And So I Stayed
In-Person Event: SHOWROOM
2021 | United States| 91 min | Documentary
Director: Daniel A. Nelson, Natalie Pattillo
Producer: Daniel A. Nelson, Natalie Pattillo
AND SO I STAYED is an award-winning documentary by Natalie Pattillo and Daniel A. Nelson about survivors of abuse fighting for their lives and spending years behind bars. These women paid a steep price with long prison sentences, lost time with loved ones, and painful memories. Formerly incarcerated survivor-advocate Kim Dadou Brown, who met her wife while incarcerated, is a driving force in the passage of New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act (DVSJA), a new law meant to prevent survivors from receiving harsh prison sentences for their acts of survival. Nikki Addimando, a mother of two young children, suffered the consequences when a judge didn’t follow the law’s guidelines. Tanisha Davis, a single mother who was ripped away from her son in 2013, is hopeful the new law is her way out of a harsh prison sentence.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual
The Art of Making It
Virtual Showing
2022 | United States | 93 min | Documentary
Director: Kelcey Edwards
The Art of Making It explores the art-world ecosystem through the prism of young artists at pivotal moments in their careers, revealing the secret sauce that thrusts some into the stratosphere and leaves others struggling to survive. Why does it matter who we anoint to tell the stories of our time? Including the voices of luminaries and disruptors, the film leaves one to question whether the new world order will make art more accessible for all.
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- Published in 2022, Short Films, Virtual
Being Bebe: The Bebe Zahara Benet Documentary
Virtual Showing
2021 | United States | 93 min | Documentary
Director: Emily Branham
Producer: Marc Smolowitz, Jonathan Goodman Levitt
English Subtitles Available
Marshall Ngwa (a.k.a. renowned drag performer BeBe Zahara Benet) came to the United States from homophobic Cameroon with dreams of a better life and became the first winner of the now-iconic reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2009. Being BeBe follows Marshall’s remarkable immigrant journey from the earliest days of his amateur drag performance career in Minneapolis, circa 2006, to his emergence as one of the leading artists in the movement to celebrate and advance Queer Black Excellence during the 2020s. With 15 years of intimate access to Marshall’s story, the film presents his unique love affair with performance alongside his unstoppable sense of persistence and purpose, offering an unprecedented portrait of an artist who chooses to live a creative life against all odds.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual
Dancing the Twist in Bamako
In-Person Event: SHOWROOM
2021 | France, Canada, Senegal | 129 min | Narrative
Director: Robert Guédiguian
French with Subtitles
Mali, 1962. The youth of Bamako dance the twist to rock and roll music newly imported from the West and dream of political renewal. Samba, a young socialist, falls for spirited Lara during one of his missions to the bush. To escape her forced marriage, she secretly flees with him to the city. But Lara’s husband won’t let them be and the Revolution soon brings painful disillusions as they dream of a future together.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual
Delmarva and the Ground for Change
In-Person Event: SHOWROOM
2021 | United States | 89 min | Documentary
Director: Karrah Kwasnik
Three family-owned farms on the Delmarva Peninsula and their success using practices that protect and promote healthy soil; practices that also safeguard working lands against the extremes posed by climate change.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual
The Drive to Sing
Virtual Showing
2022 | United States | 76 min | Documentary
Director: Bryce B. Denney
Producer: Kathryn W. Denney, Justin Lahue
When choir singing became dangerous, even deadly, in the era of COVID-19, some musicians turned to “car choirs” in parking lots to keep their music alive. See how it began, spread and gained international attention. Feel how it touched singers and audiences during this time of fear and isolation.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual
Eternal Spring
Virtual Showing
2022 | China, Canada | 86 min | Documentary
Director: Jason Loftus
Producer: Kevin Kookogey, Jason Loftus, Yvan Pinard
In March 2002, a state TV station in China was hijacked by members of outlawed spiritual group Falun Gong. Their goal was to counter the government narrative about their practice. In the aftermath, police raids sweep Changchun City, and comic book illustrator Daxiong (Justice League, Star Wars), a Falun Gong practitioner, is forced to flee.
He arrives in North America, blaming the hijacking for worsening a violent repression. But his views are challenged when he meets the lone surviving participant to have escaped China, now living in Seoul, South Korea. Combining present-day footage with 3D animation inspired by Daxiong’s art, ETERNAL SPRING retraces the event on its 20th anniversary, and brings to life an unprecedented story of defiance, harrowing eyewitness accounts of persecution, and an exhilarating tale of determination to speak up for political and religious freedoms, no matter the cost.
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- Published in 2022, Short Films, SHOWROOM
Fannie Lou Hamer’s America
Virtual Showing
2022 | United States | 60 min | Documentary
Director: Joy Davenport
Producer: Monica Land
FANNIE LOU HAMER’S AMERICA, a documentary producer by her grand-niece Monica Land, is a portrait of a civil rights activist and the injustices in America that made her work essential. Through public speeches, personal interviews, and powerful songs of the fearless Mississippi sharecropper-turned-human-rights-activist, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America explores and celebrates the lesser-known life of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest leaders.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual
Fanny: The Right to Rock
2021 | Canada | 96 min | Documentary
Director: Bobbi Jo Hart
Producer: Bobbi Jo Hart, Robbie Hart
Sometime in the 1960s, in sunny Sacramento, two Filipina-American sisters got together with other teenage girls to play music. Little did they know their garage band would evolve into the legendary rock group Fanny, the first all-women band to release an LP with a major record label (Warner/Reprise, 1970). Despite releasing 5 critically-acclaimed albums over 5 years, touring with famed bands from SLADE to CHICAGO and amassing a dedicated fan base of music legends including David Bowie, Fanny’s groundbreaking impact in music was written out of history… until bandmates reunite 50 years later with a new rock record deal. With incredible archival footage of the band’s rocking past intercut with its next chapter releasing a new LP today, the film includes interviews with a large cadre of music icons, including Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, Bonnie Raitt, The Go-Go’s Kathy Valentine, Todd Rundgren, The Runaways’ Cherie Currie, Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian, The B52’s Kate Pierson, Charles Neville and David Bowie guitarist and bassist Earl Slick and Gail Ann Dorsey. Fighting early barriers of race, gender and sexuality in the music industry, and now ageism, the incredible women of Fanny are ready to claim their hallowed place in the halls of rock ‘n’ roll fame.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, SHOWROOM
Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen
Virtual Showing
2022 | United States | 88 min | Documentary
Director: Daniel Raim
Producer: Daniel Raim, Sasha Berman
The fall of 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof, the film Pauline Kael (The New Yorker) called “the most powerful movie musical ever made.” Narrated by Jeff Goldblum, FIDDLER’S JOURNEY TO THE BIG SCREEN captures the humor and drama of director Norman Jewison’s quest to recreate the lost world of Jewish life in Tsarist Russia and re-envision the beloved stage hit as a wide-screen epic. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Daniel Raim puts us in the director’s chair and in Jewison’s heart and mind, drawing on behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen stills as well as original interviews with Jewison, Topol (Tevye), composer John Williams, production designer Robert F. Boyle, film critic Kenneth Turan, lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and actresses Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, and Neva Small (Tevye’s daughters). The film explores how the experience of making Fiddler deepened Jewison as an artist and revived his soul.
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- Published in 2022, Feature Films, Virtual