Sundance Directing Award winner Sandi Tan weaves a tale of youthful talent, guerilla filmmaking and a decades-long mystery solved. Tan was obsessed with indie film as a teenager growing up in Singapore. Under the tutelage of a mysterious older mentor, Georges, she filmed her original script, Shirkers, during a summer break, only to have Georges […]
This program presents two films appearing in our Short List: Shorts section recognizing some of the top documentary shorts films of the year. END GAME DIRS: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman A moving film about the passage from life to death, End Game is a portrait of the last days of those in palliative care in […]
High school student and poet, Chasity Hunter, experienced intense flooding in her New Orleans neighborhood during both Hurricane Katrina and recent summer rainstorms. Inspired to find out how safe her city really is, she investigates her city’s infrastructure and questions water experts, finding her own voice along the way.
In 1980, a complete coincidence brought together identical strangers Bobby Shafran and Eddy Galland, 19 year olds who realized they were separated at birth. The subsequent press coverage led to the startling discovery of a third young man, David Kellman. They were actually identical triplets, each adopted by a different family. Instant media sensations, the […]
WORLD PREMIERE On the surface, he had it all. He grew up privileged, graduated from Princeton and his all-American good looks opened the door to a lucrative career in modeling beginning in the late 1980s. But the world’s first male supermodel had an unexpected secret: he was a member of a strange cult of beautiful people […]
The hopes and dreams of the youngest generation. A nine-year-old explains the feeling of being stricken with the world’s oldest infliction—True Love in Pueblo Texti (Cuba/Spain/USA, 5 min., Horatio Baltz). New Orleans high school student Chasity investigates the safety of her neighborhood, Station 15 (USA, 15 min., Kira Akerman, Sophie Tintori), hard hit by Hurricane […]
Contemplating life and death and finding grace. 36-year-old suburban soccer mom and breast cancer survivor, Grace (USA, 16 min., Rachel Pikelny), reclaims her body. Maryam, an ex-offender, helps newly-released women begin their lives anew in her thrift shop, Sister Hearts (USA, 16 min., Mohammad Gorjestani). Crannog (Scotland, 15 min., Isa Rao) follows Alexis, a woman […]
History is made, for better or worse. The Happiness Machine (USA, 24 min., Rebecca B. Blumhagen) profiles philosopher, inventor and farmer, Carl, who grew up a sharecropper on 22 acres in rural Iowa which he now hopes to pass on to his children as a gift of place. Using entirely archival footage, In the Absence […]
Inspirational everyday women and girls who inspire. Aura is an immigrant, housekeeper, domestic violence survivor and real estate entrepreneur in De Colores (USA, 17 min., Luz Marina Zamora), while Ana is Surviving New York (USA, 20 min., Megan Miller), fighting for children?s rights. Quadruple amputee Beatrice (USA, 9 min., Lorena Alvarado) defies all odds as […]
True crime and the criminal justice Seeking justice in a flawed system. A man on death row survives Seven Dates With Death (USA, 11 min., Mike Holland). A day in the life of four electronic monitoring devices, whose wearers enjoy (Almost) Freedom (USA, 8 min., Puck Lo). 15-year-old Robert (USA, 8 min., Sarah Fleming, and […]