The Car Kid

A film on feminine legacy of rebellion, language and transgressions. Using the composition of Mahadevi Akka, a 13th century saint-poet, the film explores the multiplicity of contemporary women and their own points of transgressions.

Sam, an aspiring stand-up comedian and au pair struggling with PTSD, weighs whether to join the search for Brooke, a missing teenage girl she used to nanny. As she fights to recover from her trauma and return to the stage, memories of her deep bond with Brooke rush back—making it impossible to ignore her disappearance.

Wilma has many qualifications and talents, yet suffers just as many disappointments in life. After she catches her husband cheating, she runs away to Vienna in search of a new life. There she lives with bustling bohemians, tries her luck at a variety of jobs and perhaps... at love again.

Maya Deren's Sink, a 30 minute experimental film, is an evocative tribute to the mother of avantgarde American film. The film calls forth the spirit of one who was larger than life as recounted by those who knew her. Teiji Ito's family, Carolee Schneemann and Judith Malvina, float through the homes recalling in tiny bits and pieces words of Deren's architectural and personal interior space. Clips from Maya Deren's films are projected back into the spaces where they were originally filmed appearing on the floorboard, furniture, and in the bowl of her former sink. Fluid light projections of intimate space provide an elusive agency for a filmmaker most of us will never know as film with its imaginary nature evokes a former time and space.

In okay bye-bye, so named for what Cambodian children shouted to the U.S. ambassador in 1975 as he took the last helicopter out of Phnom Phenh in advance of the Khmer Rouge, Rebecca Baron explores the relationship of history to memory. She questions whether, "image and memory can occupy the same space." Building on excerpts from letters, found super-8 footage of an unidentified Cambodian man, iconographic photographs from the Vietnam War and other partial images, Baron combines epistolary narrative, memoir, journalism, and official histories to question whether something as monumental as the genocidal slaughter of Cambodians during the Pol Pot regime can be examined effectively with traditional methodologies.

In the male dominated society of Iran, Farahnaz Shiri, the first female bus driver in Tehran, has made her own little society in her bus. In Iran there are different sections for men and women on public buses. Women should enter buses from the back door, which is separated from men’s entrance, and should sit or stay in a limited zone at the end of the buses which is separated from men’s zone. But in Mrs. Shiri’s bus everything is vice-versa. She is the governor and the only law maker of her own little society. In her bus, men must enter from the backdoor entrance and must sit or stay in the limited zone at the end of the bus. Mrs. Shiri is struggling to prove herself in this society and resisting a series of injustices that she faces as a woman in the Iranian society.

After a one-night stand with her son's attractive teacher, a troubled wife finds herself stalked by the dangerously obsessed man.

A coming of age story about self-revelation. Sylvia, a struggling artist in New York, is fired from her job and flees back to her Texas hometown for a friend’s wedding. At the pre-wedding party, she meets an enigmatic stranger, Esteban. On the eve of the big day, he dares her to join him on a road trip through the jewel cities of the Deep South.

Penthesilea, the first of six films made by Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, traverses thousands of years to look at the image of the Amazonian woman in myth. It asks, among other questions, is the Amazonian woman a rare strong female image or is she a figure derived from male phantasy? The film explores the complexities of such questions, but does not seek any concrete answers.

Short film written and directed by Lauren Miller.

Prefaces is composed of wild sounds constructed along entropic lines, placed tensely beside bebop rhythms, and a resurfacing narrative cut from a dialogue with poet Hannah Weiner. Child tells us, "The tracks are placed in precise and asynchronous relation to images of workers, the gestures of the marketplace, colonial Africa, and abstractions, to pose questions of social force, gender relations and subordination." This tape serves as a pre-conscious preface to the parts that follow, whose scope and image bank are more narrowly defined.

Carla Aldrovandi, a gynecologist, and her husband Marco Canova, a magistrate live on the front line of criminal and political powers in Italy. She is surrounded by terror and threats.

Against the backdrop of New York and New Orleans, Elliott, Leanne and Jermaine question their ability to dream amidst a crumbling economic climate. Opening in the streets of downtown Manhattan, Elliott (23), living at home after college, is surrounded by incomplete projects, frustrated and in search of purpose. Simultaneously, in New Orleans, Leanne (26), an aspiring model/actress and single mother of four, struggles to pick up the pieces, presenting at times a clash between family and her ambitious career. Plagued by an unforgiving criminal record, Jermaine (22), a New Orleans native, shifts through his home town for what seems like a hopeless attempt at legal employment. After a series of rejections, he resolves to reinvent himself in hopes of successfully starting anew.

STATE OF FEAR takes place in Peru, yet serves as a cautionary tale for a world engaged in a "global war on terror." It dramatizes the human and societal costs a democracy faces when it embarks on a "war" against terror, a "war" potentially without end, all too easily exploited by unscrupulous leaders seeking personal political gain.

A glimpse into the world of the women who create and consume romance novels.

In the Netherlands, the final year of elementary school means turmoil for the pupils and their parents. There is no escape from the pressure on children to score as high as possible on tests to get into the best secondary schools. Parents who can afford it pay for as many private lessons as possible; other parents put pressure on the teachers. This documentary shows pupils and parents from very different backgrounds going through this process. They struggle anxiously for the same goal: the best possible start in life.

Filmed over seven years, Drawing The Tiger is a intimate portrait of a family in rural Nepal who get a chance to break their cycle of poverty: Their brightest child is awarded a scholarship to attend school in the city. When she doesn't return home, the family is forced to survive without her or the opportunity they believed would change their fate.

When best friends and total opposites Debbie and Peter swap homes for a week, they get a peek into each other's lives that could open the door to love.

Reese Donahue leads a seemingly ideal life, with a bright future ahead of her. But when she discovers the truth, that her mother left enough money for her to choose her own path, she's faced with a dilemma.

"The Wash is a portrait of the river wash that runs behind the older part of Newhall, California, where Lee and I used to live. We shot the wash on Super8 film and then finished it on video. It is a collaboration between us, describing the ways the wash is used, and the people who use it, ourselves included. It charts the way this land has changed since they began developing Newhall and the surrounding community of Valencia for housing, a development that is expected to bring over 250,000 more people into the area by the year 2015."