The Video Association of Dallas celebrates the films of the Dallas VideoFest Oct. 9-13, 2013. The long-standing, 26-year-old VideoFest opens at Gilley’s in Dallas on Wednesday, Oct. 9. It moves to Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Richardson Thursday, Oct. 10 and more than 140 screenings take place in Richardson until Sunday, Oct. 13.
The online schedule is available: http://DallasVideoFest.FestivalGenius.com/2013/Films
VideoFest (VideoFest.org) is now the oldest and largest video festival in the United States and continues to garner critical and popular acclaim. VideoFest prides itself on bringing films to the theater that are rarely available to be seen anywhere else. Films like Experimental/Art Films, Animation, Narrative and Documentary Shorts as well as Documentary and Narrative Features and some hard-to-find Classic TV episodes and Classic Films are often in the mix.
“Every year, we like to program films that will challenge us, help us see life from a different perspective, educate us and, of course, entertain the VideoFest audience. And this year, this is especially so,” said Bart Weiss, founder and artistic director of Dallas VideoFest.
Full Film List (in alphabetical order)
ADA (Canada)
Director: Lindsay McIntyre
An observational video portrait of an Inuk elder addressing age and the passage of time.
Experimental
AFTER TREATMENT (USA)
Director: Edith Staubner
Humorously detailed study of a hospital waiting room. Repetitive movements, glances, ticks, and calls turn into a symphony of the banal and everyday.
Experimental
ALL THE LABOR: THE STORY OF THE GOURDS (USA)
Director: Doug Hawes-Davis
Too happy-go-lucky for the earnest fans of roots music, too plaid and pragmatic for the hippies, too old and hairy for the mainstream, too young to be called legends. Sound like friends of yours? For nearly two decades, the Gourds have been the musical distillation of Austin itself: A label-defying, unpretentious, gregarious gang of friends whose primary motive is to have fun and create great music together. ALL THE LABOR captures The Gourds' enduring brotherhood and magnetic musicianship through candid conversations, raucous performances, on-tour media interviews and reflections and insight from friends and family. Blazing performances and candid interviews convey the life, labor and brotherhood of the Gourds, an Austin band beloved around the world for its genre-jumping music and unpretentious vibe.
HighPlainsFilms.org
Documentary Feature
ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE (USA)
Director: Les Blank
First a funeral: Allen Toussaint gives the viewer a closer look into the spirit of New Orleans. From a funeral, to a lesson in eating crayfish, to a St. Patrick's Day party, New Orleans starts its preparation for Mardi Gras – when slaves used to gather on Sundays to prepare for the one holiday they could celebrate – this documentary brings the music, the dance, and the rituals.
LesBlank.com/?Portfolio=Always-For-Pleasure-1978
Documentary Feature
ANNE BRADEN: SOUTHERN PATRIOT (USA)
Director: Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering
Hailed by King as “eloquent and prophetic,” the power of life committed to social transformation by Anne Lewis and Mimi Pickering.
AnneBradenFilm.org
Documentary Feature
AS I AM (USA)
Director: Alan Spearman
The struggle of a young man in one of the poorest neighborhoods and cities in America, as he battles to escape grinding poverty.
AsIAmFilm.com
Documentary Short
BELLY (USA)
Director: Julia Pott
I can feel you in my belly.
JuliaPott.com/Film
Animation
BLACK METAL (USA)
Director: Kat Candler
When a teen murders his math teacher in the name of a black metal band, the lead singer will have to re-evaluate the two things the loves most – his music and his family. BLACK METAL, a dark drama, follows Ian, a husband, father, and musician, struggling with the guilt and blame of a senseless murder.
Facebook.com/BlackMetalMovie
Texas Show
BLIGHTED BEAUTY (USA)
Director: Joe Brown
BLIGHTED BEAUTY is a short documentary that profiles urban explorer and photoblogger Naaman Fletcher. The film showcases the haunting beauty of urban blight while also explaining the appeal of urban exploration in Birmingham, AL.
StarsDownToEarthFilms.com
Documentary Short
THE BOOK OF JOE (USA)
Director: Mario Pena
An action/sci-fi short film that pits Joe against Death, an Angel, and even Jesus himself in an apocalyptic battle for the future of Earth. Blending vintage science fiction, biblical imagery, and South Texas Americana, THE BOOK OF JOE is a unique, entertaining, and action-packed take on the end of the world.
5000Films.com
Narrative Short
BROKEN NEWS (USA)
Director: Lori Felker
BROKEN NEWS is an intimate attempt at reporting, mediating and being mediated. This comes from an experiment/performance in which I had a news desk set up at the foot of my bed for 2 weeks. I would read only headlines all day and then deliver the “news” from memory at night. Then, I would wake myself up in the middle of a deep sleep and report all of the newest news I could muster (my dreams). The next step was to gather those newscasts and send them off to another level of mediation: my graphics department (artist Chris Royalty). Using text from my nighttime headline news, actual news, stream of consciousness video clips I gathered and variations on all of the above, he helped to create the full, overwhelming image of information dissemination.
Fandor.com/Films/Broken_News
Experimental
BUENOS AIRES RECYCLERS (USA)
Director: Nikki Schuster
Buenos Aires – tango, ear-splitting traffic, and a treasure trove for litter. BUENOS AIRES RECYCLERS portraits the cultural, social, and urban fabrics of this city by means of experimental animation. The viewer is guided to urban hideouts where little creatures dwell. These are digitally composed with collected trash and typical local products. The clatter of the limbs of these creatures interacts with the soundscapes of Buenos Aires.
Fiesfilm.com/BuenosAiresRecyclers.html
Experimental
BURROW-CAMS (USA)
Director: Sam Easterson
Features footage from cameras that have been placed inside underground animal habitats. Animals showcased include: burrowing owl, black-footed ferret, porcupine, badger, prairie vole, swift fox, deer mouse, and the black tailed prairie dog.
VDB.org/titles/burrow-cams
Experimental
BUTTERFLIES (Australia)
Director: Isabel Peppard
A young artist sits on the sidewalk, struggling to make a living. She sells drawings to passersby. A businessman recognizes her talents and offers her a paying job. The prospect seems inviting, but the reality threatens to kill her imagination.
