OMG. Our documentary my be a big time hit! Already talk of an academy nomination. The Underwater Dreams movie will be showing in Phoenix starting next week. Deb and I are going with the rest of the ROV gang to NY tomorrow for the premier and return to Denver the next day. I dont know what will happen next. This is all so much fun! See below for links and reviews, go to toward the bottom... Showing in Phoenix JULY 18 – 25, 2014 – Phoenix. AMC Arizona Center: 565 N 3rd St, Phoenix, AZ 85004 SHOWTIMES: TBD LA and NY JULY 11-18, 2014 - New York. AMC Empire 25: 234 West 42nd Street, New York, NY SHOWTIMES: 10am, 12:20pm, 2:40pm, 5pm, 7:20pm, and 9:40pm CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS JULY 11-18, 2014 - Los Angeles. AMC Burbank 6: 770 N 1st St, Burbank, CA SHOWTIMES: 12:45pm, 3pm, 5:15pm, 7:30pm, 9:45pm. (And additional morning shows at 10:30am Fri-Sun) CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS Please see the below press breaks on behalf of UNDERWATER DREAMS: RED CARPET CRASH 7/1: James McDonald wrote a positive review redcarpetcrash/movie-review-underwater-dreams-is-captivating-inspirational/ THE NEW YORK TIMES 7/10: David DeWitt wrote a positive review of the film nytimes/2014/07/11/movies/teenagers-win-a-robotics-contest-in-underwater-dreams.html?_r=0 FILM JOURNAL 7/10: David Noh wrote a positive review filmjournal/filmjournal/content_display/reviews/specialty-releases/e3ieb33a8838b16f825b18e508764d419b9 LA TIMES 7/11: Gary Goldstein posted a positive review of the film latimes/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-underwater-dreams-movie-review-20140711-story.html Movie Review: “Underwater Dreams” Is Captivating & Inspirational James McDonald July 1, 2014 Review by James McDonald “Underwater Dreams, narrated by Michael Peña, chronicles the story of how the sons of undocumented Mexican immigrants learned how to build underwater robots. And go up against MIT in the process. “Underwater Dreams” is that rare film that keeps your total attention for its entire duration and also encourages you and inspires you to want to do better with your life. The documentary follows four young Hispanic students from Carl Hayden Community High School in Phoenix, Arizona, a very economically depressed area full of unemployment, drug use, gangs and crime. Two of the institution’s teachers decided, out of the blue, to enter their school into a refined underwater robotics competition sponsored by NASA and the Office of Naval Research, among others. Only four students signed up but together, with sheer determination and very little money, they built an underwater robot using some loaned electronics, PVC piping and duct tape. They made their way to Santa Barbara in 2004 and found themselves competing with influential academic establishments such as Cape Fear Community College, Lake Superior State University and MIT. During the event, the team endured hiccups and setbacks galore but they persevered and by the end of the competition, they beat all the odds and won. The movie integrates actual footage from the finals and when they announce them as winners, you actually find yourself cheering for the underdogs. The film tells this story in retrospect but it also interviews the students who were competing against them from MIT and what their thoughts and memories were of the overall event and what they were feeling at the time but then the movie veers off in another direction altogether. You find out that all four of the Hispanic men who were attending Carl Hayden Community High School, were undocumented immigrants. The film changes gears and we begin to find out about each of the young men and their families and their struggles to stay in the U.S. Many of these men came to America when they were just infants and when Arizona passed a law that prohibited tuition aid to all undocumented immigrants, many of them had to drop out of school to try and find work. One of them even willingly turned himself into Immigration Services and was promptly deported but was then able to turn around and legally re-apply for citizenship. Denied twice, an activist heard his plight and contacted her local congressman and he took it to congress and showed them his achievements, his most notable being the big win at the robotics competition and because of this, and what he could contribute to America, he was granted U.S. citizenship. The first thing he did once he became a citizen was to join the army. What I loved about this movie, was that it didn’t just concentrate on the competition win but also the young men’s backgrounds and the impossible obstacles they and their families had to overcome just to survive. As you become more aware of the good people they are and their future goals and achievements, it makes you care about their plight even more. “Underwater Dreams” introduced me to a group of people who achieved the impossible by beating any and all odds to come out on top. Now THAT is the American dream. Opens in NY and LA on July 11th For One Team, It’s Sink or Swim Teenagers Win a Robotics Contest in ‘Underwater Dreams’ By DAVID DeWITTJULY 10, 2014 From left, Lorenzo, Oscar, Luis and Christian, who recount their experience winning a robotics competition in the documentary Underwater Dreams. Credit Richard E. Schultz/50 Eggs Films Four teenagers winning an academic contest might not seem to merit a documentary. Happens all the time, right? But in“Underwater Dreams,” the teenagers are Latinos — and illegal immigrants, four of the many who could gain citizenship through the Dream Act — from a low-income high school in Arizona. They win against many colleges, including M.I.T., in a robotics challenge. And their unlikely achievement, in 2004, reverberates a decade later, helping the students who followed them at Carl Hayden Community High School to have more confidence and even, in some cases, propelling them to work as engineers and as leaders in Dreamer groups. Underwater DreamsJULY 11, 2014 The first half of the film introduces the Carl Hayden boys — the likable Oscar, Lorenzo, Luis and Cristian — and their teachers, allowing them to tell how Stinky (their robot) was built for the Marine Advanced Technology Education competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The team’s Spanish-speaking parents are interviewed, as are members of that losing M.I.T. robotics team. The second half tells the aftermath of that victory. A 2014 scene has the team again meeting with the M.I.T. students, who are all having fine careers in science and engineering; of the Carl Hayden graduates, only one has completed college. Modest yet meaningful, “Underwater Dreams” has a political point of view, shining light on