This block explores grief and how we grapple with loss. (Total Running Time: 91 MIN) 3:07 | Director: Megan Miller A personal expression of transformation, as a mother turns her grief and silence around a stillbirth into an expression of remembrance. – Elyse Wang (UK, 12 MIN) The Final Touch | Director: Claire Maske A […]
Stories about born and chosen families. (Total Running Time: 87 MIN) Descended from the Promised Land: The Legacy of Black Wall Street | Director: Nailah Jefferson An intimate look at the lingering economic, psychological, and emotional impacts of the Tulsa Massacre through the lens of descendants. – Elyse Wang (USA, 22 MIN) Freedom Swimmer | […]
Students in the one-year Documentary Specialization program at Columbia learn to write, film, and narrate the stories of our time, from deadline reporting to profile writing and audio stories. The films completed during the 2020 academic year faced unparalleled obstacles, as students were forbidden from shooting in person, and had to edit remotely. Nevertheless, two […]
WORLD PREMIERE Don’t let the 8- to 12- year- old age range fool you: Color Killer, a head-banging punk group, can bring the noise! But can they overcome in-fighting and jealousies to ace their biggest live performance ever? SNL’s Chris Parnell “counsels” their supportive, roadie/manager parents as the film follows the band during the weeks […]
WORLD PREMIERE Mr. McArevey is a visionary headmaster at a Catholic primary school in one of the toughest neighborhoods of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He loves Elvis and teaches his students to connect with their feelings, while taking on the legacies of the “The Troubles.” In this exceptional portrait of a community still healing from trauma, […]
NYC PREMIERE The three minutes of footage explored in this extraordinary film are the only moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust. Director Bianca Stigter inhabits and examines every frame of the home movie Glenn Kurtz found in his parents’ home in Florida, transforming the rare color footage shot in […]
NYC PREMIERE Chock- full of rich archival footage of old Philadelphia and NYC, this everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-automats film is a lighthearted trip through the history of Horn & Hardart’s iconic and innovative eateries. Led by the irrepressible Mel Brooks, the film also features an impressive roster of celebrities (Colin Powell, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Carl Reiner, to name […]
US PREMIERE Mateo Sobode Chiqueno has been using an old tape recorder to capture stories, songs, and testimonies of his ancestral culture since the seventies. As a young native Ayoreo, he was a victim of the violent uprooting perpetrated in Paraguay by white missionaries, who forced them to abandon their ancestral territory, their means of […]
NYC PREMIERE Winner of the SXSW Audience Award, Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America delivers a potent immersion into history through the perspective of former ACLU attorney Jeffery Robinson—a dynamic speaker who makes history vivid through his interviews, travels, and personal stories. Filmmaking sisters Sarah and Emily Kunstler previously directed William Kunstler: […]
US PREMIERE In 1973, four young Black Muslims held up a sporting goods store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The bungled robbery triggered a response of deadly force by a then mostly-white police force and the longest hostage siege in NYPD history. Director Stefan Forbes, producer Fab Five Freddy and their team reconstruct what took place through […]