NYC PREMIERE Known as ‘the John Cassavetes of exploitation,’ filmmaker Larry Cohen is responsible for such 1970s cult hits as It’s Alive, Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem. Steve Mitchell’s rollicking tribute revisits the heyday of guerrilla filmmaking, when Cohen would shoot car chases, shootouts and fight scenes without a permit on busy Manhattan […]
NYC PREMIERE Moving to New York City from small town Louisiana in the early 1980s, Kevyn Aucoin found acceptance as a gay man and success in the fashion world. Developing an often overlooked profession into an influential art form, Aucoin became the go-to makeup artist for — and fast friends with — supermodels and celebrities […]
NYC PREMIERE Nick Bollettieri ran America’s most famous tennis academy, producing multiple champions including several who would become fierce rivals: Jim Courier, Andre Agassi, Boris Becker and more. Was Bollettieri a genius or a tyrant, a father figure or a huckster? There are no simple answers. He’s been interviewed countless times always quick on his […]
NYC PREMIERE Cecil Beaton was a multi-talented photographer, writer and painter who also designed sets and costumes for Oscar®-winning films such as My Fair Lady and Gigi. Filmmaker Lisa Immordino Vreeland, who has previously directed major lm biographies of Diana Vreeland and Peggy Guggenheim, shows how Beaton intersected multiple worlds from British royalty to fashion […]
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 […]