From turtles to perverts, Brooklyn to Brazil, RadioLab to SixBillion, the Documentary Bodega Series archives…
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The Chances of the World Changing Directed by Eric Metzgar May 6 | 7 pm An artist abandons his life’s work to build an ark filled with hundreds of endangered animals. A marathon story creates a new breed of dramatic nature film: about time, death, art, love…and turtles. Post-screening discussion with Brooklyn-based director, Eric Metzgar.Trailer + More |
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The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema Directed by Sophie Fiennes May 13 | 7 pmAn exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made… Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst. With his engaging and passionate approach to thinking, Zizek delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves. Post-screening video interview with director Sophie Fiennes.Trailer + More |
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Charged in the name of terror… May 20 | 7 pm Artist Paul Chan has been connecting contemporary artists with political activists who have been sentenced to jail, including Lynne Stewart, Steve Kurtz, Mohammed Yousry, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Kathy Kelly, and Frida Berrigan, the first activist to protest against Guantanamo at Guantanamo. These portraits—-casual, intimate, non-didactic—-are incredibly important signs of our times. Post-screening discussion with artists.Trailer + More |
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AUDIO SERIES Music & Documentary with Jad Abumrad May 27 | 7 pm Jad Abumrad, host of WNYC’s Radio Lab, curates an evening of audio to explore the brilliant but murky intersection of music, sound and storytelling. Jad will offer his perspective, and play pieces, investigating the ways marrying music and words can enhance or manipulate a story.Trailer + More |
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Brooklyn Matters Directed by Isabel Hill June 3 | 7 pm For this screening, there is no admission. Donations accepted.No single event will have a more drastic and long-lasting impact on Brooklyn than the proposed Atlantic Yards development. This uncommon proposal, however, is mostly misunderstood. Brooklyn Matters is an insightful documentary that reveals the fuller truth about the Atlantic Yards proposal and highlights how a few powerful men are circumventing community participation and planning principles to try to push their own interests forward. Post-screening discussion with Brooklyn-based director Isabel Hill.Trailer + More |
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State of Fear Directed by Pamela Yates June 10 | 7 pm State of Fear takes place in Peru, yet serves as a cautionary tale for a world engaged in a “global war on terror”. It dramatizes the human and societal costs a democracy faces when it embarks on a “war” against terror, a “war” potentially without end, all too easily exploited by unscrupulous leaders seeking personal political gain.An unforgettable array of characters takes us down a troubling road peopled by perpetrators and victims, and bystanders who only watched as the horror unfolded. But it is also the story of courageous Peruvians who fought to maintain their democracy and defend human rights, and persevered in their quest for truth and justice. Post-screening discussion with director Pamela Yates and Producer Paco de Onis.Trailer + Reviews |
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The Fighting Cholitas & Daritidzé, Trainee Healer June 17 | 7 pm THE FIGHTING CHOLITAS is a documentary short about a group of bold and fierce female Bolivian wrestlers. These indigenous, Indian women jump into the rign every Sunday in their traditional, vibrant multilayered skirts and perform the acrobatic maneuvers of Lucha Libre.In 1987, in the city of São Paulo, the Project Video in the Villages was born as a branch of the activities of the Centro de Trabalho Indigenista (Centre for Indigenous Advocacy). The project’s aim was to encourage Indians to make and observe their own image.Post-screening iChat discussion with director of The Fighting Cholitas Mariam Jobrani. Trailer + Reviews |
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AUDIO SERIES Documenting the Foreign An evening with Kelly McEvers June 24 | 7 pm Kelly McEvers is a foreign correspondent who works for radio, online media, and print. For June’s listening room, Kelly will play, show, and read stories she has reported in the Islamic world — including work from Southeast Asia, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. For more info on Kelly and links to her stories visit www.audiojournal.com and www.sixbillion.org |
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Magic Lantern Cinema Presents “The Crowd Show” Discussion with Curator Paige Sarlin & Filmmaker Ken Jacobs July 1 | 7 pm This night’s films focus on the crowd as a figure and force of modernity, featuring protests and parades, funerals and football. These films chart a progression from 1893 to 2006 and trace how the look, purpose and direction of media have changed along with the crowd. Meditating on the movement of history, this show considers what it means for large groups of people to come together in front of a camera and how images of crowds work to represent the emotional and political power of both human cooperation and antagonism. So come down and join the crowd, the audience, that is, and you can experience the sights and sounds of people (and some sheep). Trailer + Reviews |
