Film Categories: Race + Ethnicity

  • Howard

    “Howard” is a documentary about the filmmaker’s estranged Uncle Howard who was murdered in Yonkers in 1995. The film uncovers his complex and conflicted life as a gay man troubled with piety and self worth, which drove him to success, yet, ultimately led to self-destructive behavior and death. The story is intertwined with the filmmaker’s musings about the life/death of the Uncle she did not know in an attempt to comprehend what it means to have an estranged relative murdered.

  • Cuki Colorinchi Evolution

    A masked crochetist shows us his sudden immersion into crochet art. Spanish with English subtitles

  • Hoshi Neko (Little Star)

    This 16mm B&W cut-out animation borrows narrative tropes from early Atari video games, silent films, and anime cartoons, offering a weird story and hybrid aesthetic. The narrative is based on the imagined adventures of the singer’s lost cat, Hoshi. Hoshi eats a koi fish, who emerges angry from his digestive system. The koi enlists the help of a pug to exact revenge, and the three characters embark on an epic chase through the cosmos. Their journey brings them through wormholes and across poisonous planets where their skin is melted off by acid rain.

  • Fati et Aissatta (Fati and Aissatta)

    Fati, 23, and Aissatta, 16, live in the banlieue north of Paris, in a cité called “La Rose des Vents.” Their father emigrated from Mauritania to France 40 years ago to work on the assembly line at Citroën. Shot over a period of three years, the film follows the stories of the two sisters, their refusal of traditional ideas of French identity and their search for independence within a community where secularization, radicalization and patriarchal rule are continually in confrontation. Fati, 23 ans, et Aissatta, 16 ans, vivent dans la cité de La Rose des Vents, dans la banlieue nord…

  • Elegy

    Amidst the ghosts of his cultural roots, Popovich creates a lyrical and loving light monument dealing with separation, change and death. “Part diary, part travelogue, part memorium for a friend’s death, ‘Elegy’ deftly and poetically blends the private concerns of the filmmaker, a discovery of roots in his native Yugoslavia, and the insubstantiality of remembered moments.” – Kass Banning, Now Magazine Screenings: Toronto Festival of Festivals; Krakow Film Festival, Poland; International Documentary Film Festival of Nyon, Switzerland; Ann Arbor Film Festival, Michigan; 5 Jours du Cinéma Indépendent Canadien, Montreal; CBC-TV

  • Joaquin La Habana – LebenZwischenWelten (Joaquin La Habana – Living Between Worlds)

    Joaquín La Habana – Lebenzwischenwelten is a documentary portrait of the transformation artist Joaquín La Habana, an androgynous Cuban-born singer, dancer and entertainer, who currently resides in Berlin, Germany. As he plays effortlessly with changing gender and culture, his opera-trained voice switches easily from the baritone of a rebel to the soprano of a seductress. Now in his sixties, Joaquín La Habana reflects on his life and career during the ’70s and ’80s as part of New York City’s provocative underground scene. The film contains impressive archival material, including Joaquín La Habana’s performance at the famous nightclub, Studio 54.

  • INTER-MEZZO

    INTER-MEZZO is a documentary of performance as well as a performance of documentary. Through a triptych, which treats the voice as a metaphor for political voice, Stephen Chen traces his journey as a male mezzo, faced with prejudice and marginalization back in Singapore, and later in North America. The schooling and suppression of his voice becomes interwoven with his experiences of colonialism and exile. DOH! OH DEAR, A FEMALE TEAR! plays with the biography documentary form, dealing with issues of voice / gender / representation as Stephen traces his westernization, the discovery and silencing of his voice, and people’s reactions…

  • Arrhythmia

    Footage from a cardiac catheterization, intertwined with a recording of a telephone conversation and old 8mm home films, tell the story of a mother’s conflicting desire to escape a poor marriage by returning to her homeland, despite the possibility of being victimized at the hands of the government upon her return due to a past incident. “Arrhythmia” is an intimate piece about family, distance and identity.

  • Film Concerto in Hanging Major

    As the heartbroken Papageno from The Magic Flute is on the brink of ending his life, we pause to examine his options. “Film Concerto in Hanging Major” is a highly informative, yet darkly humorous, guide into the most effective ways of committing suicide.

  • Submerged Queer Spaces

    Submerged Queer Spaces is a documentary feature that examines queer history through an approach of urban archeology. Our cameras look at surviving architectural details of old haunts as if unearthing ancient monuments. As San Francisco grew and gentrified, communities changed, shifted, and were displaced. Bars, restaurants, parks, alleys, bathhouses, and other gathering spots of the queer community were remodeled, repurposed, rebuilt, or destroyed. Submerged Queer Spaces looks at the architectural remains of historic sites and buildings in San Francisco. Eight interview subjects recount firsthand experiences in these lost environs. Gerald Fabien experienced gay San Francisco before WWII, and tells tales…