Building America in Bethlehem
Directed by: Anisa George
Documentary | 2009 | 40 minutes
Nazareth, Pennsylvania

About the Film:
This short documentary follows the conversion of one of the largest steel factories in America into a casino-entertainment center. A poetic and dystopian exploration of the destruction of American industry and the remnants of the community which was built around it.

Screening Times @  Victory Firehouse
7:15pm Wednesday 6/16
7:15pm Thursday 6/17

About the Director:
Anisa is a filmmaker and theater artist. She graduated from Columbia University in 2005 with a degree in Middle Eastern Cultures, and was given the Senior Tow Fellowship to research sacred theater in Iran. She has toured throughout the world with original theater pieces, danced in Kuwait, sung in Kosovo, and taught photography in Yemen. Her filmmaking career began in 2002, when she was hired by Iranian filmmaker Amir Naderi to be his still-photographer, and wound up writing him a screenplay. She went on to make several of her own short films, and the documentary Don Quixote of Bethlehem. In 2007 she went to work for Amber Films in Newcastle, England, where she worked on various documentary projects, both short and long. Most recently she appeared in Jonathan Demme’s new film, Rachel Getting Married, in the role of Emma, and was granted a Jack Kent Cooke Fellowship to complete a master’s in movement theater at the London International School of Performing Arts.