Film
STREET SMART: Lessons from a TV Icon
STREET SMART: Lessons from a TV Icon is a feature documentary about Sonia Manzano — known to millions as “Maria” from Sesame Street. The film follows Sonia’s remarkable journey, from a young girl in the South Bronx finding refuge in television, to becoming the first Latina on American TV in a regular role, through 44 years on screen on Sesame Street, and now as the creator of Alma’s Way. Featuring interviews with luminaries, original animation, and scripted scenes that blend humor and heart, this inspirational documentary invites viewers to learn once again from this beloved icon. Written & Directed by [...]
Querida Fátima
After losing her 12-year-old daughter Fátima to a horrible attack and fleeing her home in a small town in Mexico, Lorena leads her family on a quest for justice against a corrupt system preying on thousands of women and girls each year, taking her fight all the way to the country’s Supreme Court.
Pipe Dreams: Saving the Castro Theatre Organ
Pipe Dreams follows the battle over the future of the Castro Theatre, and its prized Wurlitzer pipe organ, at a time of unprecedented change in San Francisco.
Pleasure Seekers
Pleasure Seekers is a vérité feature length documentary following the intertwined lives of three women in Brooklyn, New York. Mayra, a first-generation immigrant from Ecuador, and mother reflects on her life once rooted in survival over pleasure, now reclaims her relationship to sex and aging. Her daughter Sam, a filmmaker in her twenties uninterested in marriage or children, returns home with a camera and a growing desire to understand her mother—and herself. Alongside her is Emily, her childhood best friend and practically a second daughter to Mayra, who is adamant about finding love. Finding intersectional and intergenerational perspectives on the [...]
The Shape of Light
In the world's epicenter of technological innovation, San Francisco cinema goers struggle to preserve their neighborhood movie theaters and keep the theatrical experience alive in times of a global pandemic, shifting social behaviors, and an ascendant streaming industry. Will they be able to safeguard cinemas as we know them? The Shape of Light chronicles multiple storylines in different neighborhoods of the Bay Area striving to preserve local movie theaters while facing an unprecedented global pandemic, a struggling economy, and a societal increase of individual isolation through the use of personal electronic devices. Over several years, we witnessed the solidarity, inventiveness, [...]
Painting the Black Hill
Founded in 1974, Boston’s African American Master Artist in Residency Program made history, becoming an artistic and community hub and smoothing relations between Northeastern University and its Black neighbors. In 2018, Northeastern locked the artists out of their building and AAMARP’s battle for survival began. What will Boston lose if AAMARP is gone?
The Birth of a Poet: The Life of Bill Everson
A feature documentary about the California eco-poet, conscientious objector, master printer, and professor, William Everson, A.K.A. Brother Antoninus (1912-94).
The Jerome Project
The Jerome Project preserves, protects, and perpetuates the artistic legacy of Jerome Caja (1958 — 1995). The mission is to bring greater visibility and accessibility to Caja’s paintings and performances. The project includes several moving parts: a digital catalogue raisonné, a repository of art and ephemera available for academic research, and a feature-length documentary film about Caja, with an accompanying exhibition of his art.
Rebel Woman
Rebel Woman is a personal documentary short that traces a first-generation Afghan American woman's journey to understand her mother's quiet acts of defiance and the legacy of resilience passed down through generations. The film weaves together memories of pre-war Afghanistan and the immigrant experience in America, exploring the tensions between cultural expectations and personal freedom. In our current moment, when women's rights are threatened globally and immigrant voices are being silenced, Rebel Women offers an intimate reminder of strength, identity, reconnecting with a dying culture, and the powerful bond between mother and daughter.
Way of Life
Interweaving the stories of one of Montana’s only abortion and trans healthcare clinics and diverse Montanans fighting to define and defend individual freedoms, the feature documentary in-progress WAY OF LIFE explores ideological complexities and contradictions in the country’s rapidly intensifying battles over privacy and bodily autonomy–dangerous frontlines in a polarizing America.
