Rooftop films: The Redemption of General Butt Naked
Joshua Milton Blahyi is a murderous Liberian warlord turned evangelical minister in this stirring vérité documentary about the nature of justice and absolution. The man known as General Butt Naked murdered thousands during Liberia’s horrific 14-year civil war. Today this once-brutal warlord has renounced his sadistic past and reinvented himself as evangelist Joshua Milton Blahyi. In a riveting cinema vérité journey that unfolds over the course of five years, filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion follow Blahyi’s unrelenting crusade to redeem his life. Facing those he once terrorized, preaching where he once murdered, Blahyi is on a quest to save his soul.
(Daniele Anastasion and Eric Strauss | Liberia | 90 min.)
Redemption General Butt Naked film still Joshua Blahyi - by Ryan Lobo
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Venue:
OPEN ROAD ROOFTOP
350 Grand Street (at Essex), Lower East Side, New York, NY 10002
Subway: F, J, M, Z to Delancey Street-Essex Street; B, D, Q to Grand Street
8:00 PM Doors Open
8:30 PM Live Music by Janka Nabay
9:00 PM Film Begins
11:30 PM After Party at Fontana’s (105 Eldridge St., btwn Broome St. and Grand St.)
Tickets are $10 online or at the door. Tickets and more information at:
http://rooftopfilms.com/2011/schedule/the-redemption-of-general-butt-naked/
Music:
JANKA NABAY
“There was also an African apparition: Janka Nabay from Sierra Leone, wearing a straw skirt and singing and dancing to recorded tracks of what he said was a 500-year-old tradition called bubu music. The tracks were modern, and the beat, fast and skeletal and driven by bell taps, was unstoppable, demanding wider dissemination.” -NY Times
