2018 Films
EARTHRISE
Director: Emmanuel Vaughan Lee
When the astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission photographed the Earth rising over the surface of the moon in 1968, they brought home one of the most impactful photographs of human history, offering a new perspective that transcended national, political and religious boundaries.
FREUD VS JUNG
Director: Andrew Khosravani
Sex, religion, and envy – how Freud and Jung’s frenetic friendship tore itself apart.
GENERATION WEALTH
Director: Lauren Greenfield
Lauren Greenfield’s stunning new documentary — the culmination of 25 years of chronicling America’s excess — spins a fascinating cautionary tale about what happens when greed, status and money cloud the vision of what’s most important in life.
GIRLS SECTION
Director: Kathryn Everett
In a remote pocket of northern Pakistan, girls are for the first time challenging tradition to fight for their right to go to school, initiating earth-shifting change through a quiet but determined revolution.
I AM BISHA: THE REBEL PUPPETEERS OF SUDAN THE REBEL PUPPETEERS OF SUDAN
Director: Roopa Gogineni
Using their weapon of choice--a life-sized puppet of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir--young artists forcefully and hilariously mock the distant President’s policies and use humor, to fight against the corrupt regime.
INTO MY LIFE
Director: Ivana Hucíková, Sarah Keeling & Grace Remington
M. Elaine Bromfield, a black Puerto Rican immigrant raising her family in a Brooklyn housing complex in the ‘60s, documented their lives on 8-mm film — creating a rare trove of moments both quotidian and monumental that otherwise would be lost to history.
PRINCE’S TALE
Director: Jamie Miller
After aspiring actor Prince Amponsah suffers devastating injuries in an apartment fire, he’s forced to reckon with fate, reassess his new realities and confront a daunting challenge: retreat into fear and self-pity, or dig up the courage to return to the stage.
QUEEN OF VERSAILLES
Director: Lauren Greenfield
As millions of Americans lose their homes during the 2008 financial crisis filmmaker Lauren Greenfield mesmerizing film takes us into the home of timeshare king David Siegel and wife jackie as they attempt to build one of the largest houses in US history as their own finances and the world economy crumbles around them.
SARTRE VS. CAMUS
Director: Andrew Khosravani
There’s no better bust-up in the annals of philosophy than the row between two titans of existentialism: Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.
THE MARKET
Director: Claudia Zamora
In a distant future where catastrophe poisoned all soil and corporations produce tasteless food in labs; a mysterious Archive opens the door to a sumptuous past.
THE TABLES
Director: Jon Bunning
Two donated ping pong tables in the heart of New York City give birth to an eclectic amalgamation of the Big Apple’s finest ping pong players and the inspiring community they build around their love of the game.
THE TALK
Director: Alain Dellanoy
This is going to be awkward. We all remember ‘the talk’ either because our own parents stumbled through explaining the birds and the bees to us as we entered our own pubescent adventures or from whispered second-hand blush-faced retellings. This beautifully animated short will make you feel thirteen all over again.
THE THOUSAND YEAR JOURNEY
Director: Kenny Laubbacher
Why do this? That’s the question at the heart of this beautiful short film that follows OT guest Jedidiah Jenkins on his quixotic bicycle journey from Oregon to Patagonia. This is an adventure of the soul; not as interested in the trials and travails of life on the road as much as the existential concerns of Jenkins mind.
THE TRUTH ABOUT KILLER ROBOTS
Director: Maxim Pozdorovkin
The word robot was invented by Czech author Karel Capek in 1920 based on an old Slavic word, robota, that translates as servitude of forced labor. Maxim Pozdorovkin’s enthralling “The Truth About Killer Robots” offers not just a skeptical view of our dependence on robots, and how they may kill us, but is a deeper meditation on how our notion of humanness is being challenged as we quickly outsource much of our humanity to AI, automation, and yes robots, that promise in the next few years to change our lives dramatically.
THESE C*CKSUCKING TEARS
Director: Dan Taberski
In 1973, the son of a tenant dairy farmer wrote and released the first gay-themed country music album -- but with only 1000 copies made, the album soon disappeared and became a gay urban myth. Forty years later, Lavender Country was rediscovered and lauded by critics as 'resonant and wonderful, ...a rare act of bravery and honesty.' THESE C*CKSUCKING TEARS revisits the voice behind the album - Pat Haggerty, now in his 70s and singing “old songs to old folks” at senior living facilities - as he deals with the resurgence of a musical dream long since given up for dead.
TUNGRUS
Director: Rishi Chanda
In a cramped apartment in Mumbai, a family considers eating their hell-raising pet rooster, so that they can reclaim their lives.
UNDER HER SKIN
Director: Kelsey Bennett and Rémy Bennett
Camera-toting iconoclast Jane Rule Burdine has been chronicling the faces and landscapes of rural Mississippi for decades, documenting the complexities of the deep south while bucking all the traditionalism she grew up strapped with.
WE ARE NOT DONE YET
Director: Sareen Hairabedian
For these war-scarred veterans, the experience of writing, developing and acting in a collaborative poetry performance is a path to what they’ve failed to find elsewhere: a safe space to come together, a venue for expression and a desperately-needed medium for conveying the nuances of trauma.