Starring: Kentucker Audley, Albert Birney, Ephraim Birney, Reed Birney, Kenny Brossoie, Penny Fuller
In 2035, our dreams are no longer our own-they’re infused with product placement and auditors assess unpaid taxes on our most private reveries. Beleaguered taxman James Preble (Kentucker Audley) arrives at a run-down house in the countryside for a routine audit and encounters Bella Isadora (Penny Fuller), a lifelong dreamer who remains resolutely analog, circumventing the surveillance state with VHS tapes and homemade headgear. As Preble works his way through Bella’s archive of the unconscious, he begins to fall in love with visions of her younger self (Grace Glowicki). But all is not well in dreamland as dangerous family secrets and a rogue’s gallery of blue demons and fried chicken pitchmen threaten to set the lovers’ paradise ablaze. Can Preble and Bella escape from the modern, monetized dreamscape and find refuge in Strawberry Mansion?
Starring: Ikechukwu Ufomadu, Matt Barats, Ana Fabrega, Aparna Nancherla, John Early, Grace Rex
Inspector Ike, New York City’s greatest police detective, finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse after the conniving understudy of an avant-garde theater group knocks off the star actor. A “lost TV movie” from the 1970’s, Inspector Ike mixes visual gags, slapstick, gross food, and heartfelt emotion. Think Columbo meets The Naked Gun, featuring a rogue’s gallery of NYC’s best comedians.
Starring: Ella Ballentine, Ryan James McDonald, Olivia Scriven, Luke Bilyk
Special preview screening before the wide release. To make an additional $10 donation to The Future of Film is Female, select the “Event + Donation” ticket on the checkout screen.
Set in suburban Newfoundland in 1987, Nicole Dorsey’s debut feature is a dreamy account of two converging lives.
Fifteen-year-old Jackie (Ella Ballentine) is navigating the tricky transition between vulnerable adolescence and impending adulthood. The film opens with Jackie auditioning for her school choir with a gorgeous rendition of “Hey, Who Really Cares?”, by obscure early-’70s psychedelic folk singer Linda Perhacs. It’s a symbolic overture for a promising young woman from a broken home. Raised by her aunt and living under the cloud of all the disappointments endured by the women in her family, Jackie finds herself giving in to internal and external pressures — partying, skipping school, and hitchhiking — in search of her own identity. Her choices leave her speeding inevitably towards Dennis (Ryan McDonald), a socially inept loner with a volatile dark streak and delusional fantasies of adoring women at his beck and call.
Black Conflux is a vibrant and stunning debut, one that shies away from conventions common to small-town coming-of-age stories. Dorsey exhibits an inspiring cinematic style — both assured and mature — as she reflects on the past and her own experience. Exploring womanhood, isolation, and toxic masculinity, Black Conflux is a bracingly relevant narrative for today. – Ravi Srinivasan, TIFF 2019
A lack of connection – both human and digital – plagues a lonely New Yorker during the early months of the covid-19 shutdown.
Starring: Keith Poulson, Jason Grisell, Theodore Bouloukos, Hunter Zimny, Kyle Brown
An emerging performance artist finally gets a coveted show at a Manhattan gallery BUT right as he begins his durational, provocative piece, the entire city shuts down for COVID-19. Unswayed, he locks himself in a white cube space to continue his performance for an audience of none.
Preview screening of the new Poly Styrene doc before its February release!
Poly Styrene was the first woman of color in the UK to front a successful rock band. She introduced the world to a new sound of rebellion, using her unconventional voice to sing about identity, consumerism, postmodernism and everything she saw unfolding in late 1970s Britain, with a rare prescience.
As the frontwoman of X-Ray Spex, the Anglo-Somali punk musician was also a key inspiration for the riot grrrl and Afropunk movements. But the late punk maverick didn’t just leave behind an immense cultural footprint. She was survived by a daughter, Celeste Bell, who became the unwitting guardian of her mother’s legacy and her mother’s demons. Misogyny, racism and mental illness plagued Poly’s life, while their lasting trauma scarred Celeste’s childhood and the pair’s relationship.
Featuring unseen archive material and rare diary entries narrated by Oscar-nominee Ruth Negga, this documentary follows Celeste as she examines her mother’s unopened artistic archive and traverses three continents to better understand Poly the icon and Poly the mother.
This authorized documentary chronicles the chaotic and short-lived career of the band Deadguy and their seminal hardcore album “Fixation on a Coworker.” Featuring never before seen pictures and videos, unearthed live audio recordings and more, plus interviews with every member of the band and industry peers.
Runtime 85 minutes
In the spring of 1970, Joe Cocker undertook what became the legendary Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, immortalized in a live album and concert film. Fifty years later, first-time filmmaker Jesse Lauter tells the complete story through the lens of the Grammy Award-winning Tedeschi Trucks Band’s reunion of the Mad Dogs. In addition to Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi and the entire Tedeschi Trucks Band, this reunion featured 12 of the original Mad Dogs, including Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge and Claudia Lennear, plus guest performers Chris Robinson and Dave Mason, among others. The film showcases inspired performances from the reunion show, along with an exclusive look at the history of the tour and never-before-seen archival materials, commentary from the original members, critic David Fricke, notable fans who attended shows on the original tour and features the last filmed interview with the late Leon Russell.
In his short documentary A Look Back: Dogtown and Z-Boys, Glen E. Friedman updates the lives of the legendary Z-Boys skateboard crew twenty years after the release of their groundbreaking film. Dogtown and Z-Boys found an audience outside of the traditional skateboard community. Tony Alva, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta and more from the OG Zephyr scene break down why it worked and what was missing.