ButterfliesAnimation.com
Animation
CAT SCANNED (USA)
Director: Michael Guccione
According to the filmmaker, “A few years ago I became interested in how a TV image is built (scanned lines/alternating fields). I wanted to slow down what took place in nano-seconds to create a perceivable movie experience. More recently, I came across one of the first televised images from the 1920s. RCA created this image from a 13” papier mache effigy of the Felix The Cat cartoon character spinning on a turntable. This work was inspired by that early TV experiment.”
Experimental
CAMERA/WOMAN (Morocco)
Director: Karima Zoubir
Working as a videographer at weddings in Casablanca, Khadija Harrad is part of a new generation of young, divorced Moroccan women seeking to realize their desires for independence while honoring their families' wishes. Mother of an 11-year-old son and primary breadwinner for her parents and siblings as well, she navigates daily between the elaborate fantasy world of the parties she films and the demands from her traditionally conservative family. Sponsored by Women Make Movies.
Facebook.com/CameraWoman
Documentary Feature
CAMP STORIES (USA)
Director: David B. Levy
Sometimes you have to leave home to find where you belong. In CAMP STORIES, a poor city kid volunteers at a summer camp and discovers a whole new world in this animated documentary.
Facebook.com/CampStory
Animation
CHINESE DEMOCRACY AND THE LAST DAY ON EARTH (USA)
Director: Federico Solmi
CHINESE DEMOCRACY AND THE LAST DAY ON EARTH begins idyllically in the Garden of Eden and ends in a bloody takeover of the Times Square.
Animation
CIELO LINDO (USA)
Director: Iris Lopez
At the point of starvation, a young homeless girl learns to cope with hunger and her harsh reality by exploring her own imagination.
Facebook.com/CieloLindoFilm
Texas Show
CIRCLE IN THE SAND (USA)
Director: Michael Robinson
In a broken near future, a band of listless vagabonds ambles across a war-torn coastal territory, supervised and sorted by a group of idle soldiers. Rummaging, stuttering, and smashing through the leftovers of Western culture, these ragged souls conjure an unstable magic, fueled by their own apathy and the poisonous histories imbedded in their unearthed junk. Suspicion, boredom, garbage, and glamour conspire in the languid pageantry of ruin. Feel the breeze in your hair, and the world crumbling through your fingers.
Poisonberries.net/Films.html
Experimental
CITY OF HATE – DALLAS AND THE ASSASSINATION (USA – Preview Screening)
Director: Quin Matthews
CITY OF HATE: DALLAS AND THE ASSASSINATION explores a politically turbulent city preparing for a presidential visit, the immense pride many Dallas residents felt to see the president in their hometown and the city’s damaged reputation that followed the death of President Kennedy.
QMFilms.com
Documentary Feature
C.L.U.E. (COLOR LOCATION ULTIMATE EXPERIENCE) PART 1 (USA)
Director: A.L. Steiner and Robbinschilds
Inhabiting the intersection of human movement and architecture, A.L. Steiner and robbinschilds (Sonya Robbins and Layla Childs) present a full-spectrum video, set to a score by rock quartet Kinski. Edited in succinct rainbow-hued sections, each sequence features robbinschilds in monochromastic gear, acting in psychedelic contrast and communion with their surroundings. The artists traverse through desolate desert landscapes, darkened parking lots, and geological formations, responding to the environment through choreographed duets. In a style that is obsessive, persistent, and often humorous, robbinschilds reveals their observations of the human imprint on the world.
Robbinschilds.org
Experimental
THE COMPLECT VOICE (SUITE FOR BIRDS AND MAMMALS) (USA)
Director: Julie Rooney
This film seeks the collaborative efforts of humans and animals to create musical performances through a scored musical suite. These videos apply the structure of music to the functional sounds made by animals from a variety of sources (alive, internet-based, taxidermied). Although union is seemingly achieved, the tension between the deliberate manipulation of the animals, the blurred distinction between imitation sources, and the animal’s resistance to the formulation of music emphasizes what separates and relates humans to other species.
JulieRooney.com/Pages2/Projects/ComplectVoice.html
Experimental
CORK'S CATTLEBARON (USA)
Director: Eric Steele
A young protege and his boss sit down for a life-changing steak dinner in Omaha, Nebraska.
Facebook.com/CorksCattlebaron
Texas Show
A DAY FOR CAKE AND ACCIDENTS (USA)
Director: Jesse Mott and Steve Reinke
This film features a cast of animal characters — each of a different, though often indeterminate, species — who struggle with impending astrological despair and engage in absurdist dialogs, confessing various melancholic desires and transgressive secrets in poetic cartoon abjection. It is the third in a series of short collaborative animations.
VDB.org/Titles/Day-Cake-And-Accidents
Experimental
DESTINATION: PLANET NEGRO! (USA)
Director: Kevin Willmott
In 1939, a group of African American intellectuals propose an ingenious and unlikely response to Jim Crow America—to leave the planet and populate Mars. Using technology created by George Washington Carver, a three-person crew (plus one rambunctious robot) lift-off in Earth's first working spaceship on a mission that will take them to a world not unlike present-day America. Their spacey adventure illuminates some hard truths about American culture and threatens to undermine the time-line of history along the way.
PlanetNegro.com
Narrative Feature
DIGBY (USA)
Director: Colette Copeland
“Maybe there is a beast or maybe it's only us.” ― William Golding, Lord of the Flies. A raft ride through murky snake-filled water. An abandoned tanker filled with blue smoke haze. A rope. A ritual.
ColetteCopeland.com/Other/Digby.html
Experimental
DINING WITH THE ENEMY (Norway)
Food is a universal language that brings people together. But what if the people are sworn enemies? In DINING WITH THE ENEMY, an experienced war correspondent takes an expert gourmet chef to a conflict-ridden part of the world.
NordicWorld.tv/Formats/Catalogue/19/Format/Format
Documentary Feature
DRONES IN MY BACKYARD (USA)
Directors: Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow
DRONES IN MY BACKYARD is a funny and scary video mash-up about the coming of aerial drones to the United States. One day, a drone appears in the filmmakers' backyard, hovering over their heads. It’s the catalyst for an extended meditation and free association on the presence of drones in war-making, the role of drones in surveillance, and the thrill of flying when you put on goggles to see what the drone sees. They follow us… and we listen to the incessant buzzing of cameras overhead.