underground Americans who deserve recognition. One of the aftermath scenes has some Carl Hayden graduates, now activists, stopping a bus filled with immigrants who are being returned to Mexico; a contrasting image from this month, of anti-immigration protesters stopping a bus of new arrivals in Murrieta, Calif., starkly reinforces this film’s contribution to a continuing dialogue. Film Review: Underwater Dreams As captivating as it is important, Mary Mazzios seemingly modest tract about immigration achievement grabs you by the heart, as it grows and grows into something big and vital. July 10, 2014 -By David Noh The year is just half over, but already a contender for best documentary of 2014 is looming with Mary Mazzios Underwater Dreams. What starts out as a high-school competition study—compelling enough on its own, as so many of these like-themed films are—pulls a breathtaking fast one in its second half, expanding its basic inspirational theme to embrace an even larger message, with an organic efficacy that is nothing short of astonishing. Mazzio focuses on four male students from Carl Hayden Community High School, a Title One school in Phoenix, Arizona, where most live in poverty. In 2004, this intensely likeable and funny ragtag bunch of Mexican immigrants, all without documentation, won a prestigious NASA-sponsored annual underwater robotics competition, even decimating the entitled team from M.I.T. With their robotic underwater prober named Stinky for reasons which were literal, a quaint contraption slapped together from parts purchased at Home Depot, they were able to best the sleekly high-tech model created by their rivals (with Exxon sponsorship) through sheer determination, divinely sparked by pure ingenuity. Example: When Stinkys PVC pipes sprang a leak and began to sink from incoming water, one of their number came up with using tampons to absorb the moisture, even though that called for one embarrassing visit to the store. A decade later, the boys are invited to M.I.T. to meet their competition again and relate their stories since then, which have also engendered a flourishing program at Carl Hayden, now legendary in the educational field for the number of graduates it has successfully sent on to college. While the M.I.T. kids are unsurprisingly ensconced in cushy, prestigious tech jobs—one even having invented the ear buds emitting the music the world bops to—the Carl Hayden boys are mostly eking out a living, working for minimum wage in fields like catering and janitorial, while trying to set up small businesses. However, one of them, Oscar, even went so far in his determination to become documented that he turned himself in, was deported, and eventually returned to the States, where he enlisted and has served two tours of Afghanistan duty. The reasons for this professional discrepancy go beyond mere race or obvious socioeconomic roots and have everything to do with this countrys oppressive immigration policy, particularly Arizonas inhuman Proposition 300. And it is at this point where the film kicks into a universalist high gear, with a thrilling demonstration of how one small incident of immigrant triumph not only can reflect but motivate change. The smart, alert, engineering-besotted generation of students at Carl Hayden, who followed that original dream team, is particularly active in demonstrating for change, and we see their inspiring, risk-taking efforts, including a sit-down before a bus deporting immigrants back to Mexico. Engineer Dulce Matuz—who created the Arizona Dream Act Coalition, a youth-based organization dedicated to gaining higher education and immigrant rights—spearheaded this movement, is extensively interviewed here, and was named one of Time magazines most influential people. Illinois senator Dick Durbin, who heard about the boys from Matuz, has made this issue a priority, and eloquently lauds their achievements as well as excoriating the sad and ridiculous fact that only a piece of paper separates them from being total Americans in every other way, while the lack of such has them treated as criminals. Again and again, Mazzio captivatingly returns to the faces of the original four, as well as the terrific kids inspired by them, who are still surprising everyone with their achievements. The reasons for a serious revamp of Americas immigration policy become mountainous as you watch this movie, and its a genuine Kleenex-requiring tearjerker by the end. Review An inspiring and insightful Underwater Dreams Fredi Lajvardi (Carl Hayden Teacher), Diserea Sanders (Carl Hayden student), Sergio Corral (Carl Hayden student), Martin Carranza (Carl Hayden student), and Isela Martinez (Carl Hayden student) with Stinky in the movie Underwater Dreams. (Richard E Schultz / 50 EGGS) GARY GOLDSTEIN Underwater Dreams is a powerful argument for immigration reform With the debate over Americas unresolved immigration policies at fever pitch these days, the inspiring documentary Underwater Dreams makes for quite the timely entry. Writer-producer-director Mary Mazzio neatly recounts how a group of Mexican-born students from a beleaguered Arizona high school trumped opponents from the esteemed Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a 2004 underwater robotics contest sponsored by NASA and others. The filmmaker also presents a cogent case why, for the good of the United States and its future, Congress should pass the Dream Act and other pending immigration reforms. But its the robotics competition and its life-changing aftermath that informs most of the narrative. Recent interviews with the original challengers — the resourceful underdogs from Phoenixs Carl Hayden Community High School and the more seemingly privileged contestants from MIT — are effectively mixed with actual footage from the 2004 contest. The film also incorporates modest reenactments of the Arizona kids preparation for the event. The two teams reunite toward the end of the movie in a spirited gathering held earlier this year at MIT at which the onetime competitors again build and race underwater robots. The differing paths taken over the past decade by the Carl T. Hayden Community High School grads and the MIT alumni prove a telling snapshot of our nations class and cultural divide. Comments by student advisors, parents of the main Carl Hayden alumni, the high schools more recent robotics students and immigration activists, along with narration by actor Michael Peña (Cesar Chavez) rounds out this moving and insightful piece. Underwater Dreams. No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 26 minutes.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:45:38 +0000
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