"I wish I had good news," says the poet Li-Young Lee in the documentary "Poetry of Resilience." "You know, to say that [the human] spirit is resilient"—pause—"some days I feel that spirit is not so resilient." Though Lee's perspective is ultimately global, he's speaking first of the fallout within his own family from the horrors they suffered during China's Cultural Revolution, the ways in which those horrors deeply and permanently scarred them individually and as a unit. But he's also elegantly shorthanding the conversations both in and between many of the films in this year's DocuWeeks film festival, which features a particularly strong lineup of shorts and features for its 15th anniversary. With a primary thematic focus on cultural, political, religious, and class wars, as well as their (human, spiritual, and economic) costs, there's an often palpable struggle for the work to arc toward the uplifting and affirming, even as rose-tinted... More >>>