The evening features 90 minutes of radically independent films presented by Rooftop Films, complemented with readings by authors who have had their work published in Clamor Magazine.

The films to be shown include:

Getting Stronger Every Day (Miranda July, 7:00)

What happens if you are kidnapped as little child, tortured for years, and returned to your natural family as a young man? What happens if you saw that in a movie once, but tell the story like it happened to you? Sometimes youíd rather have a teddy bear for a face; sometimes you are haunted by extra-dimensional blobs. It s getting better.

Record Player Party (Divya Srinivasan, 2:45)

A Pattern of Exclusion (Emily & Sarah Kunstler, 16:10)

The Skateparks of Oregon: Aumsville (Coan Nichols & Rick Charnoski, 6:00)

Between My Mother and Me (Nicole Nelson, 6:00)

Demonstrating a remarkable mixture of astute maturity and an endearing desire to be mothered, 16-year-old Nicole examines her relationship with her single-mom.

Cusp (Ruth Sergel, 24:00)

Cusp is a portrait of Alice, a spirited 12 year old, hitting the wall of early adolescence. As Alice teeters on the edge of adolescence, her connection to her mother begins to seesaw and the tensions of sixth grade social order begin to dramatically play themselves out. Alice is left as an anthropologist of her own culture, bravely attempting to understand her initiation into the world as a young woman.

The Bear Garden (Andrea Leuteneker, 14:00)

Monkey vs. Robot (Nate Pommer, 2:00)

Hear more about the Tour, Rooftop Films and Clamor Magazine in this interview with Tour co-organizer Josh Breitbart on the mediageek radio show.

From the Power of Living Tour website:

They are artists, students, professionals, activists, parents, writers, teachers and more. Just like all of us, they work, worry, love, laugh, play, fight and live. They are the cast of hundreds who make up the list of contributors to almost 20 issues of Clamor Magazine and nearly 50 evenings of Rooftop Films. "The Power of Living: Become The Media" tour will be sharing the stories of these contributors with people in cities across the Midwest who seek the power of becoming the media. The multimedia program will include films and readings from Clamor and various books and zines, sharing stories that are real and relevant.

Whether it is the plight of the Toledo Jeep worker scorned by his bosses, peers and his union for speaking out about his working conditions or a high schooler reminiscing about her coming to know America's obsession with breast-size, Ed Waisnis following his brother through a heart transplant operation or Louis Rivera searching for his long lost family in Cuba, people are writing articles and making movies about their very personal and very amazing stories.

Clamor co-editor and founder Jason Kucsma and Rooftop co-director and founder Joshua Breitbart will be presenting the tour in cooperation with local organizations, bands and venues in each city. Kucsma is also the founder of the Underground Publishing Conference, founded in 1999 and recently renamed the Allied Media Conference. The past two conferences have drawn 1000 independent media makers and supporters from all around North America. This year, the Utne Reader named him one of 30 Young Visionaries Under 30.

Rooftop Films, a volunteer-run non-profit corporation which promotes low-budget filmmaking in New York City, has been showing movies on a roof in Brooklyn for six years. Every Friday night each summer they host an evening of movies like many that will be shown on the Power of Living tour: movies about where people live and how they live; ingenious shorts and daring features; animated, experimental, even handmade movies. Through their funding and production efforts, they also support the making of short films, especially by filmmakers that would otherwise lack a media outlet for their stories.