NYC PREMIERE Although Brooklyn’s Heather “The Heat” Hardy has only been boxing for a few years, she’s a world champion in the making—but first she has to be given the chance to prove herself in a sport that has been slow to open its doors to female athletes. Training at the world-famous Gleason’s Gym, the […]
WORLD PREMIERE In the 1940s and 50s, long before Arthur Ashe or Venus and Serena Williams, Althea Gibson was the first African-American tennis player to become World Champion. Her singles wins at Wimbledon and Forest Hills drew worldwide attention and was celebrated with a ticker-tape parade along Broadway. Reintroducing the pioneering athlete to a new generation, […]
Played since the 1930s, 9-Man, a variant of volleyball, was developed by Chinese immigrants to America as both an athletic pastime and a social outlet in a time of widespread anti-Chinese sentiment, discrimination and segregation. Ursula Liang’s film traces the game’s fascinating history as a backdrop to the present-day national championship, in which Asian-American players, […]
WORLD PREMIERE A pair of acrobatic burlesque performers attempt to juggle art, love and financial stability in this perceptive portrait. Following the effervescent Trixie and the puckish Monkey from their base in Baltimore to hone their skills at a New England circus school, to burlesque competitions in Las Vegas and, finally, to a new home […]
WORLD PREMIERE Located just outside of Manhattan, the Lillian Booth Actors Home provides a most resonant setting for the staging of a classic play in which nothing is what it seems. Seeking ways to engage their residents, administrators bring in young professional Broadway directors to shepherd the charismatic retired performers through A Midsummer Night’s Dream. […]
NYC PREMIERE From Oh! Calcutta! and The Rocky Horror Picture Show to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, producer Michael White has helped bring enduring cultural touchstones to Broadway, London’s West End and the silver screen over the last four decades, but the bon vivant may be the most famous person you’ve never heard of. […]
NYC PREMIERE In 1996, during NASA’s Space Shuttle Mission, STS-76, Michael ‘Rich’ Clifford performed the first American spacewalk while docked to the Russian Mir Space Station. It was a flawless performance that paved the way for future spacewalks. Fifteen years later Rich Clifford reveals that he had Parkinson’s disease while performing that spacewalk and with […]
NYC PREMIERE Recognizing that music and rhythmic activity can help those suffering from Parkinson’s disease achieve greater control of their mobility, two dancers from New York’s Mark Morris Dance Group lead a workshop teaching dance and movement to a group of Parkinsonians. As the tenacious participants joyously regain a sense of bodily freedom, they rehearse […]
A courageous young Scottish actress takes the boldest step imaginable to confront her risk of having inherited the fatal, incurable Huntington’s Disease. This film has been shortlisted for the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. This film plays before the feature, WHEN PEOPLE DIE THEY SING SONGS
NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE Olga Lvoff’s film is a sensitive examination of family, memory and mortality. Under the watchful eyes of her dutiful daughter Sonia, Regina recalls the Yiddish and French songs of her youth through music therapy sessions following a stroke. But the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor is starting to succumb to dementia. Fearful that their […]