听
UNTITLED Ann Roy
An ethnofiction by听Emilie Upczak听
A look at the Super-8 films of Ann Roy, the relatively unknown Tulsa-born poet and feminist activist, who among other engagements, explored mysticism through the use of hallucinogens in Tepoztl谩n, Mexico in the 1970's.
The Length of Day
A documentary film by Laura Conway听
A collaged essay film that tells an emotional history of socialism in the United States. Filmmaker Laura Conway enacts a cinematic seance using archival documents to communicate with her departed communist grandparents and ask them questions听about the end of capitalism. An account of the dreams, struggles, and losses of revolutionaries in the United States. At its heart is the question - how can we imagine an alternative to capitalism?
The Length of Day will premier at the in the documentary shorts category.听
Tickets to slamdance are free until December 31st:听
听
听
Revolution from Afar
A feature-length documentary film by Bentley Brown
Sudanese-American poets and musicians engage in performances and听conversation around the revolution in Sudan, from which they have been听physically cut off.
In 2019,听after months of peaceful protests across Sudan, the country鈥檚听thirty-year dictator Omar Al-Bashir was removed from power by a military听leadership that cracked down in a violent fashion on the peaceful sit-in outside听its headquarters. Internet was shut down across Sudan, leaving only听those outside to carry on a voice for the revolution in an ever-despairing听quest for peaceful transition to civilian government.
Revolution from Afar premiered at听Sudan Independent Film Festival (2020)听and is currently screening at festivals around the world.
听
Of Land and Water: A Portrait of Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar
鈥淚t's our whole identity where I am from. It is what makes us, us.鈥�
Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar is a 39 year old mother of four. She spends her waking hours working to save her community, advocating for coastal restoration and preservation as the water rises. Chief of the Grand Caillou/Dula Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw in听Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana for the last eleven years, she is consumed by her efforts to gain tribal recognition from the US Government. As she tirelessly works to serve her tribal citizens, their native land is being swallowed by the Gulf of Mexico.
A documentary film by Keely Kernan.
La Sierra
Through oral histories, community-based media workshops, and extended reality technology, this multimodal project is a collaboration with the people of Costilla County, Colorado, a community of predominantly Chicanx families who have fought for their rights to an 83,000-acre mountain tract known as 鈥楲a Sierra鈥� for nearly 200 years. Using emergent media to create a simulated experience of three significant sites on this land, La Sierra explores the ways technology can serve as a critical mediator in a community鈥檚 navigation and understanding of antagonistic histories dealing with land, power, and use.
An extended reality experience by Sarah McCormick and Kevin Sweet.
MELT: The Memory of Ice
A cinematic archive captured for a world where ice is a distant memory. An operatic converation between generations in the time of climate change.
Imagining a world where ice is a distant memory, the powerful multimedia opera and hybrid music-film MELT: The Memory of Ice archives the meanings and memories of ice for future generations through persuasive sonic and visual counterpoint. With spectacular aerial footage of glaciers giving birth to icebergs, visual portraits of Arctic residents, visitors and scientists, ambient music made from glimmers of Arctic sounds, and memories of ice sung by children鈥檚 choirs and the New York-based vocal ensemble , this extraordinary experimental music-film will act as a powerful and emotional reminder to preserve our glaciers in a time of climate change.
A feature-length music film directed by Betsey Biggs. Coming Spring 2021.
American Refuge
The forest is a place of refuge, but it鈥檚 hard to escape the past.
As the homeless flee the gentrifying cities of the American West and take refuge in nearby forests, the residents of a small, mountain town in Colorado, led by a progressive minister who was himself once homeless, must learn to live with the strangers in their midst and the limitations of the American dream.
A feature-length documentary film produced and written by Christian Hammons. Directed by Eric Coombs Esmail & Christian Hammons. Coming Fall 2021.
Messengers
A anthropolgist reflects on his life, career, and the 1,000-year journey of 400 Nubian mummies.
In 1979, Prof. Dennis Van Gerven exhumed the bodies of 400 Nubian mummies from the desert in Sudan. They were itinerant farmers in the 6th and 7th centuries BC, but in the three decades after they were excavated, they would go to work again as "messengers from the poor." At the end of his career, Van Gerven reflects on his life with the mummies and their afterlife in the United States speaking to the problems of poverty and discrimination.
A short documentary film produced and written by Christian Hammons. Directed by Eric Coombs Esmail & Christian Hammons. Released in 2018 and premiered at the Los Angeles Independent Filmmakers Showcase Film Festival.