Documentary Short
DUSTY STACKS OF MOM: THE POSTER STORY (USA)
Director: Jodie Mack
Interweaving the forms of personal filmmaking, abstract animation, and rock opera, this animated musical documentary examines the rise and fall of a nearly-defunct poster and postcard wholesale business; the changing role of physical objects and virtual data in commerce; and the division (or lack of) between abstraction in fine art and psychedelic kitsch. Using alternate lyrics as voice-over narration, the piece adopts the form of a popular rock album reinterpreted as a cine-performance.
JodieMack.com
Experimental
ECHOES (USA)
Director: Van Blumreich
David and Jonie's son, Micah, has disappeared into the woods. When he comes home, all is not what it seems in this haunting short film.
Texas Show
EVERY TUESDAY: A PORTRAIT OF THE NEW YORKER CARTOONISTS (USA)
Director: Rachel Gordon Loube
The New Yorker Magazine is famous for its pithy, witty, and occasionally incomprehensible single-panel cartoons. The cartoons are well known, but the cartoonists are not. This film follows four of them—Sidney Harris, Emily Flake, Drew Dernavich, and Zack Kanin—through their creative process and their weekly shared lunch.
Facebook.com/EveryTuesdayAPortraitOfTheNewYorkerCartoonists
Documentary Short
FALLOUT (USA)
Director: Paul Turano
A futile gesture marking the one-year anniversary of the collateral calamity at the Fukushima nuclear power facility, surveying a more invisible tsunami. Scientific predictions of the residual effects are undercut by the cheerfully benign day-glow colors assigned to the threat. A gradual contamination of the image and increasing waves of fear give way to an irradiated bloom.
PaulTurano.com/Artwork/2716103_Fallout.html
Experimental
FAR FROM VIETNAM (France)
Director: Chris Marker
In seven different parts, Godard, Klein, Lelouch, Marker, Resnais and Varda show their sympathy for the North-Vietnamees army during the Vietnam-war.
IcarusFilms.com/New2013/Far.html
Documentary Feature
FILMAGE: THE STORY OF DESCENDENTS/ALL (USA)
Directors: Matt Riggle and Deedle LaCour
Long before Green Day and Blink 182 inflicted punk-rock's puncture wound on the map of mainstream music, the Descendents were in a garage concocting the perfect mix of pop, angst, love, and coffee. Sponsored by Charlie Uniform Tango. Director of photography, Justin Wilson in attendance
FilmageMovie.com
Documentary Feature
FINDING HILLYWOOD (USA)
Director: Leah Warshawski
Set amongst the hills of Rwanda, FINDING HILLYWOOD chronicles one man's road to forgiveness, his effort to heal his country, and the realization that we must all one day face our past. FINDING HILLYWOOD is a unique and endearing phenomenon film about the pioneers of Rwanda's film industry.
FindingHillywood.com
Documentary Feature
FOREVER IN HIATUS (Australia)
Director: Andy Nguyen
A washed up former pop star lives in exile pedaling a xich lo (bicycle taxi) aimlessly in the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, until he meets a 16-year-old girl who discovers who he is.
Facebook.com/MatVan2011
Narrative Short
FORMER MODELS (USA)
Director: Benjamin Pearson
Tells the tragic story of Milli Vanilli member Rob Pilatus' transition from embodied subject into pure image. A public and private history undo themselves as together they encounter the trials of Labor, Love, Loss, and Planned Obsolescence. A body desires its other and a simulation is transgressed and the ultimate price is paid.
Experimental
FORTY YEARS FROM YESTERDAY (USA)
Directors: Robert Machoian And Rodrigo Ojeda-Bec
After an unexpected and tragic event, Bruce is forced to face the inevitable questions we spend our lives avoiding.
FortyYearsFromYesterday.com/
Narrative Feature
FREEDOM FIGHTERS (USA – Ten Minute Excerpt)
Director: Jamie Meltzer
There’s a new detective agency in Dallas, Texas, started by a group of exonerated men, with decades in prison served between them. They call themselves the Freedom Fighters, and they are looking to free innocent people still behind bars. FREEDOM FIGHTERS is a character-driven documentary that follows these change-makers as they rebuild their lives and families, learn to investigate cases, work to support each other, and campaign to fix the criminal justice system.
FreedomFightersFilm.com
Documentary Short
FREE RADICALS: A HISTORY OF EXPERIMENTAL FILM (USA)
Director: Pip Chodorov
This feature-length documentary provides a vivid, eye-opening, and appropriately personal introduction to one of the most important, yet perpetually marginalized, realms of filmmaking: avant-garde cinema.
Experimental
FREE THE BUTTERFLY/UWOLNIC MOTYLA (Poland)
Director: Joanna Frydrych
Catherine Rosicka-Jaczyńska used to have money, beauty, and fame, until she got sick. While ALS kills in average after four years, she lives more than a dozen. This disease takes the possibility of any movement, and Catherine is exceptionally active. She is not able to speak a single word, but wrote a book that became a bestseller. Catherine achieves everything she wants, except one of the most important things.
PolishDocs.pl
Documentary Feature
A GAMEBOY LIFE (USA)
Director: Jose Cortez
A forgotten video game device decides to go on an adventure to find the excitement he's been missing for many years.
Animation
GEORGE GIMARC TALKS ABOUT THE SEX PISTOLS AT THE LONGHORN BALLROOM (USA)
Presenter: George Gimarc
A band is sent on a self-destruct mission across the USA and ignites a cultural shift uniting misfits in their wake.
Special Program
GIRLS LOVES HORSES (USA)
Director: Jennifer Reeder
A professional woman, traveling alone, recalls and reenacts an incident from her adolescence after injuring herself off-camera. This experimental narrative unravels patiently and points to melodrama as a potential form of plot structure. An adult female and the girl ghost from her past emerge and retreat within real-time exchanges and previously recorded footage. The linearity is disrupted by magical b-roll and a constant shift between the actual and imagined. This is a fractured little story about a business trip, a bloodstain and being okay.
TheJenniferReeder.com/
Experimental
GOOGLE GLASS
With Google Glass Owners: Rob Garner, Michael Stancil, Cameron Gawley,
Ryan Plesko and Luke Wallace
The Dallas VideoFest has had a long tradition of showing off new technologies and talking about how they will affect us. Ever since the first videos of Google Glass on YouTube, it has captured the imagination of the geek-o-sphere. Like all new technologies, the backlash and cartoons have been extreme. Clearly this Glass has touched a nerve. For many of us, this is there is a very high curiosity factor.
