The volunteers set up a first aid station and quickly find themselves in charge of a refugee camp caring for over three thousand people. What was originally a two-week journey spirals into a year-long odyssey of hope, heartbreak and setbacks as the villagers slowly begin to rise up against them when the worlds’ donated tsunami money never materializes. The volunteers break every rule in the ‘Disaster Aid books’ and out of the rubble an entire village is re-born.

THE THIRD WAVE is a roadmap for volunteering: it chronicles that in a world of increased natural and manmade disasters, Everyone’s needed. No experience required.

Selected for Special Presidential Jury Screening
at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival

Third Wave website

On February 12, 2005, Sister Dorothy Stang, a Catholic nun from Dayton, OH, was shot six times and left to die on a muddy road in the Brazilian Amazon. Who was this woman? Why was she killed? And what will be done about it? The answers may hold the fate of the rainforest itself. They Killed Sister Dorothy is a ground-breaking documentary and a true courtroom drama that follows the trial of Dorothy’s killers and examines her life’s work in the rainforest of Brazil.

Winner: Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize, 2008 SXSW Film Festival
Official Selection: 2008 Seattle International Film Festival

The touching and hilarious story that follows the lives of five teenagers – the jock, the princess, the heart-throb, the rebel, and the geek - in one small town in Indiana through their senior year of high school. We see the insecurities, the cliques, the jealousies, the first loves and heartbreaks, and the struggle to make profound decisions about the future.
Winner: Directing Award/Documentary, 2008 Sundance Film Festival.
Official Selection: Seattle International Film Festival, South by Southwest, Cleveland International Film Festival, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, AFI Discovery Channel Film Festival
Directed by
Nanette Burstein
~ Joe Killian
Produced by Taylor University students Tamara Shaya, Johnathan Bennett, and Tim Sutherland, Dependence explores the troubled relationship of two brothers struggling with addictions. Al desperately wants to help his older brother, Joe, a drug addict but is forced to choose between remaining loyal to his family or being committed to his job. Joe must decide if he can overcome his own addictions or continue to rely on his brother as a crutch. Winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Harvest Moon Film Festival. Official Selection at the 2008 Imago Film Festival
~ Tamara Shaya
~ Lowell Frank and Destin Daniel Cretton
Deacon lives in a fantastical world of snowing feathers, hailing golf balls and incredible guilt. After a petty accident begins to haunt him, the lonely landscaper must stumble through his mundane life while combating his inner torment. Through an unlikely friendship with an elderly woman, Deacon comes face to face with his own humanness and learns that he is not alone.
~ Matt Barber, Matt Webb and Aaron Schuh
This film delicately depicts the isolated world of Weather Wellington. The death of her fiancé in 1989 has left her alone in the aprtment they once shared, surrounded by caged animals, piles of unfilled prescriptions, and outdated electronics. Weather desperately longs to engage with life outside her apartment but has forgotten how to do so. Her only excursions are for doctors’ appointments, as medical exams have become her sole experience of human touch. Just as Weather begins to lose her last shred of hope, she discovers a friend through a surprising encounter.
Directed by Vince DiPersio
Produced by Frank Desiderio
Directed by Alison Thompson, Produced by Oscar Gubernati, and Edited by Cedar Daniels. Executive Producers include Morgan Spurlock and Joe Amodei.
A remarkable film that explores prominent tragedies (the shooting in the Amish schoolhouse, the assassination of MLK, Apartheid in South Africa) as well as personal stories of profound loss and asks the haunting question ~ Could you forgive? Should you forgive? Featuring Archibishop Desmond Tutu, Civil Rights Leader Rev. Joseph Lowery, Dr. Deepak Chopra, M.D., Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, Sister Helen Prejean, His Holiness Sri Sri Shankar, Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and Hopi Elders, the filmmakers explore The Big Question through astonishing acts of forgiveness, courage and will.
Winner: Best Documentary, 2008 Breckenridge Film Festival
Official Selection: 2008 Sedona International Film Festival, 2008 Washington DC Independent Film Festival, 2008 Atlanta Film Festival, 2008 Mendicino Film Festival, 2008 Newport International Film Festival, and many others
After the 2004 Asian tsunami disaster, four independent volunteers race off to Sri Lanka to see if they can help. With little money or experience they arrive in the main city, meeting each other by fate, rent a van fill it with supplies and drive off along the coast. They stumble into Peraliya, a tribal village devastated by a 40 foot tsunami wave, leaving more than 2500 people dead.
Winner: Fujifilm Audience
Impact Award, 2007 Angelus Student Film Festival
Director, Daniel Junge; Producer, Henry Ansbacher

A young artist seeks inspiration for his painting, and finds it in an unexpected combination. Starring local high school students: Alex Killian, Logan Webber, and Sara Barad. Winner of 2008 Imagination Celebration Young Filmmaker’s Award

Films Screened at the 2008 WINDRIDER FORUM