Personal Cuts

EXTREME is a visually stunning 45-minute journey into the soul of adventure featuring a cast of world champion athletes. Combining incredible extreme sport action with narration from the athletes and an eclectic, contemporary soundtrack, EXTREME explores the paradox of human nature: facing fear from the edge of life.

This film takes viewers through the rich, white majesty of the Inuit Great North. Along with doing justice to the breathtaking and awesome landscape of the freezing, snow-covered environment, Great North also looks into the long-standing traditions, such as fishing and hunting, of the Inuit tribes.

A journey to seven of the most geographically dynamic locations on earth. The film features spectacular land forms, diverse wildlife and the people and cultures indigenous to these places. Distinct geographic places include the great island of Madagascar, home to unique limestone pinnacles and the playful lemur; and the greatest desert—the Namib—home of the largest sand dunes in the world that tower majestically over its western border, the Atlantic Ocean. Other locations featured are the great icecap of Greenland, Iguazu Falls in Brazil, the Okavango Delta in Botswana, the Chang Tang Plateau in Tibet, and the Amazon River in South America.

For more than 10 years, world champion freedivers Pipin Ferreras and Umberto Pelizzari have been vying for world records. Their love of the sea without compromise is what unites these two rivals. However, it is their different personalities and opposing diving philosophies that separate them. Pipin is the "No Limits" man who wants to go deeper and deeper. Umberto, the purist, seeks harmony in the ocean's depth. Ocean Men takes you into the world of these two awe-inspiring freedivers through the use of breathtaking underwater photography, enchanting music, and insightful animation.

A breathtaking adventure across five continents and through time to reveal nature's most vital secret. Watch a flying fox gorge itself on a midnight snack of figs. Climb into the prickly jaws of insect-eating plants. Witness a mantis disguised as a flower petal lure its prey to doom.

We follow the Newman-Haas (Andretti) racing team through the process of building, testing, and racing for a season. This includes extensive race speed on-track footage, including some pre-race footage with a full squad of cars. From time to time, we check in with a small shop building/restoring one of the first roadsters Mario Andretti raced; the finale includes him taking it for a spin.

After Saddam Hussein had the Kuwait Oil wells lit up, teams from all over the world fought those fires for months. They had to save the oil resources, as well as reduce air pollution. The different teams developed different techniques of extinguishing the fires. Man's emergency creativity can be seen at it's best.

By land, by air, and by sea, viewers can now experience the struggle that millions of creatures endure in the name of migration as wildlife photographers show just how deeply survival instincts have become ingrained into to the animals of planet Earth. From the monarch butterflies that swarm the highlands of Mexico to the birds who navigate by the stars and the millions of red crabs who make the perilous land journey across Christmas Island, this release offers a look at animal instinct in it's purest form.

In 1936 and 1937 Harry Dunham shot "several hundred feet of film," being the first cameraman to penetrate into the Shensi region and obtain footage of the Communist forces in China. He smuggled his film out and placed it in the hands of Frontier Films. Leyda, Lerner, Meyers and Maddow (they had to use pseudonyms) spent four months preparing the film for publication. In that time, the Chinese situation altered to such an extent that Frontier had to change the scenario several times in order to keep up with events...the producers had to make a happy change in the theme of China Strikes Back. It was no longer a film showing the Chinese people moving toward unity. It became a pictorial history revealing the how and why behind a realized unity.

Rhys Day presents NO DIVIDE - a sticky mashup biopic/ videofeast.

Translating History to Screen (2008) Video Short - 10 June 2008 (USA)

A secret culture of foragers hunt the Matsutake, a coveted Japanese mushroom worth up to $1,000 a pound—although its true value lies underground as a brilliant networker and healer of ruined landscapes. The Matsutake might just be our last, best hope for an American forest system run amok.

In 1977, Prince Charles was inducted as honorary chief of the Blood Indians on their reserve in southwestern Alberta. The ceremony, conducted in the great Circle of the Sun Dance, commemorated the centennial anniversary of the original signing of Treaty 7 by Queen Victoria.

For Filmmaker Film Festival (2023), Fulvio Baglivi and Cristina Piccino asked some filmmakers (R. Beckermann, J. Bressane, D’Anolfi/Parenti, T. De Bernardi, L. Di Costanzo, A. Fasulo, F. Ferraro, M. Frammartino, S. George, ghezzi/Gagliardo, C. Hintermann, G. Maderna, A. Momo, A. Rossetto, M. Santini, C. Simon, S. Savona) to give us their own "lost road," that is, a sequence, scene or piece of editing that did not later find its way into the final version of one of their works. Each fragment has its own accomplished presence, often has a different title from the film it was made for, which is not necessary to have seen in order to find meaning; on the contrary, those who set out thinking they know the world they are walking through will find themselves displaced.

A short documentary exploring the ways LGBT couples show affection, and how small interactions like holding hands in public can carry, not only huge personal significance, but also the power to create social change.

A metacinematic reflection on the nature of representation and the ongoing drug war in Mexico, Nicolás Pereda’s Flora revisits locations and scenes from the mainstream 2010 narco-comedy El Infierno, exploring the paradoxes of depicting narco-trafficking on film—its tendency both to romanticize and to obscure. To screen is both to project and to conceal.

The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.

After concluding the now-legendary public access TV series, The Pain Factory, Michael Nine embarked on a new and more subversive public access endeavor: a collaboration with Scott Arford called Fuck TV. Whereas The Pain Factory predominantly revolved around experimental music performances, Fuck TV was a comprehensive and experiential audio-visual presentation. Aired to a passive and unsuspecting audience on San Francisco’s public access channel from 1997 to 1998, each episode of Fuck TV was dedicated to a specific topic, combining video collage and cut-up techniques set to a harsh electronic soundtrack. The resultant overload of processed imagery and visceral sound was unlike anything presented on television before or since. EPISODES: Yule Bible, Cults, Riots, Animals, Executions, Static, Media, Haterella (edited version), Self Annihilation Live, Electricity.

A short featurette available on the DVD for Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), released in January 2004.

Edwin’s Restaurant is determined to become one of America’s top French restaurants, with a staff unlike any other in the country. Brandon Edwin Chrostowski prepares to open his Cleveland, Ohio fine dining establishment with a staff composed nearly entirely of recently released prisoners in search of an opportunity to get their lives back on track. They sign up for a classical French food boot camp to learn the ins and outs of fine wine, sauces, and more.