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Videos by Jacqueline Goss July 8 | 7 pm I like stories about people who set out to objectively measure or chart something and then fail in interesting ways when they get tangled up in the natural color and noise of the world. Jacqueline Goss makes videos and web-based works exploring the rules, histories, and tools of language and mapmaking systems. Her projects take as their source specific acts of writing and cartography that bring about cultural change, technological innovation, or create social narrative ruptures. For the last few years she has used 2D digital animation techniques to work within the genre of the animated documentary. |
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Crossing Arizona Directed by Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo July 15 | 7 pm As up-to-date as the nightly news, but far more in-depth, “Crossing Arizona” reveals the surprising political stances people take when immigration and border policy fails everyone. The film examines the crisis through the eyes of those directly affected by it. Trailer + ReviewsPost-screening discussion with filmmakers Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo. |
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Los Sures Directed by Diego Echeverria July 22 | 7 pm This documentary looks at South Williamsburg (which happens to be UnionDocs’s neighborhood) 25 years ago. The film explores the area, known then as Los Sures, where more than 20,000 Latinos, mostly Puerto Rican, lived in some of the worst poverty in New York City. In Los Sures, painted sidewalk memorials attest to gang violence, but hopes and dreams persist. Through the stories of five residents, filmmaker Echeverria offers a cross-section of this beleaguered community and provides a history of which many of the current residents may be unaware. Trailer + ReviewsPost-screening video conference with Diego Echeverria. |
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AUDIO SERIES Truth Beyond Facts An evening with Pejk Malinovski & Benjamen Walker July 29 | 7 pm How do you make a documentary about characters or places that don’t exist in the ‘actual world’. Benjamen Walker and Pejk Malinovski present an evening on the ‘mockumentary.’ Works from Gregory Whitehead, Alice Furlaud, Werner Herzog, and Walker and Malinovski themselves. Trailer + Reviews |
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Black Gold Directed by Nick and Marc Francis August 5 | 7 pm Multinational coffee companies now rule our shopping malls and supermarkets and dominate the industry worth over $80 billion, making coffee the most valuable trading commodity in the world after oil.But while we continue to pay for our lattes and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains so low that many have been forced to abandon their coffee fields. Trailer + ReviewsPost-screening discussion with Nick and Marc Francis. |
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Fish Kill Flea Produced, Shot & Directed by Brian Cassidy, Aaron Hillis & Jennifer Loeber August 12 | 7 pm Once thriving, a dead mall in upstate New York is now home to a ragtag flea market, living proof that the American Dream is in perpetual decay. Blending verite with a stylized wit, this heartbreaking portrait raises questions about our disposable culture through the unfiltered lives of its eccentric community. Trailer + ReviewsPost-screening discussion with Brian Cassidy, Aaron Hills & Jennifer Loeber. |
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A Grin Without A Cat By Chris Marker August 19 | 7 pm A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is Chris Marker’s epic film-essay on the worldwide political wars of the 60’s and 70’s: Vietnam, Bolivia, May ‘68, Prague, Chile, and the fate of the New Left. From 1967 (the year Marker argues was the real turning point) on, A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT is a sweeping, global contemplation of a defining ten years’ political history. Trailer + Reviews |
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AUDIO SERIES Documentary = Music An evening with Jonathan Mitchell August 26 | 7 pm Producer and composer Jonathan Mitchell presents an exploration of documentary as a musical artform. Jonathan Mitchell has produced over 200 features for public radio, around 90 have been heard on PRI’s Studio 360.Trailer + Reviews |
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Los Angeles Plays Itself Research/Text/Production by Thom Andersen October 7 | 7 pm Pre-screening UnionDocs recorded interview with Thom Andersen“In this documentary, Thom Andersen examines in detail the ways Los Angeles has been depicted, both when it is meant to be anonymous and when itself is the focus.”Andersen’s idiosyncratic, three-hour masterpiece is both a dazzling work of film criticism and a fascinating piece of urban anthropology centered on the one city on earth where one could be mistaken for the other.” Ken Fox, TV Guide’s Movie GuideTrailer + Reviews |
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Flying Confessions of a Free Woman By Jennifer Fox October 14 | 7 pm Post-screening discussion with Jennifer Fox “What does the modern woman want? Where does she fit in today’s world?”Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such autonomy to construct a life of their own creation. Yet, the terrain is still rocky and ‘choice’ does not necessarily bring happiness, let alone freedom. Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women everywhere.Trailer + Reviews |
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The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair Co-Directed and Co-Produced by Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein October 21 | 7 pm Post-screening discussion with Michael TuckerA freedom-loving Iraqi journalist is mistaken as Tony Blair’s would-be assassin and sent to Abu Ghraib.“You can get a fine, nuanced and ultimately very disturbing sense of the durable and deeply ingrained anger among the Iraqis from an extraordinary documentary film by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein” Christopher Dickey, NewsweekTrailer + Reviews |
