Could there be a more timely moment for the Global Cinema Film Festival of Boston?
Running March 9-12 at Studio Cinema in Belmont, all of the 28 international features and shorts examine in some way how political and social conflict clashes with the will to survive, whether it’s fleeing dictatorships for a life in exile or how families cope while living on opposite sides of tightly closed borders. Raouf J. Jacob, director of the documentary “Sierra Leone: A Culture of Silence’’ (2014), produces the festival with Lara M. Moreno. Jacob’s own family fled Sierra Leone, West Africa, during the civil war in 1999 and immigrated to Boston.
Filmmakers who’ll be attending the festival include Bita Shafipour, whose short “Last Night in Edinburgh’’ (Thursday) is about two sisters escaping arranged marriages by remaining on a holiday in the Scotland capital. There’s also William Aydelott, American director of the short “Mail.Man’’ (Sunday), about the unique way that the written word can unite; Krysten Resnick of the United Kingdom, whose short “Nothing Gold’’ (Sunday) follows three generations of women and their attempts to cope with the imminent loss of their grandfather; and the producers of Edgar Baghdasaryan’s “The Simon’s Way’’ (Sunday, co-presented with the Armenian Museum of America in Watertown) about relatives living on each side of the closed border between Armenia and Turkey who manage to communicate with each other.
In addition to its many documentaries, the festival presents two fiction features. The romantic comedy “UnIndian’’ (Friday), directed by Anupam Sharma, is about a man (Brett Lee) who teaches English to immigrants and who falls for a single mother (Tannishtha Chatterjee) of Indian origin, despite opposition from the woman’s family. “Rebellious Girl’’ (Saturday) is director Jawad Ghalib’s drama about young social activist Laila (Sofiia Manousha), who leaves Morocco to work as a seasonal fruit picker on a farm in Belgium. The farm’s harsh labor practices and poor living conditions rekindle Laila’s activism, disrupting life for everyone.
For more information, go to www.worldwidecinemaframes.com.
Family affair
Filmmaker and Tufts University professor Jennifer Burton shines a light on issues of gender, human rights, and identity itself with “Kings, Queens, & In-Betweens,’’ a documentary she co-produced on drag queens, kings, and trans performers in Columbus, Ohio. The film screens Thursday at 6 p.m. at Tufts in Tisch Library, Room 304, where Burton will be joined by four Boston drag performers who represent the spectrum of drag celebrated in the film, which was directed by Burton’s sister, Gabrielle Burton. Their Los Angeles-based Five Sisters Productions is helmed by the five real-life Burton siblings.
For more information go to www.fivesistersproductions.com.
Big dig
Producer and Boston native Kevin Crick and actress and co-screenwriter Amanda Todisco of Revere will be on hand for the Boston premiere of “Valley of Ditches’’ on Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Kendall Square Cinema. The crime thriller about a woman in a brutal struggle to escape her captor as he digs her grave is Crick’s producing debut. It will be the last big-screen showing prior to the film’s release March 21 on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Xbox, and Vudu. Director Christopher James Lang and executive producer Rachel Veznaian will also attend the screening.
For more information go to www.landmarktheatres.com.
Not just for kids
The offbeat offerings of Channel Zero return to the Somerville Theatre on Friday at 8 p.m. with a program called Saturday Morning on Friday Night. It features about one dozen classic Saturday morning cartoons from the 1960s such as “The Lone Ranger,’’ “Beanie and Cecil,’’ “Tom Sawyer,’’ and “Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles.’’ Programmer John L. Galligan promises other treats from an era when “all sorts of craziness was once thought reasonable children’s entertainment!’’
For more information, go to www.channel0.blogspot.com.
Loren King can be reached at loren.king@comcast.net.
