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day-to-day lives of people directly impacted by the 2013 Dominican Republic Supreme Court decision that strips Dominican birthright citizenship from individuals of Haitian heritage. The film challenges fixed notions of cultural identity and demonstrates how the ruling is a continuation of the violent history of a racial system that plagues the collective imagination rooted in colonial thought. We follow Rosa Iris, a Dominican with Haitian ancestry determined to represent her community as she runs for local office. She is met with continuous death threats and a handful of characters facing the hardship of statelessness. One such individual is Elena, a young woman forced to function below the radar and avoid confrontation at all cost. There is Juan Tcheofilo, who had all his citizenship documents in order, but nevertheless was denied his birthright forcing him to flee to the mountains of Haiti leaving behind his wife and children. Contrasting all these characters is Gladys, a warm, middle-aged grandmother with a proud Dominican ancestry and complete dedication to the removal of Haitians and their descendants from her country. By putting a human face to the plight of stateless individuals, Hispaniola examines the broader ramifications of racism and xenophobia. What is at stake for the Dominican government to guarantee its fragile spot in the modern world? Are denationalization of its citizens and apartheid-like measures the desperate solution of a community unable to grapple with its painful history of slavery, racism and anti-blackness?

AFTERMATH revisits the scene of a wrenching, highly-publicized hate crime 25 years later. When Brandon Teena arrived in Falls City, Nebraska, in November of 1993, the 20-year-old’s handsome looks swiftly won him friends and a pretty girlfriend. Three weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Brandon was brutally raped and beaten by two new-found “friends,” enraged when they discovered that he was transgender, presenting as male, but assigned female by birth. The two men came to murder him that New Year’s. Critically-acclaimed and Emmy-nominated, THE BRANDON TEENA STORY drew global attention, exposing the roots of violence, hatred, and transphobia in America. It was the first documentary to investigate violence against transgender people in the US, leading to hate crime laws and changes in policing practices. AFTERMATH, a follow-up to THE BRANDON TEENA STORY, builds on the filmmakers’ 25 years of relationships in Nebraska. Through the eyes of a community still grappling with the impact of Brandon’s life and death, the film explores the changes – or lack thereof – when it comes to perceptions, behavior, laws, and understanding of LGBTQ community members in heartland America. Weaving archival Super-8, VHS and contemporary HD verité footage of people in their surroundings, AFTERMATH revisits characters from THE BRANDON TEENA STORY and introduces new ones.

Now a book and a movie! A bright 16-year-old with big dreams, elfin faced, Edith Grosman, her sister, Leah, and 999 other innocent young women reported for national service duty and ended up in Auschwitz. “There was nothing there when we arrived. It was an empty place!” Why take girls? If you want to destroy a race of people annihilate fertile, young women. Archival footage and photographs of rare documents reveal: a camp regime of starvation—the equivalent of one tin of cat food per day, per girl; the Slovak government’s payment to the Nazis of $200.00 per girl. Juxtaposing B&W footage with color, children tell their mothers’ stories: Marta was sterilized by Dr. Mengele, her daughter was adopted. Ill with Typhus, Ida’s friends hid her in mounds of clothes. The beautiful Helena Citronova had an affair with SS Franz Wunsch. Postcards sent to and from Birkenau reveal a dramatic correspondence that ends abruptly. On Chanukah 1942, 10,000 women were taken to the gas, Edith’s sister, Leah, was one. Afterwards “the camp was empty.” “We weren’t even adults. We were teenagers, young enough to throw temper tantrums, now we were seeing girls our age dying.” Now 94, Edith asks, “Why do intelligent people hate? War serves no one.” It takes a minion of ten men to say Kaddish; our film ends with women saying Kaddish in the very place where Edith’s sister and thousands of other girls, died. “I will do anything to remember the girls.” Will you?

