The Witness highlights the dramatic and inspiring personal transformation of a
tough Brooklyn construction contractor whose heart is opened by the love of a kitten.

Friday, 05/23/08, Doors Open @ 7pm
5th Avenue Cinema, 510 SW Hall St, Portland, OR
Suggested Donation 5$ for “Let Live” NW Animal Rights Conference
Brought To You By: Food Fight! Grocery, Herbivore Magazine, Vegans For Animal Advocacy


Portland, Oregon — The Witness, a 43-minute film that has won six “Best Documentary” awards at film festivals across America will screen for one night only at 5th Avenue Cinema in Portland, OR. The Witness tells the inspiring story of Eddie Lama, a tough construction contractor from Brooklyn whose chance encounter with a kitten completely transforms his life. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of the Los Angeles Times, Howard Rosenberg, said: “The Witness is one man’s truth that cries out for mass exposure… may be the most important film about animals ever made.”

Lama's remarkable change in consciousness, from loathing animals to devoting his life to their protection, seems to be contagious. “I feel as though I have been walking around with a bag over my head, and my heart,” said one viewer in Albany, NY. “The difference those 43 minutes made in my perceptions are earthshaking for me.”

The film has received extraordinary support from everyday people, who have thus far organized several hundred community screenings in almost every U.S. state, in venues ranging from libraries and churches to college campuses and movie theatres, often with theatre owners donating the space for the events. The documentary has also been broadcast on independent film showcases of several regional PBS stations.

For his groundbreaking street level education work, Eddie Lama was honored with the Peace Abbey’s Courage of Conscience Award. Past honorees have included Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama. "In my lifetime,” said Lama as he accepted the award, “I have been both the oppressor and the oppressed, both the fomenter of discord and the advocate for peace, both the perpetrator and the victim. But most significantly, I have been both the silence and the voice. It is the human voice that is the primary tool for change.”

“The Witness touches something very deep in audience members,” says producer LaVeck, “because it shows how any person, from any background, can change. Eddie Lama is living proof of something that we all hope and pray is true, that one person’s change of heart can change the world.” LaVeck and the film’s director, Jenny Stein, founded their non-profit production company Tribe of Heart, to fill an unmet need for films that explore the human potential to respond to injustice with creativity and non-violence. Tribe of Heart’s second film, Peaceable Kingdom, is currently on the film festival circuit and recently won a festival award for “enriching the human spirit through film.”