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AUDIO SERIES Teens with Mics: Radio Rookies October 28 | 7 pm Radio Rookies collaborates with youth to produce documentaries that take listeners deep inside the lives of the NYC teens. Since 1999, Radio Rookies has been conducting workshops across New York, in predominantly under-resourced neighborhoods, training young people to use words and sounds to tell true stories. Upon completion, the Rookies’ documentaries air on WNYC - usually during Morning Edition (5am to 9am weekdays on WNYC 93.9 FM, 6am to 10am on WNYC AM 820 and online at wnyc.org) |
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The Colour of Olives A story of everyday life in Palestine November 4 | 7 pm Fifteen miles from Tel Aviv, the Amer family lives surrounded by the wall Israel is building on the West Bank. This beautiful and haunting film observes the private world of all eight members of the family. |
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Damed If You Don’t Post-screening discussion with Director Su Friedrich November 11 | 7 pm This experimental film is Friedrich’s subversive and ecstatic response to her Catholic upbringing. Blending conventional narrative techniques with impressionistic camerawork, symbols and voice-overs, the film creates an intimate study of sexual expression and repression. “Passionate and genuinely innovative… a lyrical evocation of the mystery of memory and the develoment of sexual identity.” Amy Taubin, The Village Voice |
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Flying Confessions of a Free Woman By Jennifer Fox November 18 - By audience request, UnionDocs will screen all 6 parts! 2:30pm | Parts I and II 5:00pm | Parts III & IV 7:00pm | Parts V & VI Post-screening discussion with Jennifer Fox “What does the modern woman want? Where does she fit in today’s world?” Never before in our collective human history have so many women had such autonomy to construct a life of their own creation. Yet, the terrain is still rocky and ‘choice’ does not necessarily bring happiness, let alone freedom. Meanwhile, old models of femaleness still haunt women everywhere. Trailer + Reviews |
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Postcards From Tora Bora by Kelly Dolak & Wazhmah Osman December 2 - 7:00pm Post-screening discussion with directors. At the height of the Cold War, the Osman family frantically escapes from Afghanistan while leaving almost everything behind. Now after two decades of living in America, Wazhmah Osman, a young Afghan-American woman returns to her childhood home. On an alternately sad and humorous quest, she encounters confused cabbies, the enthusiastic former minister of the tourism bureau, a museum director that archives land mines, and a group of angry street vendors. Amidst the rubble and destruction, she finds her estranged father who in the aftermath of war choose his country over his family. Trailer + Reviews |
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Young, Jewish and Left by Irit Reinheimer & Konnie Chameides December 9 - 7:00pm Post-screening discussion with Konnie Chameides. A celebration of diversity, Young Jewish and Left weaves queer culture, Jewish Arab history, secular Yiddishkeit, anti-racist analysis, and religious/spiritual traditions into a multi-layered tapestry of Leftist politics. Personal experiences from many of today’s leading Jewish activists reframe the possibilities of Jewish identity. It presents a fresh and constructive take on race, spirituality, Zionism, queerness, resistance, justice, and liberation. Trailer + Reviews |
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Thing With No Name (work in progress) by Sarah Friedland December 16 - 7:00pm Post-screening discussion with director. Thing With No Name, a feature-length documentary, provides an unprecedented, intimate glimpse into the traditional life of a rapidly changing culture. Set in Okhahlamba, South Africa, a stunning, mountainous Zulu area and UNESCO World Heritage Site, the story follows Danisile and Ntombeleni, two women with full-blown AIDS as they attempt to access recently introduced antiretroviral (ARV) treatment through the public sector. Trailer + Reviews |
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Aspen: the Multimedia Magazine in a Box A tour by Kenneth Goldsmith January 27 - 7:00pm Published 10 times between 1965 and 1971, Aspen billed itself as the first three-dimensional magazine. Most issues arrived in a notebook-size box stuffed with articles that had been printed individually rather than stapled together. But it was the nature of its contents that made Aspen magazine stand out like a ski lift in a cornfield. Each issue was as likely to hold postcards, posters and phonograph records as essays. And among the magazine’s 235 contributors were many prominent figures on the 60’s cultural landscape, including Roland Barthes, John Lennon, Marshall McLuhan, Lou Reed and Andy Warhol. Kenneth Goldsmith, founding editor of UbuWeb, will give a guided tour of Aspen Magazine, now housed permanently on UbuWeb. The talk will include an in-depth look at the films, recording, sculptures, writings and images that this remarkable publication produced. Audio + Reviews |
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Who Is Bozo Texino? Directed by Bill Daniel February 10 - 7:00pm Daniel’s gritty black and white film uncovers a secret society and it’s underground universe of hobo and railworker graffiti, and includes interviews with legendary boxcar artists, Coaltrain, Herby, Colossus of Roads, and The Rambler. Shooting over a 16-year period, Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition that has gone mostly unnoticed for a century. Trailer + Reviews |