As a child of a military family, I am fascinated with military parachutes—a seemingly fragile material that holds the weight of a human body in mid-air. The beauty and the draw of the parachute is the beginning of a look into its creation, its use, and its cultural meaning. It leads me to ask, “Whose hands made this object?” My question sends me on a journey through Ireland and Northern Ireland, unfolding a much larger story than my original inquiry. My search leads me to Margaret, a Northern Irish Protestant who sewed the seams of linen parachutes during the Second World War. I also meet Ruby, a Protestant linen mill worker from Belfast, and then Joan, Elsie, and Eileen, three Irish Catholic soldiers in the British Army (ATS) from Co. Cork, and finally Jane, an Irish Catholic nurse in London from Co. Clare. A story about borders, identity, and cultures in transition, Seams is a complex look at the Anglo-Irish definition of “enemy” and the deep-seated religious, national, and economic divides of two fledgling societies at odds with each other during a global war. The women’s testimonies of the horrors of the Second World War, of the tragedy of the Northern Irish Troubles, and of the slow progression of peace over decades visually unfold through portraiture, archival footage, poetic live-action shots of landscapes and buildings, and hand-drawn stop-motion animation made with tea and ink on Irish linen.

In the comedy boom of the late 1990s Rick Scotti was a busy guy—working clubs across the country—when he came to the deadly realization that nothing felt right. At a time when the words gender dysphoria and gender reassignment surgery were rarely heard, Rick’s awakening at age forty-seven led to a year of hormonal treatments, surgery in a small clinic in Canada and a new identity as Julia Scotti. And then the doors shut. Tight. Everyone turned away—former wives, friends, family, comedy world buddies, and most painfully Julia was shut out from contact with the people she most desperately loved – her children. She completely reinvented herself, spent a decade teaching at a junior high, developed a whole new network of friends, and then several years ago, in her early 60’s a friend dared Julia to step back on stage at a comedy club and she began the journey back to the world she loved. And in that same period, her children made contact after fifteen years of total estrangement. This film tracks Julia’s comeback, the rough life on the comedy circuit and the return of her children, who both find their way into the comedy realm. We observe the delicate and sometimes difficult business of re-discovery as comedy becomes a shared language of identity and healing.

Subjects of Desire is a timely documentary film that examines the cultural shift in North American beauty standards towards embracing (or as some feel - appropriating) Black female aesthetics and features. From society’s new fixation on the ‘booty’, fuller lips, the dramatic rise of spray-tanned skin, ethnic hairstyles, and athletic bodies, some argue that Black women are having a beauty moment. But others, primarily Black women, argue that traditional Black features and attributes are seen as more desirable when they are on White women. Subjects of Desire will examine these two points of view from the voices of women who are not afraid to challenge conventional standards of beauty. The film will explore some of the positive and negative portrayals of Black women in media and asks what is the impact today? It will also examine the historical and popular cultural expressions of Black and White beauty with the intent of uncovering how beauty has been constructed to define women in their daily lives. Weaving through past and present and told from the point of view of women actively engaged in this debate, Subjects of Desire is a culturally significant, provocative documentary film that challenges and ultimately deconstructs what we understand about race and the power behind beauty.

Seven days after Trump’s inauguration, his Muslim ban was a stunning assault on civil liberties — but more extraordinary still was the ACLU’s counter-attack. Thirty hours after the order was signed, attorneys emerged from a Brooklyn courthouse with fists raised high, triumphant at the court’s first check on the president’s power. This was but the opening salvo in the fight to defend our constitutional rights. The Trump administration has since moved to expel transgender soldiers, roll back voting rights, separate refugees from their children, and force teens to carry unwanted pregnancies. But at each affront, an ACLU lawyer is fighting back. In this modern-day David vs Goliath story, these self-described “freedom nerds” battle an unpredictable adversary with unlimited resources. While the court battles rage, controversy threatens. In Charlottesville, the ACLU’s defense of white supremacists’ right to march — and the ensuing murder of a counter-protester — brings fierce condemnation and inflames a debate around limits on free speech. For nearly a hundred years the ACLU has defended the First Amendment, especially for those with whom they disagree. In today’s polarized political climate, this is difficult political terrain to navigate. THE FIGHT is the inside story of human struggle at a moment of national crisis.

