NYC PREMIERE Maddman tells the unlikely rags to riches story of Steve Madden, who went from selling shoes out of the trunk of his car to becoming the mogul of a billion-dollar designer footwear empire. Then, at the height of his success, he was sentenced to prison because of his entanglement with Jordan Belfort, the […]
NYC PREMIERE Wilma Mankiller rose from poverty to become the first female chief of the Cherokee nation. After a forced relocation from her native Oklahoma at 10, Wilma developed her activist chops in turbulent 1960s San Francisco, fighting for land rights during the Alcatraz Occupation. Back with her people, she organized around issues of social and […]
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 […]
WORLD PREMIERE In the 1970s, New York City was hit with a financial crisis just as a planned luxury apartment building was being constructed in Hell’s Kitchen. With its future uncertain, a bold plan was hatched to offer subsidized housing to people working in the performing arts. The result was Manhattan Plaza, a harbinger for […]
WORLD PREMIERE Award-winning filmmaker Julia Bacha (Budrus) chronicles the remarkable journey of Naila Ayesh, who played a key role in the nonviolent Palestinian uprising known as the First Intifada. When the uprising broke out in the late 1980s, Naila was living in Gaza. Faced with a choice between love, family and freedom, she embraced all […]
WORLD PREMIERE Combining archival footage and interviews with female activists, scientists and scholars in the US and Africa, director Harriet Hirshorn demonstrates the vital role that women activists have played and continue to play in the global fight against HIV/AIDS. An unexpectedly upbeat film about pressing global issues conveyed through intimate, evocative journeys, Nothing Without Us […]
NYC PREMIERE Acclaimed filmmaker Mila Turajlic (Cinema Komunisto) follows the recent troubled history of Serbia through the experiences of her mother, Srbijanka, a tireless dissident against multiple regimes. Over the course of several months, Mila and Srbijanka engage in probing and humorous dialogues over Serbia’s past, present and future. Their country has typically gained more […]
NYC PREMIERE In the mid-1980s, Bruce LaBruce and G. B. Jones, a pair of young Canadians, introduced the world to the burgeoning Toronto queer punk scene through homemade zines and scrappy films. In this pre-Internet era, there was no way of knowing that queercore consisted of just two people. Soon enough, their subversive creation spread […]
NYC PREMIERE A star of stage and screen and member of the legendary Rat Pack, Sammy Davis, Jr. broke racial barriers, but paid a heavy price for it. Defying societal norms concerning interracial romance, religion and political affiliation, Davis courted controversy many times, but always with grace and honesty. Filmmaker Sam Pollard explores all the […]
Part of our Bring a Friend special – get 2 tickets for the price of 1! NYC PREMIERE Years ago, local Iowa historian and eccentric collector Michael Zahs chanced upon a cache of early films and cinema memorabilia belonging to Frank Brinton, a showman who brought moving pictures to America’s heartland in the earliest years of […]