Silvio Salom
Composer Paul Brill
Film website: www.aliasrubyblade.com
Copies of Kirsty Sword Gusmao's book, Woman of Independence, are available from ETAN. http://etan.org/resource/books.htm#B47
