by Carl Kruse
Filmmaker and friend of the Carl Kruse Arts Blog, Rick Minnich, cordially invites you to the closing night screening of the documentary film ‘The Strait Guys’ taking place at the Global Peace Film Festival on Saturday, September 23, 2023, 7:30-9:15 PM, at Crummer Auditorium, Rollins College, Fairbanks Ave. & Interlachen Ave., Winter Park, FL 32789.
The Strait Guys tells the story of the 76-year-old retired mining engineer George Kounal, who is on a mission to connect the United States and Russia via the world’s longest train tunnel beneath the Bering Strait. Filmed across Alaska and Russia over a twelve-year period, The Strait Guys follows the efforts of George and his fellow “Strait Guys” to convince governments, corporations and indigenous tribes to green light their $100 billion project, which promises to become the Panama Canal of the 21st century.
The film poses the timely question: What is preventing the US and Russia from being connected?
Since Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the tunnel plan certainly seems absurd. Yet the Strait Guys are more convinced than ever that their mega-project is exactly what the world needs to finally leave wars behind and create “peace, progress and prosperity” for all.
‘We all need to know one another and see each other as friends and coinhabitants of this beautiful planet, not as enemies. What a massive, ambitious and visionary project. We need a transformation in discovering we are all brothers and sisters! The train could help facilitate this change.’
-David Hartsough, co-founder World BEYOND War and author of WAGING PEACE: Global Adventures of a Lifelong Activist.
To request a press screener or interview appointment, please email head of distribution Charlie Corubolo at: distribution@ourmaninberlin.com.
ABOUT
The Strait Guys, a film by Rick Minnich
99 min. color
English + Russian
English + German subtitles
Global Peace Film Festival
Since 2003, the Global Peace Film Festival has used the power of the moving image to further the cause of peace on earth. From the outset, the Festival envisioned “peace” not as the absence of conflict but as a framework for chanelling, processing and resolving conflict through respectful and non-violent means.
Rick Minnich
Rick Minnich is an American independent filmmaker based in Berlin, Germany.
He holds a B.A. in English from Columbia University and an MFA equivalent in film directing from the Film University Babelsberg “Konrad Wolf” in Germany. Rick Minnich has been writing, directing and producing shorts and feature documentaries since 1993 through his companies Rickfilms and Our Man in Berlin and in association with various German broadcasters, film funds, and production companies. He has dedicated his life to building bridges, rather than walls. In his filmmaking and teaching, he is always on the lookout for stories about what motivates and connects us human beings no matter where we live on this beautiful planet of ours.
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The Carl Kruse Arts Blog homepage is at https://carlkruse.net
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Previous blog posts include: Open Studios in Berlin, Lars Von Trier, and Metropolis.
Also find Carl Kruse on TED.
