Friday, March 3rd at 12pm, Boulder Theater
THE BORNEO CASE
Sweden, Feature Documentary, 2016, 78 min
Ninety percent of eastern Borneo’s forest has been sold off and destroyed. But where did all that money go? In this  modern-day thriller, a polyglot group of investigators manages to expose Abdul Taib Mahmud, the chief minister of Sarawak, who, over the last 33 years, has stolen billions of dollars from illegal logging.
He hid the money in secret accounts and funds around the world, including in some of the biggest banks and with  politically connected people in the U.S. (Abdul’s family owns the FBI building in Seattle.) A whistle-blower in Los Angeles (later found dead) gives the team concrete proof of how a major international bank actively helped Mahmud purchase properties in the U.S. The story is filled with intimidation, death threats and murder, before finally ending up at the heart of the financial center of the world. Subtitled
Directed by Erik Pauser and Dylan Williams
U.S. Premiere – Talk Back following the film at the TalkBack Café • Free Snacks + Beverages
Saturday, 12:15pm, First Presbyterian Church

THE ISLANDS AND THE WHALES

Scotland/Denmark, Feature Documentary, 2016, 84 min

Winner at Hot Docs and Reykjavik International Film Festival

Nominated for Best Documentary at BAFTA Scotland

The hardy people of the Faroe Islands north of Scotland are fiercely proud of their thousand-year Viking tradition of hunting non-endangered pilot whales. When the hunt is on, director Mike Day’s camera is taking it in from a small motorboat—the chaos, danger, and violence from all angles. When the hunt is over, bells ring and celebrations erupt all over the islands. However, with exposure to rapidly increasing ocean pollution, mercury is rising to dangerous levels in the whale meat. Activists want to end the whale hunts. The Faroese are reluctant. They are only a tiny harbinger of a time when the entire world will face a crisis of mercury in its food supply from the sea. SUBT I T LED

Directed by Mike Day

Colorado Premiere

TalkBack following the film at the First Presbyterian Church
Saturday, 5:15pm, First Presbyterian Church

HOLY (UN) HOLY RIVER
USA, Feature Documentary, 2016, 60 min
Winner at the Banff Mountain Film Festival

What starts as a traditional expedition film at the source of the Ganges high in the Himalayas becomes something else as Boulder co-directors Pete McBride and Jake Norton journey downriver. Although once celebrated for its purity, the Ganges now carries contaminants from its glacial headwaters where the snow contains zinc from industrial emissions. Downriver, there are sixteen dams built to provide hydroelectric power. Water is diverted for agriculture while the 500 million people in the Ganges basin further pollute the river with bathing the burials. The Hindu faithful believe they can cleanse away their sins in this “holy” water which carries the unfiltered drainage of a population twice the size of the U.S.
Directed by Pete McBride and Jake Norton

Boulder Premiere: Pete McBride in person