Early Came the Stories

In October of 2023, Two amateur filmmakers disappeared in search of dark web personality "WETBOXX".

iPhone video diary of the first half of Kotlyarenko's 24th year, very much in the style of Jonas Mekas' "Walden".

Bienvenue en…. Los Angeles! Film executive Kyle and filmmaker Arran rendez-vous for a tête à tête in this crème de la crème of Cinéma Verité.

What starts as harmless fun turns sinister when a dare sends Jon into the woods alone. He comes back... different. Now every new dare unlocks something darker, and the footage reveals a night they were never meant to survive.

Called "an elegant documentary" by Sundance and "eloquent and deeply moving" by the LA Times, Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray is a penetrating portrait of this photographer's search for truth and beauty in a world of impermanence. Los Angeles' Little Tokyo's foremost studio photographer, Miyatake smuggled a lens and film holder into the U.S. WWII camp he was incarcerated in and captured life behind barbed wire with a makeshift camera made of scrap wood. Yet it was his little-known artistic pursuits before the war that honed his discerning eye.

When Shakespeare Must Die, a Thai film adaptation of Macbeth is banned by the Thai government as a threat to national security, the film's producer treks through the corridors of power to un-ban his Shakespearean horror movie--from the Cultural ministry to the Senate and the National Human Rights Commission, all the way to the Administrative Court where he is suing the government for abuse of power. Wherever he went, amidst political upheaval, his director followed with a camera. The resulting reality cinema is the living story of a struggle for justice and human dignity, for freedom of expression, which Thai filmmakers do not have. A dark cinematic record of democracy in action, in all its farcical, obscene and heartbreaking details.

The collective life of the generation born as Jurij Gagarin became the first man in space. Vitaly Mansky has woven together a fictional biography – taken from over 5.000 hours of film material, and 20.000 still pictures made for home use. A moving document of the fictional, but nonetheless true life of the generation who grew up in this time of huge change and upheaval.

A young woman's life takes a series of unexpected turns after she leaves the Buddhist temple where she has lived most of her adult life.

"YouthMin" is a mockumentary following an attention seeking youth pastor and his small group of Christian teens at Bible camp.

A visual image of the city of Lysychansk, Luhansk region, Ukraine, created from found archival materials from the Akzent TV channel.

Realizing the urban legend of their youth has actually come true, two filmmakers delve into the mystery surrounding five missing children and the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearances.

In 2007, a teen girl from a posh L.A. suburb must deal with the grizzly murder of her family while trapped in the company of their killers.

Delve into the minds of serial killers Leonard Lake and Charlie Ng with this horrifying found footage film, spanning the 1983-1984 killing spree that shocked California and the nation.

I had the chance to interview a revered independent filmmaker four years after his death.

The filmmaker's mother describes stories of his lustful youth over the phone, causing them to reflect on his current love life at the age of 30.

Grave robbing, torture, possessed nuns, and a satanic Sabbath: Benjamin Christensen's legendary film uses a series of dramatic vignettes to explore the scientific hypothesis that the witches of the Middle Ages suffered the same hysteria as turn-of-the-century psychiatric patients. But the film itself is far from serious-- instead it's a witches' brew of the scary, gross, and darkly humorous.

In this spoof of "March of the Penguins," nature footage of penguins near the South Pole gets a soundtrack of human voices. Carl and Jimmy, best friends, walk 70 miles to the mating grounds where the female penguins wait. The huddled masses of females - especially Melissa and Vicki - talk about males, mating, and what might happen this year. Carl, Jimmy, and the other males make the long trek talking about food, fornication and flatulence. Until this year, Carl's sex life has been dismal, but he falls hard for Melissa. She seems to like him. A crisis develops when Jimmy comes upon something soft in the dark. Can friends forgive? Does parenthood await Carl and Melissa?

State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.

A collection of death scenes, ranging from TV material to homemade super 8 movies.

Inspired by an experiment from 1972, a team of paranormal researchers led by an unscrupulous documentary filmmaker try to summon the ghost of a fictional character.