Good Fortune at SILVERDOCS

We are excited that our former Ithaca Park Scholar, Jeremy Levine, is heading to SILVERDOCS this week for the World Premiere of a film that he has been working tirelessly on with his filmmaking partner Landon Van Soest.

Good Fortune explores how massive, international efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa may be undermining the very communities they aim to benefit. Through intimate portraits of two Kenyans battling to save their homes from large-scale development organizations, the film presents a unique opportunity to experience foreign aid through the people it is intended to benefit.

In the rural countryside, Jackson’s farm is being flooded by an American investor who hopes to alleviate poverty by creating a multi-million dollar rice farm. Across the country in Nairobi, Silva’s home and business in Africa’s largest squatter community are being demolished as part of a United Nations slum-upgrading project.

Interweaving meditative portraits of its characters, Good Fortune examines the real-world impact of international aid. With a broad scope and intimate style, the film portrays gripping stories of human perseverance and suggests that the answers for Africa lie in the resilience of its people.

Following the two screenings, there will be Q&A’s with the filmmakers and organizations who are working in unique ways to address international aid that benefits the communities that they aim to support.

The film has already received kudos, as it was the recipient of the 2007 Sundance Documentary Fund, winner of the Fledgling Fund Award for Socially Conscious Documentaries at the 2007 IFP Market, and the recipient of a Fulbright Grant in the Creative and Performing Arts.

The New York premiere will be the following week at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, a leading venue for distinguished fiction, documentary and animated films and videos with a distinctive human rights theme. This screening is presented in association with the Fledgling Fund and IFP and will also include a post-screening Q&A.