So to scratch that itch and ask the questions you wanted to ask, VideoFest brings you a panel of people who live and walk among us in DFW who have been using them. They will talk about their experiences, what they like and don’t like, and you can ask them the questions you have wanted to ask. Along the way, we will show a few videos made with and about Glass. We have come along way since the days of the Virtual Reality goggles and gloves.
Special Program
GREAT BLOOD SACRIFICE (Canada)
Director: Steve Reinke
GREAT BLOOD SCRIFICE traces the movement of a voice from being rooted in a particular body (the artist's) to its dispersal through a variety of dummies. Whatever is going on on top, there’s a precise machine at work below, and this machine is digging little grooves, and these grooves slowly join together and become the conduits by which all meaning is drained from the world. A comedy but not a pretty one.
Experimental
HARDCORE EL PICANTE (USA)
Director: David Hernandez
HARDCORE EL PICANTE is a doc short about the DIY punk scene hosting shows at the oldest Taqueria in Denton, TX.
Documentary Short
HOME MOVIE DAY
Home Movie Day events provide the opportunity for individuals and families to see and share their own home movies with an audience of their community, and to see their neighbors' in turn. It's a chance to discover why to care about these films and to learn how best to care for them.
Media archivist and media philosopher, Rick Prellinger, talks about how it is important to look at the ephemeral media to really understand a culture. It is industrials, educational films, and home movies that tell us so much about who were are and were, what we wore how we treated each other, what we valued, and what we, at that moment, thought was worth preserving. Home movies are often discarded, until someone dies or we are looking for a reason to embarrass someone. There was a therapist who asked their patients to bring in home moves of them as a kid to see what their parents were really like. Rarely do those images match the memory.
So here on Home Movie Day at VideoFest, we celebrate those memories as they were preserved. Bring us your past and share it with us. Presented by Video Association of Dallas and the Dallas Municipal Archives.
Special Program
A HOLY THING (USA)
Director: The Perennial Plate
In Gujarat, spending two days with Bhaskar Save–the Gandhi of Indian farming after visiting his family, the viewer sees their way of life and cuisine. The filmakers were inspired to compose a type of visual “poem” out of his non-violent philosophy.
ThePerennialPlate.com
Documentary Short
IN REPS OF LONG-PLAY (USA)
Director: Olivia Ciummo
The curtain opens and Greek pillars mark an entry point to staged happenings. The imagined stage actors command movement as the director controls stillness and points out spots for the viewers to look.
OliviaCiummo.com/MImgs
Experimental
INTRIGUE AND THE RONCHES (USA)
Director: Kurdwin Ayub
"No matter when, no matter where I´ll be, I´m looking for a woman that will satisfy me." A penis performs a cult hit by the Sonics, swings its "hips" and gathers a group of vaginas around it. As groupies do, they are looking to be close to the lead singer, but things turn out differently.
SixPackFilm.com/en/Catalogue/Show/1905
Experimental
THE INVISIBLE WORLD (USA)
Director: Jesse McLean
In this video, materialism, emotional presence, and the adaptive nature of human beings are broadly considered through the lens of time. A variety of time-based materials are collected and collaged, revealing the filmmaker’s own hoarding tendencies. The present world is packed with objects that evidence human productivity, yet the desire to possess things remains somewhat mysterious. Lifeless objects become imbued with emotional significance and possessions are linked with personal identities – even as these objects bear a cool and distant witness to human struggles. The rapidly arriving future portends an intangible new world of virtual experience.
JesseMcLean.com/Category/The-Invisible-World/
Experimental
IRRESISTIBLE (USA)
Director: George Wada
In George Wada's music video "Irresistible", singer-songwriter Tommy Homonym strolls through Paris in the 1963 thriller Charade, pining for both Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Facebook.com/pages/Irresistible/175258362661396
Music Video
KANZEON (Japan)
Director: Neil Cantwell and Tim Grabham
A mystical film journey from the timeless to the modern looking at the ritual role of sound in Japanese culture and religion.
KanZeOnTheMovie.com/
Documentary Feature
LA MIRADA PERDIDA (Argentina)
Director: Damián Dionisio
Argentina, 1976. Claudio is forced to live with his family in hiding, due to his political ideals. The house in which they live is discovered by the militarists. No time to flee, Teresa tries to shelter his daughter in a fantasy world to avoid seeing the horror they are about to live.
PromoFest.org/Films/la-Mirada-Perdida
Narrative Short
LATENT (USA)
Director: Nate Kantor
A curious young girl discovers the unrevealed secrets of a benevolent photographer.
Facebook.com/LatentFilm
Narrative Short
LEVIATHAN (France)
Director: Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel
A documentary shot in the North Atlantic and focused on the commercial fishing industry.
Documentary Feature
LIE BACK AND ENJOY IT: A FILM ABOUT JOANN ELAM (USA)
Director: Jessica Bardsley
JoAnn Elam was an experimental filmmaker, postal worker, and social activist. This film remixes JoAnn's footage as a way of introducing viewers to her life and work.
Experimental
LINE DESCRIBING YOUR MOM (USA)
Director: Michael Robinson
This is the new choreography of devotion, via the vlog of Southern nightmares. This is the light that never goes out. This is the LINE DESCRIBING YOUR MOM.
Poisonberries.net/Films.html
Experimental
LITTLE LIONS (USA)
Director: Tony Costello
Cosmo spends his days rough-housing with his little brother and sister, and the games don't stop when he discovers an injured bird in their backyard. LITTLE LIONS is the story of a boy who's just starting to figure it out.
TonyCostello.us/LittleLions/
Texas Show
LIVING CONDITION – BILL'S STORY (USA)
Director: Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman
LIVING CONDITION is an animated documentary that tells the stories of four families living with a relative condemned to execution. Each family bears witness to the impact of capital punishment on whole communities, a perspective that is rarely, if ever, heard. This film opens up discussions surrounding the Death Penalty and offers new perspectives on crime, justice, human rights, costs to society, and questions of racial equality. This is a screening of the story of BIll. Screened in partnership with Make Art with Purpose for MAP 2013.
