NYC PREMIERE Executive produced by Dan Rather, Fail State explores the dark side of higher education in America, focusing on the rise of for-profit colleges. Echoing the subprime mortgage crisis, these private institutions target lower-income and minority students, who become saddled with student loan debt and, often, worthless degrees. Director Alex Shebanow traces the historical […]
NYC PREMIERE In 1967, Detroit’s mostly white police department was known for its harsh treatment of black citizens. When police raided an after hours party at the intersection of 12th Street and Clairmount, the streets erupted in what’s been called a riot by some, a rebellion by others. It lasted five days and left 43 […]
NYC PREMIERE . Years after the suicide of her sister Ruth, a talented but troubled artist, director Hope Litoff tries to make sense of her loss. Renting a studio, Hope begins a meticulous forensic investigation of the belongings Ruth left behind, filling the space with her artwork, diaries, datebooks and a pharmacy’s worth of prescription-drug bottles. […]
WORLD PREMIERE In the early 1900s, an African-American man named Reverend M.J. Divine began a religious movement that would reach over a million followers at its peak, crossing racial divisions and advocating for gender and economic equality. Despite his influence and achievements, Father Divine is little remembered today, dismissed by detractors as a con man […]
WORLD PREMIERE Seattle’s Providence Mount St. Vincent is a nursing home that also houses the Intergenerational Learning Center, a preschool program. Over the course of a school year, elderly Mount residents regularly interact with young children over various activities. As relationships develop between those at the end of their lives and others at the beginning […]
WORLD PREMIERE Director Sam Pollard constructs a portrait of charismatic trailblazer Maynard Jackson, who became Atlanta’s first black mayor in 1973. The son of pastors raised in the segregated South, Jackson entered college at 14 and took office at 35. During his three-term tenure, he led the city through the traumatic Atlanta child murders and […]
NYC PREMIERE In the Renaud brothers’ compelling look at the dark realities of America’s war on drugs, DEA agents face the Sisyphean task of curbing the influx of Mexican ice, a more potent form of meth, into poor, rural communities in Arkansas. On the other side of the law, the film profiles Veronica, a longtime […]
NYC PREMIERE Chicago’s Westside has its share of problems, but it’s also home to Orr Academy. There, young men like Marquise and Tyquone find refuge from the sometimes dangerous realities of the street on the school’s basketball team, under the watchful eye of their mentor and coach, Lou. After team MVP Marquise runs afoul of the […]
NYC PREMIERE While recent years have seen a remarkable increase in transgender visibility, the path to acceptance – and self-acceptance – is not always smooth, particularly for youth, who still face alarmingly high rates of suicide. Becoming More Visible turns the spotlight on four diverse young transgender New Yorkers as they contend with family and societal expectations […]
NYC PREMIERE Here is “the real Transparent,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter. Set against the backdrop of logging towns in the Pacific Northwest, The Pearl is an intimate profile of four transgender women who come out for the first time in their later years. This immersive story considers not only what it means to become a […]