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Beautiful Faces A compelling new film about a Mexico City hospital where young lives are transformed. Beautiful Faces is an intimate portrait of one of the world’s most remarkable clinics, the disfigured young patients to whom it offers new lives, and the team of surgeons, physicians, and medical professionals who believe it’s the best place in the world to practice their unique, life-transforming craft. Beautiful Faces is a film that’s at once moving and inspiring, informative and challenging, a story that’s told with narrative power and visual eloquence. "A splendid documentary," writes Federico Reyes Heroles in Reforma.
Two Spirits
Two Spirits was broadcast during the 2010-2011 season of the PBS series "Independent Lens," reaching an audience of millions and receiving the Audience Award as the viewers' favorite among the twenty films broadcast during the series. The Fred Martinez Project and the documentary film Two Spirits have received the Monette-Horwitz Distinguished Achievement Award for outstanding activism, research, and scholarship to combat homophobia. Fred Martinez was nadleehi--someone who possesses the gift of both masculine and feminine traits according to his traditional Navajo culture. On a warm summer evening in Cortez, Colorado, Fred hugged his mother, said he would return soon, and left the trailer house in which they lived to attend a rodeo carnival. Fred was sixteen years-old. He dressed as he usually did with a touch of mascara, wearing a small bra stuffed with socks beneath his sweatshirt, and carrying his favorite purse. He spent several hours with friends and then disappeared. His savagely beaten body was found five days later in a shallow canyon near his home. The film also explores the history of Native two-spirited people and the range of gender expression and sexual identity that has long been seen as a healthy part of many of the indigenous cultures of North America, and of Navajo culture in particular, which recognizes four genders. The first is the feminine woman. The second is the masculine man. The third is the male-bodied person who has a feminine essence—nadleehi. The fourth is the female-bodied person who has a masculine essence—dilbaa. When a child is born, elders seek to support the child in becoming fully who they are, and, in adolescence, the ceremony that marks entry into life as an adult is different for each gender. Quite wonderfully, a nadleeh or dilbaa person receives a combination of the masculine and feminine ceremonies.
The Sorrow of Archaeology “Russell Martin's The Sorrow
of Archaeology is
an intelligent, poetic novel with the complex characterization
and layered plotlines of rich literature. . . . a lyrical page-turner
with a knack for grappling with the deeper human questions of self-identity,
personal history, and physical and emotional brokenness.” - Rocky
Mountain News
Award-winning Beethoven's Hair, Beethoven's Hair, directed by Larry Weinstein and based on the book by Russell Martin, has been screened at film festivals throughout the world, and has aired on television in the U.S., the U.K., France, Italy, Hong King, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic. It is the recipient of three Gemini awards, and the Festival Director's Prize at the Golden Prague International Television Film Festival. The film combines both documentary and dramatic elements to tell the story of a lock of hair that was cut from Ludwig von Beethoven's corpse and that has had a remarkable trip through time, including its role in helping hunted Jews escape Nazi-occupied Denmark. It was produced by Toronto-based Rhombus Media, whose films include Last Night, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould, September Songs and the Academy Award-winning The Red Violin.
Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica, "Imaginative cultural historian Martin crafts a well-integrated and fascinating account of Picasso's famous painting and the horrible events that inspired it. The Author's signature approach to seemingly offbeat subjects is careful research filtered through a novelistic sensibility to grasp the inherent story, which he unfolds in the engaging, almost offhand manner of a fictional amateur sleuth. Martin is, first and foremost, a consummate storyteller who deftly weaves such multiple disciplines as politics, history, art, science and even current events into a narrative forming a coherent whole...An engrossing story of a landmark work of art and the struggle 'to fashion meaning out of unimaginable evil, once more to offer hope.'" - Kirkus Reviews
Beethoven's Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey " A wonderfully gripping and readable narrative...a fascinating story, full of mysteries solved and as yet unsolved." - BBC Music Magazine "Russell Martin's lively account of the investigations into strands of Beethoven's hair makes for absorbing reading...a lucid narrative that takes on the characteristics of a tightly constructed whodunit." - Sydney Morning Herald "A wonderful contemplation of how relics can become bridges between people separated by time, culture, and death...an inspiring look at passion in several forms." - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Out of Silence: An Autistic Boy's Journey "A deeply moving rendering of human beings in adversity...Other accounts of the suffering of autism have been published, but few can vie with this one for thoughtfulness, scholarship, and personal accent." - New York Times Book Review
A Story That Stands Like A Dam: "Russell Martin's extraordinary tale of what may prove to be the last big American dam ever built is narrative history as good as it gets. But it is more than that, for in his thoughtful, relentlessly fair analysis of the character of the struggle between the conservation of community and the dam-builders, Martin reveals some of the unmeasured costs that accrue when the dream of human progress is left in the hands of the engineers and the poetry of the landscape is taken from us." - T.H. Watkins
Beautiful Islands, "What a rare, good thing Russell Martin has given us. Beautiful Islands is a story about decent people involved in matters of consequence, a good read and a fine pleasure." - William Kittredge
The Color Orange: A Super Bowl Season With the Denver Broncos "Martin's observant eye and analytical mind enable him to discuss the team in its socio-cultural context, specifically how and why the Broncos' performance affects not only the direct participants but also the community at large. It's an intelligent look into modern sports by an experienced objective observer." - Booklist
Matters Gray and White: A Neurologist, His Patients
"A Book of fascinating insights into modern medical practices and heartening accounts of individual courage...Martin records with uncommon sensitivity and understanding the clinical work and thoughts of a first-rate physician...It is excellent." - New York Times Book Review
New Writers of the Purple Sage: Both edited by Russell Martin
Entering Space: An Astronaut's Odyssey Cowboy: The Enduring Myth of the Wild West "Martin's text is informative, yet lively, even poetic at times, with just the right touch of sentimentality. It's a huge sprawl of a book, one worth dipping into again and again." - Houston Post |
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