LivingCondition.net/
Animated Documentary Short
LUCKY (USA)
Director: Laura Checkoway
Masked in tattoos and armed with an indomitable spirit, Lucky Torres has forged a path all her own. Spanning five years, this intimate survival story delves deep into the fringes of NYC to reveal a life etched in wounds, longing, resilience, and dreams.
LuckyTheDocumentary.com/
Documentary Feature
MARTINDALE (USA)
Director: Bug Davidson
MARTINDALE is a collaborative work from Bug Davidson and Two Left Feet Dance Company. The filmmakers sought lost memories, history, and a trace of domesticity in the rural southwest. Once a thriving agricultural community, the city of Martindale, Texas now awaits a purpose. Its structures are in a state of instability as a new era makes its mark on the town. This work questions the possibility of marginalized identities to make a historical impact on these territories as apparitions.
Behance.net/Gallery/Martindale/4485891
Narrative Short
MERCY MERCY: A PORTRAIT OF A TRUE ADOPTION (Denmark)
Director: Katrine Riis Kjaer
MERCY MERCY gives a rare look at all participants in the adoption process, including the parents who give their children up. Two loving Ethiopians parents, Sinkenesh and Hussen, have just been diagnosed with HIV and told they only have one year to live. They make the painful decision to give their two youngest children up for adoption, handing them over to a Danish family. In an emotional departure, the Danish family promises to stay in touch, and the adoption agency agrees to broker the relationship. What seems like the best decision for the children becomes a series of tragic and painful events for all, unveiling that the well-being of children is not always the main priority in the adoption process. Greed, selfishness, unrealistic expectations, and skewed cultural perspectives collide in this powerful story.
MercyMercy.dk/
Documentary Feature
MIRACLE BODY EPISODE 1: “USAIN BOLT, SECRET OF CIVILIZATION’S FASTEST” (Japan)
Director: Yoriko Koizumi
A look at the body of Usain Bolt. Bolt is the Jamaican sprinter who is widely regarded as the fastest person ever. He is the first man to hold both the 100 meters and 200 meters world records.
JunOkumaFilms.com/NHK-Special-Miracle-Body
Documentary Feature
MOMS MABLEY: I GOT SOMETHIN' TO TELL YOU (USA)
Director: Whoopi Goldberg
Comedy pioneer Moms Mabley, often referred to as “the funniest woman in the world,” comes to life again, complete with rolling laughter and measured eloquence, in Whoopi Goldberg’s directorial debut. This astute documentary feature showcases Mabley’s talent and pays homage to a woman whose relevance still resonates today. A role model for Whoopi Goldberg herself, Mabley’s legacy is defined through rich found footage and interviews with some of the world’s best comedians, including Bill Cosby, Kathy Griffin, and Eddie Murphy. They show how Mabley paved the way for female comedians and performers everywhere with her boundary-pushing stand-up routines and innate ability to transcend racism, sexism, and ageism. The documentary dives whole-heartedly into Mabley’s comedy – political and social – and is still hilarious. A passion project for Goldberg, it celebrates Mabley’s historical significance and profound influence as a performer vastly ahead of her time.
Documentary Feature
MOTOR WEST (USA)
Director: Ren Rowland
MOTOR WEST is an animated post-apocalyptic portrayal of a futuristic father taking his son on a nostalgic journey following in the paths of the early 20th century motorists who had the dream of traveling America on Route 66.
RenDrive-In.com
Texas Show
MR. BEAR (Spain)
Director: Andrés Rosende
It's Christmas again: family, presents, parties… the worst time of the year for Steve. Driving through New York City for Christmas Eve dinner, his car breaks down and he accidentally stumbles upon a crime scene. Mistaken for the notorious cleaner, Mr. Bear, Steve has to face a difficult choice: dismember and get rid of some bodies or become a corpse himself.
PromoFest.org
Narrative Short
NATAN (Ireland)
Director: Paul Duane and David Cairns
How did the man who—more than any other—paved the way for French national cinema become completely forgotten, especially so in France? Why was Bernard Natan's name erased from the history of cinema, despite the fact that he dominated the French film industry for most of the 1920s and '30s? David Cairns and Paul Duane have excavated an extraordinary tale that aims to rewrite the history of European cinema. **Warning: Viewer discretion is advised. This show contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing.
Facebook.com/NatanMovie
Documentary Feature
NINE GATES (USA)
Director: Pawel Wojtasik
Wojtasik's NINE GATES explores the possibility of transcendence through sexual passion. Exposing close-up images of all openings of the female body, Wojtasik's camera, while moving slowly, searches and probes the orifices. Deliberately interlocking anatomy and pornography, Wojtasik reflects through sensuous camera work and careful editing the question of beauty within the context of the human condition, by examining the operations of desire in the act of looking. This piece boldly addresses the nature of love and visuality by using the body as a portal, overcoming the raw reality of the visible and directing the viewer toward the implications of perception superseding actuality by entering the realm of fantasy and ultimately reinstating a universal polymorphous state of bliss.
PawelWojtasik.com/CURRENT.html
Experimental
NOT TORN (ASUNDER FROM THE VERY START) (Canada/USA)
Director: Steve Reinke
The archive is not a repository of cultural memory, but of dreams–a bank of dream material. Both memory and archive embrace death from contrary positions. The archive is a mausoleum that pretends to be a vast garden. Memory is an irradiated zoo in which the various animals are mutating extravagantly and dying slowly.
VDB.org/Titles/Not-Torn-Asunder-Very-Start
Experimental
ON THE COAST (Turkey)
Director: Merve Kayan and Zeynep Dadak
A short essay film on the ephemeral feeling of summer, observed in Erikli, a small coastal town on the Aegean Sea in Turkey. The film reflects the nature of vacation, as it is a transformed version of reality, the fantastical counterpart to winter.
Facebook.com/groups/261252417943/
Experimental
ON THE SPOT (ISRAEL)
Director: Eszter Cseke and András S. Takács
The film takes place in the West Bank. The protagonists are the Jewish settlers who live in the Palestinian area to fulfill the Biblical prophecy, to populate the land of Israel according to what borders are recorded in the Torah. The mission of the settlers is surrounded by brutal murders and military actions. The filmmakers, Eszter Cseke and András S. Takács show the settlers' movement from as close as many have never seen it–with much curiosity, honesty, and bravery.
