THE MAD SONGS OF FERNANDA HUSSEIN
Shot over a period of six years on a minuscule budget and with a cast of nonprofessional actors, The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein revisits the experience of the Gulf War through a reverse lens, focusing on the war's reverberations in America. Set in a different desert, the film presents three stories in three cities, as it follows characters whose lives get altered as a consequence of the war: a Mexican-American woman who has acquired the name Hussein through marriage; a teenage boy adrift in his anger, struggling to affect change; a returning veteran indelibly marked by what he has witnessed and participated in. Working in the space between fiction and documentary, Gianvito's film seeks to resurrect the memory of a time that was too quickly filed away but whose tragic consequences continue to be felt, most profoundly among the twenty-two million people of Iraq. Historian Howard Zinn has called it «both a work of art and a critical piece of history ... thoroughly engaging as a story and provocative as an examination of American values».
«My goal was to try to create a time-capsule of what it felt like to be in America during that period, to preserve as best possible the memories I had of that time, with the hope of encouraging reflection.» (John Gianvito)
- Thia Gonzales - Fernanda Hussein
- Robert Perea - Carlos Sandia
- Dustin Scott - Raphael Sinclair
- Sherri Goen - Azhar Hussein
- Carlos Stevens - Ameer Hussein
- Elizabeth Pilar - Pilar
- Bill Facker - Mr. Sinclair
- Ann Dasburg - Anna
- John Gianvito
- zusätzliche Dialoge von Suzanne Gaulin
- Ulli Bonnekamp
- Will Gethin-Jones
- John Gianvito
- Rob Todd
- Igo Tkachenko
- Johannes Ammon
- Jakov Jakoulov
Traveling Light Productions 10 Mt. Vernon Street #3 Arlington, MA 02476, USA T 781 483 3211 john.gianvito@verizon.net
