NoBudge is happy to present new work from a group of emerging indie filmmakers based in New York. These seven short films are a mix of the dramatic and experimental. Textured societal commentary can be found in films like Rules of the Game and Imaginary Friend. Others like Gas Gets In Your Eyes and Others use surreal imagery to explore dream-like landscapes and occurrences. Night Swim and Dom place New York City as a spontaneous backdrop for adventurous days fraught with complications. Five of the films are NYC or Brooklyn premieres, and five of the directors will be in attendance for a post-film Q&A and Afterparty.

NoBudge is an online platform spotlighting the best in low-budget indie filmmaking. “One of the best places to sample what’s happening in low-budget cinema worldwide,” says Glenn Kenny of The New York Times. Its mission is to provide a supportive home for emerging indie filmmakers working with limited resources and without major industry connections, and to be a trusted discovery platform.

The movies:
Gas Gets in Your Eyes
Brooklyn Premiere
Director Madeline Leshner present.
Henry loses his vision after being exposed to an unknown toxic gas.
(13 minutes)

Others
New York Premiere.
Director Grace Rex present.
A collection of eight surreal vignettes about people in everyday moments connected by an umbilical cord.
(13 minutes)

Rules of the Game
New York Premiere.
Director Francesca Pazniokas present.
An experimental video art piece that explores the ways in which bisexual and queer people are misunderstood, pigeonholed and silenced based on the rules and expectations of others.
(6 minutes)

Imaginary Friend
New York Premiere.
Director Zachary Rubin present.
Helen, a lonely and isolated woman, is given the opportunity to connect with people from her past using a new augmented reality device.
(16 minutes)

Dom
Two old friends reunite on the hottest day of summer in NYC.
(17 minutes)

Night Swim
Director Victoria Rivera present.
Three teenage girls break into a closed-off pool on a hot summer night, but when unwanted guests show up, their friendship is tested and one of them is left behind.
(12 minutes)

Accessibility: Closed Captions, Descriptive Audio

Starring: Zora Howard, Joshua Boone

On a summer night in Harlem during her last months at home before starting college, seventeen-year-old poet Ayanna (Zora Howard) meets Isaiah (Joshua Boone), a charming music producer who has just moved to the city. It’s not long before these two artistic souls are drawn together in a passionate summer romance. But as the highs of young love give way to jealousy, suspicion, and all-too-real consequences, Ayanna must confront the complexities of the adult world—whether she is ready or not. Emotionally raw, intimate, and honest, Premature is at once timeless and bracingly contemporary in its portrait of a young woman navigating the difficult choices that can shape a life.

Starring: Demi Moore, Armand Assante, Ving Rhames, Robert Patrick, Burt Reynolds

When her ex-husband gets custody of their daughter, former FBI office assistant Erin Grant (Demi Moore) needs money to fight the legal case to get her child back. As a result, she takes a job dancing at the Eager Beaver strip club in Miami, where she befriends an imposing bouncer named Shad (Ving Rhames). Unfortunately, she also becomes an object of obsession for politician David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds), who gets what he wants through charm and violence — and what he wants is Erin.

Jourdain Searles says, “Striptease is one of the most earnest films about stripping, government corruption, and motherhood. What other movie will you find Burt Reynolds covered in vaseline or Demi Moore practicing a strip routine to Annie Lennox’s ‘Little Bird?’ You will never see a more noble box office failure.”

The final film from the late, beloved Agnès Varda is a characteristically playful, profound, and personal summation of the director’s own brilliant career. At once impish and wise, she acts as our spirit guide on a free-associative tour through her six-decade artistic journey, shedding new light on her films, photography, and recent installation works while offering her one-of-a-kind reflections on everything from filmmaking to feminism to aging. Suffused with the people, places, and things she loved—Jacques Demy, cats, colors, beaches, heart-shaped potatoes—this wonderfully idiosyncratic work of imaginative autobiography is a warmly human, touchingly bittersweet parting gift from one of cinema’s most luminous talents.