OnTheSpot.hu
Documentary Feature
OUR NIXON (USA)
Director: Penny Lane
OUR NIXION shows the 37th president as ""just a person."" With audiotape of a casual phone conversation in the new documentary, OUR NIXON reveals a startling fact about President Nixon and his staff: that they were unfamiliar with the most popular television program in America at the time, ""All in the Family.""
OurNixon.com/
Documentary Feature
OWNERBUILT (USA)
Director: Lawrence Andrews
Hurricane Katrina destroyed Noel's home and as he rebuilds, he evokes the past, but his memories are complicated by the tragic events of Danziger Bridge.
Animation
PEARL WAS HERE (USA)
Director: Kate Marks
A little brat finds solace in a sea of stuffed animals.
Narrative Short
PETITE HISTOIRE DES PLATEAUX ABANDONNÉS (Italy)
Director: Rä di Martino
Abandoned movie sets are scattered all around the South Moroccan deserts. In this film, they are used again, but the actors are two local kids, born not far from the film studios near Ouarzazate. Together, the two kids re-enact a few lines from movies that have been shot there. This work also gives a vivid introspection of the uncontaminated landsquares of the Draa Valley and how its surrounding nature withstands the test of time.
Dugong.it
Documentary Short
PHOTOS IN THE WIND, A JOPLIN TORNADO STORY (USA)
Director: Abbey Hoekzema
A community in small town in Carthage, Missouri works to rescue, preserve and return lost photographs after the deadly May 22, 2011 EF5 tornado that struck neighboring city, Joplin.
LostPhotosTheFilm.com
Texas Show
PHYSICAL EXAMINATION (USA)
Director: Mauri Lehtonen
Homage to Owen Land. PHYSICAL EXAMINATION is a short structural film that shows viewers the elements of film stock that usually cannot be seen during movie projection, like sprocket holes and sound track area. It also shows an examination of breasts.
MauriLehtonen.com/Physical-Examination/
Experimental
A PIZZA CHEGOU (Brazil)
Director: Joe Tripician
A young Brazilian girl has been evicted from a local slum along with her entire family. She delivers pizzas by motorbike to support them. By chance, she encounters the man who evicted them, and faces a choice between forgiveness and revenge.
JoeTripician.com/Projects/146-A-Pizza-Chegou
Narrative Short
PUNK JEWS (USA)
Director: Jesse Zook Mann
Profiling Hassidic punk rockers, Yiddish street performers, African-American Jewish activists and more, PUNK JEWS explores an emerging movement of provocateurs and committed Jews who are asking, each in his or her own way, what it means to be Jewish in the 21st Century. Jewish artists, activists, and musicians from diverse backgrounds and communities are defying norms and expressing their Jewish identities in unconventional ways. In the process, they are challenging stereotypes and breaking down barriers.
PunkJews.com/
Documentary Feature
THE REALIST (USA)
Director: Scott Stark
An experimental and highly abstracted melodrama. A "doomed love story" storyboarded with flickering still photographs, stoic department store mannequins, and located in the visually heightened universe of clothing displays, fashion islands, and storefront windows.
ScottStark.com/Realist.html
Experimental
THE RIVER (USA)
Director: Sam Handel
A short comedy starring Lauren Ambrose, Jay O. Sanders, Adam Driver, Michael C. Hall, Kate Skinner, Ron McLarty, Matt Hopkins, Anthony M. Corbett, Asa Palmer, Jake Shmerechniak
Facebook.com/TheRiverShort
Narrative Short
THE ROAD LED HERE (USA)
Director: Jennifer Hardacker
THE ROAD LED HERE tells the story of a discontented voyager who finally finds a place to end her journey, but what is it about this place?
Experimental
ROBERT WILLIAMS MR BITCHIN’ (USA)
Directors: Mary C Reese and Nancye Ferguson
MR BITCHIN’ delivers insight into multiple American countercultures by following the great American artist and underground legend Robert Williams. From Hot Rods to Punk and Metal, to LSD, to the top of the art world, the influential paintings of Robert Williams defied categorization until they became their own art movement.
MrBitchin.com
Documentary Feature
ROLLING STONE: SOME GIRLS IN TEXAS '78 (USA)
Director: Lynn Lenau Calmes
The Rolling Stones 1978 tour of the USA in support of that year's “Some Girls” album is considered by fans to be one of their very best. By the time the band arrived in Texas in July, the album had hit the #1 spot on the US charts. The tour took a back-to-basics approach; with the band and their music very much at the forefront and little or no elaborate staging. Filmed at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas, on July 18th, 1978, this concert is typical of the tour, with the Rolling Stones delivering a raw, energetic performance in front of a crowd who is clearly loving the show. Originally shot on 16mm film, the footage has been carefully restored and the sound remixed and remastered by Bob Clearmountain from the original multi-track tapes. This is undeniably the Rolling Stones at the peak of their form.
Documentary Feature
RUBIES (USA)
Director: Lizette Barrera
A single mother throws a birthday party for the manipulative father of her child in order to rekindle their relationship.
Facebook.com/RubiesTheFilm
Narrative Short
SCIENCE GIRL TV SHOW (New Zealand and USA)
Director: Andrew Dean and Kaleta Doolin (Executive Producer)
At a high school in New Zealand, girls in the band Science Girl are assigned to write a song about water purity. Their quest to create the perfect song takes a twist when the school’s water turns murky, and a sleuthing adventure commences involving helicopters, laboratories, cows, and creepy janitors.
Narrative Short
SHELDON LEONARD’S WONDERFUL LIFE (USA)
Director: Allan Holzman
Hollywood producer Sheldon Leonard looks back on his legacy, creating some of the most influential sitcoms on television, with some of the biggest television stars of all time. The roster of shows Leonard produced and/or directed include “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Danny Thomas Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “I Spy,” “Gomer Pyle, USMC,” and “My Favorite Martian,” most of which still air in syndication decades after their initial run.
Documentary Feature
SHORED UP (USA)
Director: Bill Kalina
A documentary that asks tough questions about our coastal communities and our relationship to the land. What will a rising sea do to our homes, our businesses, and the survival of our communities? Can we afford to pile enough sand on our shores to keep the ocean at bay? In Long Beach Island, New Jersey, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina, surfers, politicians, scientists, and residents are racing to answer these questions. Our development of the coastlines place us in a tough predicament and it’s time to start looking for solutions.
ShoredUpMovie.com/
Documentary Feature
SIGGRAPH 2013 (USA)
Director: Faythe Levine and Sam Macon
The world's premier conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques, welcomed 22,549 artists, research scientists, gaming experts and developers, filmmakers, students, and academics from 79 countries around the globe.
Compilation of Computer Animation
THE SILLY BASTARD NEXT TO THE BED (USA)
Director: Scott Calonico
One of the most popular US Presidential phone call recordings celebrates its 50th birthday on July 25, 2013. In the phone call, recorded on July 25, 1963, President John Kennedy berates an Air Force general in the Pentagon for wasteful expenditures, using some rather salty language.
ScottCalonico.com/The-Silly-Bastard/
Documentary Short
SKINNINGROVE (USA)
Director: Michael Almereyda
A photographer shares unpublished images chronicling time spent among the "fiercely independent" residents of a remote English fishing village.
Experimental
SMALLER THAN THE SKY (UAE)
Director: Rebekah Louisa Smith
What happens when everything that you took for granted was lost in an instant? What would you do, when you can’t do anything? This film is set entirely within a crashed car and takes the audience…
TwoFour54.com/CreativeLab/en/Film/Film/Smaller-Than-The-Sky.html
Documentary Short
SOFT IN THE HEAD (USA)
Director: Nathan Silver
With nowhere to go, Natalia wanders New York City, crashes a family's holiday meal, stays at a men's shelter, and drags everyone down with her. An ode to lost souls and New York, SOFT IN THE HEAD is an intriguing narrative film.
KonecFilms.com/Soft-in-the-Head-1
Narrative Feature
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING (USA)
Director: Hal Samples
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING is a film about the the power of serving others, the risk and rewards of allowing yourself to experience relationships, redemption, our search for family, community and home and the beauty and truth that is often found in seemingly unlikely places.
SomethingFromNothingTheMovie.com/blog
Documentary Short
A SONG OF TYRANY (USA)
Director: Federico Solmi
The prelude of the trilogy, A SONG OF TYRANY, introduces the Chinese ruler/tyrant hell-bent on the invasion of America getting interviewed by American journalists.
FedericoSolmi.com/
Animation
SPRING EDDY (USA)
Director: George Anson
This offbeat comedy sprawls from murder to love as a cast of uncommon characters runs from each other, into each other, and away with each other. With Bruce Debois from Undermain Theater
SpringEddyMovie.com/
Narrative Feature
STRYNGS (USA)
Director: Derek Presley
Ambrosio the Great is near death. His beautiful puppet show is ignored by the village children and his body aches more and more each day. In his fading moments on Earth, he tries to gather enough strength to create one last show that no one will ever forget.
Facebook.com/StryngsMovie
Texas Show
SUITE ANCIENNE (USA)
Director: Roger Deutsch
SUITE ANCIENNE takes the viewers via auto, boat, and plane to an unexpected destination. World premiere with filmmaker in attendance.
Experimental
THEIR HOUSES (USA)
Director: Cam Archer
Filmmaker Cam Archer examines and explores his ordinary, suburban neighborhood in search of hidden truths, new narratives and a better understanding of his fading, creative self. Combing heavily degraded video with personal photographs and real life neighbors, Archer re-imagines the concept of 'home video'. In an attempt to distance himself from his subjects, actress Jena Malone narrates the piece as Archer in the first person.
VDB.org/Titles/Their-Houses
Experimental
THIS AIN'T NO MOUSE MUSIC! (USA)
Directors: Chris Simon and Maureen Gosling
Roots music icon Chris Strachwitz is a detective of deep American music—music that’s the antithesis of the corporate “mouse music” dominating pop culture. Born a German count, Strachwitz is the legendary founder of Arhoolie Records. His life has been a relentless quest to track down and record the best of American roots music—New Orleans jazz, down home blues, Cajun, Zydeco, and Norteño. Directors in attendence.
NoMouseMusic.com
Documentary Feature
THIMBLERIG (USA)
Director: Jesse Malmed
Body swaps, time manifest and made literal, multiverse tears, two minds to a body, dream babies, singtalk, represented realities.
JesseMalmed.net
Experimental
TIME PRESENT (USA)
Director: Alfred Guzzetti
A wordless meditation on the present moment by a composer and a filmmaker.
AlfredGuzzetti.com
Experimental
TRUE TALES (USA)—World premiere with filmmaker and Tammi True in attendance
Director: Katie Dunn
Just two days after Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a little-known Dallas strip club operator named Jack Ruby murders Oswald on live television. Why did he do it? Despite decades of theories and speculation, the question has never been satisfactorily answered. Until now. Shunning the press for nearly 50 years, Tammi True—a top-billed stripper in Jack Ruby's Carousel Club—is finally ready to reveal the answers. AMS Pictures presents TRUE TALES, an original docudrama exploring the bizarre world of 1960s Dallas burlesque through the eyes of its preeminent entertainer. Featuring dramatic re-creations shot on actual locations, TRUE TALES immerses you into the events that led to one of the most infamous crimes of the 20th Century. Evening will be celebrated with a performance by Ruby Revue, the Dallas Burlesque Show.
Documentary Feature – Opening Night Film
TURNING A CORNER (USA)
Director: David B. Levy
A chance encounter leads a poor kid from Brooklyn with college dreams to fight the fates for a chance to change his life.
Facebook.com/pages/Turning-a-Corner/108095182653474
Animation
UNITED IN ANGER: A HISTORY OF ACT UP (USA)
Director: Jim Hubbard
The film explores how the diverse members of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) came together to save their own lives and to change the world.
UnitedInAnger.com
Documentary Feature
AN UNREAL DREAM: THE MICHAEL MORTON STORY (USA)
Director: Al Reinert
In 1986, Michael Morton's wife, Christine, is brutally murdered in front of their only child, and Michael is convicted of the crime. Locked away in Texas prisons for a quarter century, he is forgotten by all but his parents and a small team of dedicated attorneys. In this “unreal dream,” the price of a wrongful conviction goes well beyond one man's loss of freedom. Screened in partnership with Make Art with Purpose for MAP 2013.
AnUnrealDream.com
Documentary Feature
UNSPOKEN SPEECH (USA)
Creative Directors: Peter Wood and Cliff Simms
A preview of a series of short films showcasing the speech JFK was schedule to give at the Trade Mart in downtown Dallas 30 minutes after the time of his assassination. Fifty years after his assassination and as a tribute to JFK, the Citizens of Dallas deliver the essence of his Unspoken Speech.
The Shorts:
· BOTH TEXAS AND TEXANS: Julie Curtis, of local Dallas alt rock band, The Bright, set part of JFK's speech to music.
· DISSIDENT VOICES: 50 patrons from a local Dallas coffee shop looking through an art book created from the speech edited together to make a stop-motion animated film.
· ONLY AN AMERICAN: 1960s Dallas based civil rights activist, Clarence Broadnax, articulates Kennedy’s thoughts.
· OUR ADVERSARIES: Filmed inside Lee Harvey Oswald’s holding cell in the Dallas Municipal Building. Features DFW high school students speaking Kennedy’s words about worldwide terror and threats to our freedom.
· WORDS ALONE (USA)
81 Dallas citizens hold signs with words from JFK's Unspoken Speech photographed around Dallas. Music composed by Matthew Slater featuring world-renowned cellist Caroline Dale.
UnspokenSpeech.org
Documentary Shorts
VENICE: UNDER WATER (USA – WORLD PREMIERE)
Director: Chip Lord
VENICE: UNDER WATER is a meditation on the water level rising in Venice and how it is being over-flooded with tourists. Directed by Chip Lord, an original member of Ant Farm.
Experimental
VESSEL (USA – Preview Screening)
Director: Diana Whitten
Captain Rebecca Gomperts and her organization, Women on Waves, work with a global network of locally based organizations to transport women 12 miles offshore, just outside of domestic jurisdiction, where doctors provide safe, legal, medical abortions at sea. Their actions shock the church, infuriate the government, exhilarate the media, and provoke mass debate among the voting population, but break no laws. They hope, instead, to save lives.
VesselTheFilm.wordpress.com/Tag/Diana-Whitten/
Documentary Feature
VINCENT VALDEZ: EXCERPT FOR JOHN (USA)
Director: Mark Walley and Angela Walley
Filmmakers Mark and Angela Walley follow artist Vincent Valdez as he paints a powerful portrait of a friend and soldier lost in the fog of war.
WalleyFilms.com/Vincent-Valdez-Excerpts-for-John
Texas Show
WE REAL COOL (USA)
Director: Alex Ruiqing Ma
A newly adopted teenage girl of minority ethnicity hangs out late at night with her old friends on her birthday, only to find her Caucasian guardian waiting for her worriedly when she tries to sneak back home. She then realizes what home really means to her.
Narrative Short
WE REGRET TO INFORM YOU (USA)
Director: Wago Kreider
The Church of Contemporary Art provides secular fellowship to cultural workers throughout the world, and offers a creative response to the excesses of the art market and dwindling arts funding. Addressing the inequities that today's artists face, CoCA creates and supports collaborative projects which provide synergistic alternatives to the current model of the individual, branded artist.
TheCoCA.org/
Experimental
WHAT ONCE WAS (Argentina)
Director: Julieta Averbuj
What once lay behind the images.
Experimental
WHEN I WALK (USA)
Director: Jason DaSilva
WHEN I WALK chronicles one man’s inspiring journey following his multiple sclerosis diagnosis. For Jason DaSilva, life’s most challenging and joyous moments are yet to come.
WhenIWalk.com
Documentary Feature
WHERE WE STARTED (USA)
Director: Chris Hanson
When there's a line you know you shouldn't cross…what makes you cross it anyway? Two married strangers who have reached the age where life's disappointments begin to add up consider other options when a chance meeting leads to a possible romance in this drama.
Narrative Feature
WHITE ASH (USA)
Director: Leighton Pierce
WHITE ASH is an inexorable dive into edges of consciousness. While grounded in recognizable images and sounds captured from reality, WHITE ASH is designed to scrape through the patina of normal perception, leading to an embodied associational state—something “to the side” of narratives and perceptions.
LeightonPierce.com
Experimental
WHITE COAT PHENOMENON (USA)
Director: Kristin Reeves
Finding sex in an unexpected location requires some examination.
Experimental
WILT CHAMBERLAIN: BORSCHT BELT BELLHOP (USA)
Directors: Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg
In 1954, before his senior year of high school, Wilt Chamberlain took a summer job. He worked as a bellhop at Kutsher’s Country Club, a Jewish resort in the Catskill Mountains. By day, he was getting great tips from the awestruck guests as he lifted their luggage through a second floor window while standing outside on the ground. At night, he played on the Kutsher’s basketball team. Mixing rarely-seen archival video and interviews with people who lived and worked with Wilt during that magical summer, this documentary short reveals an unexplored and pivotal chapter in the life of one of basketball’s greatest players.
KutshersDoc.JimDo.com
Documentary Short
XXX (USA)
Director: Julie Orser
XXX appropriates porno magazines in an animated video to take an abstract and satirical look at the porn industry of the late 1970s and early 1980s when the use of videotape gained popularity.
JulieOrser.com/New/XXX.html
Experimental
YAMASUKI YAMAZAKI (Japan)
Director: Shishi Yamazaki
When you're insanely happy, you're so happy to be happy that you forget what made you happy in the first place.
ShishiYamazaki.com
Animation
YA-NE-SEN A GO GO (Japan)
Director: Shishi Yamazaki
Shishi Yamazaki dancing through Yanaka, Nezu, and Sendagi area in Taito-Ku, Tokyo.
ShishiYamazaki.com
Animation
YOU DON’T NEED FEET TO DANCE (USA)
Director: Alan Govenar
An intimate documentary about a man who overcomes his disability one day at a time. Alan Govenar's new film reveals the extraordinary life of African immigrant Sidiki Conde, who balances his career as a performing artist with the almost insurmountable obstacles of life in New York City.
YouDontNeedFeetToDance.com
Documentary Feature
YOUR MOVE (USA)
Director: Nick Gibbons
The story of two men enjoying a simple game of chess that quickly spirals down a dark Hitchcockian well of intrigue.
Narrative Short
Dallas VideoFest 26: Full Film List
