NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE After her sons died and she could no longer conceive, Maggi chose the intellectually disabled Chun-hee as a second wife for her husband to continue the family line. Forty-five years later, and after their husband has passed, the two elderly women continue to share a life, but Maggi worries about Chun-hee’s fate […]
NYC PREMIERE On the eve of her own wedding, Sharon Shattuck seeks to understand the relationship between her parents in this revealing portrait of an unorthodox family. When she was in middle school, Shattuck’s father came out as transgender, taking the name Trisha, yet remained married to the filmmaker’s straight-identified mother, Marcia. With sensitivity and […]
NYC PREMIERE “I want to tell people how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth.” So says Sonia Sanchez, a seminal figure in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, a poet who has harnessed her gift for words as a champion against racism, sexism and war, fusing art and activism over the past […]
NYC PREMIERE Despite a couple of minor hits, soul singer Syl Johnson retired from the music industry in the 1980s, never quite having achieved the success he longed for. But with the dawn of hip hop came the unexpected, widespread embrace of his 1967 song “Different Strokes” – sampled by artists as diverse as Run-DMC, […]
NYC PREMIERE The head of an apiary school, nearing the end of his career, worries there’s no one to carry on his work with bees. This film is followed by AN ART THE NATURE MAKES: THE WORK OF ROSAMOND PURCELL
Experiences in the melting pot. Satellite Baby (USA, 9 min., Jenny Schweitzer) uncovers the consequences of a Chinese immigrant daycare alternative. A Resident Alien (USA/Spain, 18 min., Naiara Eizaguirre-Paulos) evaded Honduran drug cartels but may be forced back home. The Absentees (UAE, 10 min, Tanya Daud) are stuck in a no-man’s land. A Romanian Olympian […]
2015 AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER NYC PREMIERE Left on Purpose began as a portrait of the life of Mayer Vishner, an antiwar Yippie activist. In the midst of filming, the aging radical informs director Justin Schein that, having had his fill of solitude and depression, he intends instead to make the project about his death – […]
NYC PREMIERE For the past three decades a community of wise, elderly women enjoy a simple life in Chernobyl’s radioactive exclusion zone, subsisting on their beloved but toxic land, while radiation experts and soldiers marvel at their resilience. The three protagonists, more fearful of starvation than radiation, defied Ukrainian authorities to join a sisterhood of […]
NYC PREMIERE Havana, Cuba. An up-and-coming singer searches for confidence, a young woman in love longs for motherhood and a veteran of the Revolution comes to terms with the death of her husband. Three women, united by blindness and a desire for independence, guide us through Cuba’s current economic and social landscape while pursuing their […]
NYC PREMIERE Though she has painted all her life, Cuban-born NYC artist Carmen Herrera is “discovered” in her 90s. This film is followed by TOCANDO LA LUZ.