A Place of Absence, a deeply affecting and poetic film, explores “frozen sadness,” an unresolved form of grief that haunts those living with the uncertainty of knowing whether a loved one is alive or dead. The film follows director Marialuisa’s search to find meaning and connection with Anita and Leticia, Central American women who are traveling to Mexico as part of the Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants. As the group searches for sons and daughters who vanished en route to the U.S., Marialuisa draws parallels to the emotional turmoil her own mother experienced in the aftermath of her uncle’s disappearance during Argentina’s ‘Dirty War.' Like filmmaker Patricio Guzman’s Nostalgia for the Light, this film employs a nontraditional approach to documentary combining elements of cinema vérité, personal essay, and layered sound design to create a narratively cohesive cinematic collage. Seamlessly weaving together two separate narrative threads with the poetic voice-over of filmmaker Marialuisa, A Place of Absence is a character-driven film that draws viewers into the lives of three women connected across time and geography each of whom has lived under the specter of uncertainty not knowing whether a loved one is alive or dead.

Changing Same is an immersive, room-scale virtual reality experience where the participant travels through time and space to witness the connected historical experiences of racial terror in America. It’s a respectful, haunting, story infused with magical realism and afrofuturism about the uninterrupted cycle of the history of white racial oppression—past and present. Changing Same seeks to confront the U.S.’s history of lynching and examine how the U.S.’s legacy of racial violence continues to influence contemporary issues such as mass incarceration, crime, and justice. Changing Same uses time-travel and magical realism to enable participants to experience the evolution of racial violence in the US and make connections between the past and present, as well as contemplate how our history of racism continues to have a lasting effect on human conditions in the US today. At the end of the experience, participants travel to an Afrofuturist world to imagine a more equitable future for all, one that is attentive and accountable to the violence of the past. Changing Same explores the critical role that our history plays in forming a deeper and more meaningful understanding of our present, and the social and cultural conditions that continue to shape us as a nation.

EL RETORNO follows Aura Taibel, a cleaning lady during her last months in New York. Serving an upscale clientele, she compares her job to that of an artist-- canvases to transform into works of art. Living modestly in a poorly lit, tiny space, Aura’s saved enough money to make real estate investments in her native Colombia. Focused on her goals, she treats herself to a night at the opera, occasionally, because rarely does Aura take a day off. Embodying the lives of many women in Latin America and across the globe, she was born to a family too poor to take care of her and grew up in a convent until her mid-teen years. After years of domestic abuse by the father of her only child, she begins her life anew and migrates to New York..The tension-filled relationship with her son reveals Aura’s flaws and contradictions and the painful patterns that repeat in the lives of families. Navigating the barriers of class between employer and employee, these power dynamics are flipped when Aura returns to Barranquilla, Colombia as a property owner and employer due to her tenacious ability to follow through with her plans. Amidst a tenuous political backdrop and fragile economy in Colombia, she returns to a place and family she calls home but doesn’t really know. Having accomplished such a major feat, will Aura finally find the peace she longs for?

SISTERS is a personal journey and investigation into the discriminatory policies and practices of the white Greek letter college sororities. The film tells a story that’s part of a new civil rights movement as SISTERS characters, black and white, younger and older, unlock a hidden history and question the white sororities’ privileged status.

The story begins on video game streaming site Twitch.tv, where a competitive subculture is quickly gaining momentum. It’s called “speedrunning,” the art of exploiting every secret and glitch in a game in order to beat it as fast as possible. Perhaps the best and most famous speedrunner is Narcissa Wright. In 2014, she beats “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,” a game that takes ordinary humans around 20 hours to complete, in just over 18 minutes. This world record-setting feat catapults her to stardom and cements her status as a gaming legend. She’s flown to gaming events all over the world, wins the adoration of more than 180,000 followers, and earns $80,000 per year. To the thousands of loyal fans watching from their computer screens, it seems as if speedrunning’s brightest star will never be extinguished. Then, suddenly, at the height of her fame, Narcissa does something unexpected: she stops speedrunning. When she returns, she makes a big announcement: she comes out as a transgender woman. While some fans are supportive, an obsessive group of online haters harass and threaten her. They claim Narcissa is mentally ill and encourage her to commit suicide. Determined to stage a dramatic comeback, she sets her sights on winning back her former fans by setting the world record for the new Zelda game, Breath of the Wild. But when her comeback doesn’t unfold as planned, she begins to question what it really means to feel loved when your entire life is online.

