FILMS || TITLES | FILMMAKERS | COUNTRIES

An Act of Conscience
Robbie Leppzer | USA | 1997 | 90 min. | documentary

In Colrain, Massachusetts, tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner -- lifelong pacifists who refuse to fund war -- work to keep their home, first seized by the IRS, then occupied by a young couple who buy it for a song at government auction. Conscience counts up the cost of civil disobedience, for the new owners of the house, and for the resisting couple and their close-knit community -- as its support stretches into months and even jailtime. Never losing sight of the complex elements of this "war" at home, the film is full of memorable folk -- Father Daniel Berrigan, forbearing police, Pete Seeger, a Buddhist monk, a not-unsympathetic IRS bureaucrat, an elderly gardener, and a passionate old woman -- all of whom have parts to play in this modern-day Thoreauvian stand-off.

DIRECTOR/PRODUCER/EDITOR/CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robbie Leppzer
SCREENWRITERS: Robbie Leppzer and Sara Elinoff
NARRATOR: Martin Sheen

New York Premiere, 1997 Human Rights Watch Festival. Distributed by Robbie Leppzer, Turning Tide Productions, P.O. Box 864, 27 Cooleyville Road, Wendell, MA 01379 Tel: (508) 544-8313 Fax: (508) 544-7989.

Robbie Leppzer

Robbie Leppzer has worked for 20 years as an independent documentary filmmaker. He has directed and produced numerous award-winning films, video, and public radio documentaries for national and international distribution. His documentaries about contemporary social themes have been broadcast by WGBH (PBS, Boston, MA) and WGBY (PBS, Springfield, MA), and nationally on the PBS Primetime series, "The 90s," and aired in Canada by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Cinema's "Reel Life" series presented the U.S. broadcast premiere of An Act of Conscience on tax day, April 15, 1997. This is the first time that one of Leppzer's complete documentaries has been aired nationally. An Act of Conscience received its world premiere at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.

Additional credits include: Futbolito: A Journey Through Central America, Columbus Didn't Discover Us, Straight Talk, Call of the Peace Pagoda, Harvest of Peace, and Seabrook 1977.

Leppzer's next work, Ashes and Light, an hour-long documentary to be released in 1998, chronicles an international gathering at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz on the eve of the 50th anniversary of its liberation.

---

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL