The film examines the ways that women directors have contributed to this genre and emphasizes the role that the media play in representation of sexuality and gender, underscoring the power that film has to shape our perceptions of one another. Visually, this documentary comes to life on screen...
In Seeing Red, three elements run parallel, overlap, diverge, lock horns and in various other ways give voice to the notion that a color, a melody, or a person has multiple characteristics that cannot be grasped by, or understood within, a simple framework. One element is purely visual. One is very...
The film is primarily a portrait of Kam Kelly, who teaches West African drumming to students at various New York schools, including Intermediate School 292 in Brooklyn. One of his students, Jessica Jackson, is featured. The piece was commissioned for the “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” festival at...
A global portrait documenting the year's events, Cinetracts '20 features the work of an international lineup of 20 filmmakers. Capturing the zeitgeist in their own backyard, the artists' short films are the culmination of a year-long residency project.
From Go Fish to Paris is Burning to The Watermelon Woman, this festival favorite goes behind the scenes to reveal seven successful lesbian directors. These talented movie-makers enlighten and entertain as they explore their sexual identity, growing up gay, inspirations and techniques, Hollywood vs....
The film begins with a series of events on a crowded outdoor market street. Women on stages perform "private" rituals: shaving legs and armpits, fixing their hair, etc. A woman tries to disrupt their "work." She struggles to set herself apart from them, to resist the forces of habit, but gradually...
Queer culture and the arts would be much poorer without the presence and contribution of butch and stud lesbians, whose identity is both its own aesthetic and a defiant repudiation of the male gaze.
Su Friedrich's personal essay charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After living in the neighborhood for 20 years, the filmmaker was one of many who were forced out after the city passed a rezoning plan allowing developers to build luxury condos where there were once thriving...
The Ties That Bind is an experimental documentary about the filmmaker's mother, who was born and lived in southern Germany from 1920-1950. Through a mixture of personal anecdote and social history, she describes the rise of Nazism, the war years, and the Allied occupation, during which she met her...
Through a series of twenty six short stories, a girl describes the childhood events that shaped her ideas about fatherhood, family relations, work and play. As the stories unfold, a dual portrait emerges: that of a father who cared more for his career than for his family, and of a daughter who was...
GENTLY DOWN THE STREAM is constructed from fourteen dreams taken from eight years' worth of my journals. The text is scratched directly on to the film so that you hear your own voice as you read. The accompanying images of women, water, animals and saints were chosen for their indirect but potent...
With few words and no polemics, From the Ground Up shows how an ordinary cup of coffee occupies center stage in the world economy. Traveling with the filmmaker from Guatemala to South Carolina to New York City and seeing each phase of coffee production unfold—the growing, picking, processing,...
Su Friedrich is a pioneering queer filmmaker who has been making ground-breaking personal films for decades. In Today, she again eschews conventional narrative, observing her world over a six-year period. It’s a time that includes a country vacation and a city cookout. Also the loss of loved ones...
Rules of the Road tells the story of a love affair and its demise through one of the primary objects shared by the couple: an old beige station wagon with fake wood paneling along the sides.
After a twenty year period of multiple illnesses and injuries, the filmmaker turns the camera on herself as a way to analyze her chances for a happier, healthier life. In the process, she captures the frustration, tedium and petty annoyances of a revolving-door relationship with the medical...
"From A to Z" is a loving look back at a viral phenomenon that burst out during the Covid pandemic: The Jerusalema Dance Challenge. After Master KG--a South African musician and record producer--wrote a beat, and Nomcebo Zikode wrote the lyrics, and the Angolan dance troupe "Fenómenos do Semba"...
The Head of a Pin reveals the awkward ruminations of the filmmaker and her friends as they attempt to learn about nature. Starting out as an examination of the differences between urban and rural life, between the daily grind and summer vacations, the film turns unexpectedly into a portrait of what...