TRAVEL NOTES OF A GEECHEE GIRL celebrates the life of Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor-- writer, chef, actor and broadcast journalist, whose unconventional life took her from a rural African-American Gullah Geechee community in South Carolina Lowcountry to an international career involving major 20th C intellectual, artistic and social movements. Through her travels and living in New York, Paris and D.C., this six foot Renaissance woman from Bo Peep Crossroads enraptured poets and politicians alike with her humor, wit, stories, cuisine and embrace of life. Julie Dash will draw on her connections to the Gullah culture, powerfully visible in her epic film, Daughters of the Dust. Through a narrative blend of first-person storytelling, archival images and sounds, contemporary landscapes, and dramatic evocations of historical moments, we will travel with Vertamae as she moves with her family to Philadelphia in the 1940s, meets lifelong friends Nina Simone and Charles Fuller, before sailing to Paris in the 1950s. There she joins a diverse circle of artists and activists including Allen Ginsberg, and writes On The Left Bank at The Beat Hotel, marries sculptor Robert Grosvenor, and creates a bohemian life with her daughters after separating. Doubleday publishes her memoir cookbook in 1970. A pioneering television chef on PBS and commentator on NPR, friends like Muhammad Ali and Maya Angelou entreat her for a taste of home cooking. Like her landmark cookbook, Vibration Cooking, or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl, recipes for food/living will punctuate this narrative along with locales traversed throughout Vertamae’s remarkable journey.

In 2003, Oprah Winfrey sought out some of America’s greatest poets to contribute to an issue of OWN Magazine dedicated to the human body. There was a mad dash by poets to choose the heart, the brain and the skin to serve as poetic metaphor for their balladry. African American poet Nikki Giovanni’s choice best illustrates her approach to life. She chose the feet and then spun a compelling and inspirational tale using the feet of African American women to describe their struggle and ultimate triumph over oppression. This is the life work of Nikki Giovanni, using poetry, humor and satire to inspire us to think, challenge assumptions and ultimately demand equity and justice. Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project opens within the privacy of Nikki’s present-day home in Blacksburg, Virginia, as she reluctantly reckons with the meaning of her legacy, her struggles with her health, and the inevitable march of time. Through the artistry and life of a poet who has lived life and created work to the beat of her own drum, the film poses universal questions on the human condition while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of biographical storytelling through impressionistic visual language, innovative editing techniques, and stylized treatments of Giovanni’s poetry that bring her written words to life.

The feature-length documentary BEBA, is a multi-layered personal history of an Afro-Latina coming of age in New York City. Our protagonist, Beba finds herself working an unsatisfying day-to-day life when she asks herself: “Who am I and how did I get here?” Beba brings her audience along an internal journey, as she examines her community, her heritage, and herself in a personal history illustrated by interviews, various visual anecdotes, and performance art.

In the 1980s, one woman had the audacious vision that middle school should embrace the awkwardness and energy of 10-14 yrs old, rather than try to wrangle students into submission. Thirty-three years later her wildly unconventional recipe for building flexibility, self-reliance, and bold acceptance of difference relentlessly produces well-adjusted, academically successful students. Could the confounding strategies of this school be an antidote for the rising anxiety and distress we see in early adolescents across the country? Middle School 243 tells the story of four students and their friends as they navigate one year of middle school chock full of confusion, humor, angst, and joy. Together the four children represent the arc of middle school and the developmental odyssey that is early adolescence.

Hundreds of cows that belong to a dairy company die mysteriously in the south of Chile. Cecilia (45), daughter of the owner, travels with her son and daughter to help her father. In the Middle of this unsettling atmosphere, Magdalena, the dead matriarch, comes back to clarify the circumstances of her death, opening the wound she left in her children.

“How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.” - Wendell Berry Jarmo, the media project, is an essay film in seven parts. It is a document that shares fragments of human history and experience surrounding a common theme: how we feed (and have fed) ourselves across time. Jarmo, the place, is an archaeological site in Northern Iraq believed to be one of the earliest farming settlements; today residents of adjacent villages eat food imported from abroad. Environmental changes, war, and political turmoil have all but ended the rich agricultural life that characterized Iraq for 10,000 years; by looking to the place where agriculture was born and died, we glean understanding about what is next for our human civilization.