Starring: Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer, Tom Holland, John Ratzenberger

Screening in 2D

Set in a suburban fantasy world, Disney-Pixar’s Onward introduces two teenage elf brothers who embark on an extraordinary quest to discover if there is still a little magic left out there.

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Giovanni Ribisi, Delroy Lindo, Timothy Olyphant, Robert Duvall

In this action thriller, a master car thief has his skills pushed to the limit. Randall “Memphis” Raines (Nicolas Cage) can steal practically any car that crosses his path. While he has done well in his life of crime, he knows that there’s a short future in theft, and he wants to get out of the business. But his retirement plans are interrupted when his younger brother Kip (Giovanni Ribisi) gets in trouble with a dangerous crime boss. To get his brother out of harm’s way, Randall agrees to a profitable but risky scheme to steal 50 luxury cars in one night, with the help of several other car thieves, including Sara “Sway” Wayland (Angelina Jolie). A rival group of thieves is trying to pull the same stunt at the same time, and detectives Castlebeck (Delroy Lindo) and Drycoff (Timothy Olyphant) are trying to shut down both operations.

Starring: Corey Feldman, Crispin Glover, Ted White, Kimberly Beck, Erich Anderson

This is an original print and is slightly faded, but the color is still intact!

A carefree lakeside vacation is interrupted by the re-emergence of killer Jason Voorhees (Ted White). After he escapes from a morgue, leaving bodies in his wake, Jason travels to Camp Crystal Lake where a group of friends is staying. The teens meet some locals: Tommy (Corey Feldman) and Trish (Kimberly Beck), as well as secretive hiker Rob (Erich Anderson). As the group of teenagers engages in drunken debauchery, their numbers begin to dwindle, and pieces of the past resurface.

Starring: Kang-ho Song, Sun-kyun Lee, Yeo-jeong Jo

This is the black and white re-release of the 2020 Academy Award winner for Best Picture.

Bong Joon Ho brings his singular mastery home to Korea in this pitch-black modern fairytale.

Meet the Park Family: the picture of aspirational wealth. And the Kim Family, rich in street smarts but not much else. Be it chance or fate, these two houses are brought together and the Kims sense a golden opportunity.

Masterminded by college-aged Ki-woo, the Kim children expediently install themselves as tutor and art therapist, to the Parks. Soon, a symbiotic relationship forms between the two families. The Kims provide “indispensable” luxury services while the Parks obliviously bankroll their entire household. When a parasitic interloper threatens the Kims’ newfound comfort, a savage, underhanded battle for dominance breaks out, threatening to destroy the fragile ecosystem between the Kims and the Parks.

By turns darkly hilarious and heart-wrenching, Parasite showcases a modern master at the top of his game.

Accessibility: Closed Captions, Assisted Listening, Descriptive Audio

Starring: LaKeith Stanfield, Issa Rae, Chelsea Peretti

When famed photographer Christina Eames unexpectedly dies, she leaves her estranged daughter Mae Morton (Issa Rae) hurt, angry and full of questions. When a photograph tucked away in a safe-deposit box is found, Mae finds herself on a journey delving into her mother’s early life and ignites a powerful, unexpected romance with a rising-star journalist, Michael Block (LaKeith Stanfield).

Starring: Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo, Stockard Channing, Blythe Danner

Noxeema Jackson, Vida Boheme and Chi Chi Rodriguez are gonna show America a thing or two about being fabulous. Dressed to kill, with their Dynel tresses tossing in the breeze behind them, these three stars of New York’s drag-queen beauty pageant circuit have hit the open road in a 1967 Cadillac convertible. Destination: Hollywood. But the trio is in for a detour when the car breaks down in the tiny midwestern town of Snydersville, where drag queens are about as common as August snowstorms. Up to now Snydersville has been a lot more like a graveyard than a town. That’s all about to change. The local citizenry is going to get an infusion of flash and glamour the likes of which it’s never seen. During the course of one incredible weekend, eyes will be opened, broken hearts healed, and hair teased within an inch of its life.