Co-presented by Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard LLP. When it comes to Wall Street corruption, the worst criminals rarely grant interviews. But Unraveled marks an exception. Prominent attorney Marc Dreier committed fraud on a scale that made him second only to Bernie Madoff. While confined under house arrest, he opened his life to filmmaker and attorney Marc H. Simon […]
WORLD PREMIERE Billboards and commercial messages dominate the public space like never before. Can we reverse this visual pollution? This Space Available looks at diverse activists from the worlds of advertising, street art, and politics. Influenced by the writing of Marc Gobé (Emotional Branding), his daughter Gwenaëlle directs with tremendous verve in her depiction of New Yorkers and others […]
WORLD PREMIERE Whatever happened to The Sugarhill Gang? After scoring a mega-hit with “Rapper’s Delight,” the band’s creative leaders Master Gee and Wonder Mike became the victims of nightmare contracts. They lost their income and even their names. Twenty-five years later, they set out to reclaim their identities and place in hip-hop history, going up against ruthless adversaries […]
2011 METROPOLIS COMPETITION WINNER US PREMIERE Inside the legendary (and soon to be transformed) Chelsea Hotel, first-time director Corinne van der Borch discovers Bettina, a resident since the 1960s, once a mysterious beauty and now a recluse. Filmed over two years, Bettina lets down her guard and reveals a treasure trove of her artwork. This exquisite portrait captures […]
Blazing the Trail reveals the legacy of New York’s silent movie pioneer The Kalem Film Company, toplined by the creative combo of director Sidney Olcott and actress Gene Gauntier. In 1910, they traveled to Ireland to produce the country’s first feature film, The Lad from Old Ireland, and built on its success with other tales of immigration, romance […]
2010 METROPOLIS COMPETITION AND AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER Karina, Pearl and Anthony are three New York teenagers in a radical poetry workshop called Power Writing that has a profound affect on their lives. Putting pen to paper they’re able to imagine a future where fathers aren’t in jail, mothers aren’t abusive and college isn’t something you […]
RIDE, RISE, ROAR is a David Byrne concert film that blends riveting onstage performances with intimate details of the creative collaborations. Shot with multiple cameras over several concerts during the 08/09 tour, the film blends the energy and charisma of classic Talking Heads with the heartfelt pathos of Byrne and Brian Eno’s most recent collaboration. […]
PUPPET interweaves a broad look at the fraught history of American puppetry (its marginalization as children’s theater and its sudden explosion as high art) with an intimate thread following Dan Hurlin, a downtown artist who is creating a complex puppet work called “Disfarmer” based on the life of a Depression-era portrait photographer. Hurlin’s struggle to mount […]
Before rock journalism was respectable, before feminism had gained ground, Lillian Roxon was trailblazing both as an Australian journalist transplanted to New York. She forecast the significance of musicians such as Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and the Velvet Underground; and authored “Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia” before succumbing to an early death at age 41. Director […]
The visionary theater director Richard Foreman has been an icon of New York’s avant garde for 40 years. Whether or not you’re familiar with his work, this portrait gives an accessible entry to understanding an important chapter of cultural history, packed with interviews including F. Murray Abraham, Eric Bogosian, James Cromwell, Willem Dafoe, Yoko Ono, […]