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Plato’s Retreat A Documentary Symposium February 17- 7:00pm In honor of the greatest thinkers and the wildest orgies, UnionDocs invites all you lovers out there to join in a night full of films, audio, music and presentations about this mysterious thing called love. Bring yourself, bring your lover(s), and bring your appetite. If the special hot cocoa and other delectable aphrodisiacs don’t satiate your hunger, the show sure will. Trailer |
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Letters from the Other Side Directed by Heather Courtney February 25- 8:00pm Letters from the Other Side interweaves video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border by the film’s director with the personal stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico, giving voice to four amazing women who feel the effects of failed immigration and trade policies on a daily basis. Focusing on a side of the immigration story rarely told by the media or touched upon in our national debate, Letters offers a fresh perspective, painting a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics, communities dying at the hands of globalization, and governments incapable or unwilling to do anything about it. Trailer + Reviews |
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Crossing the BLVD Produced by Judith Sloan March 2 - 7:00pm Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America, a multimedia project created by Judith Sloan and visual artist Warren Lehrer, shares the stories, sounds, and images that reveal the human toll of a post-cold war and 9/11 world, and forms a portrait of an ever-shifting America. Sloan shares excerpts culled from over two dozen audio compositions and radio documentaries that blur the boundaries between music and speech, journalism and expressionism, tradition and the avant-garde. Trailer + Reviews |
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Sleepwalking through the Mekong featured band Dengue Fever March 3- 8:00pm Sleepwalking Through the Mekong follows Los Angeles based band Dengue Fever on their recent journey to Cambodia to perform 60s and 70s Cambodian rock n’ roll in the country where it was created and very nearly destroyed. More than a rockumentary, the film serves up a portrait of modern Cambodia as the band tours through Phnom Penh and beyond, crossing a great cultural chasm with the same spirit of Cambodia’s original rock pioneers. Trailer + Reviews |
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My Country, My Country Directed by Laura Poitras March 16 - 7:00pm Director/cinematographer Laura Poitras creates an intimate portrait of Iraqis living under U.S. occupation. Her Oscar-nominated film My Country, My Country follows Dr. Riyadh, a physician and critic of the U.S. occupation who nonetheless supports democracy in Iraq and runs as a candidate in the tumultuous 2005 elections. Dramatically interwoven into the personal journey of Dr. Riyadh is the landscape of the US military occupation, with Australian private security contractors, American journalists and the UN officials who orchestrate the elections. Trailer + Reviews |
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A Night of Films Directed by Elisabeth Subrin March 23- 7:00pm Elisabeth Subrin’s films and videos examine the intersections of history and subjectivity within female biography. The Fancy (2000), is Subrin’s foray into “experimental biography,” lifts the veil of mystery around the life and suicide of photographer Francesca Woodman and her disturbing artistic legacy. Also screening are Shulie and Subrin’s new work, Sweet Ruin Trailer + Reviews |
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Will the Real NPR Please Stand Up? April 14- 8:00pm Meet the new NPR on the block: Neighborhood Public Radio. An artist run radio project now broadcasting live from a former shoe storefront at The Whitney Biennial, NPR provides an alternative media platform to community artists and musicians, activists, and local residents. By opening up the channels of communication through both internet streams and a micro-powered signal, Neighborhood Public Radio creates a kind of open radiophonic space: one free of FCC rules and regulations, corporate underwriters, and, well, any editorial involvement whatsoever. The motto for NPR is: “If it’s in the neighborhood and it makes noise .. we hope to put it on the air.” |
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Happy Monday and Light Spill April 20- 7:00pm On April 20th, UnionDocs presents an exciting installation of experimental film works by artists, Andrew Filippone, Luis Recoder and Sandra Gibson. Moving far beyond conventional documentary form and presentation, both Happy Monday and Light Spill use traditional materials of cinema – film and light source – to explore space, light, and time. Pictures + Description |
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Spring Fever Symposium April 27- 7:00pm Ahhhhhhh, Spring time - a time for sprouting, budding, chirping, hopping, birthing, drinking, frolicking, skipping, romping, and general happy-to-know-you interactions. UnionDocs is calling all you Springers to express yourself through your art in our show-and-tell style event. Whether you are a filmmaker, photographer, painter, dancer, singer, actor, bird watcher, puppeteer, tai chi master, or idiot savant UnionDocs wants to give you a moment in the sunlight to express yourself. here. |
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Begging Naked May 4 - 7:00pm “Begging Naked” began in 1996, when director Karen Gehres began to video tape the stories of a teen runaway and prostitute named Elise. When Elise decided to go back into stripping at age 30, the story went on an unpredictable course. Over the next 7 years, Mayor Guiliani wiped out the sex businesses on 42nd Street leaving Elise unemployed. Elise began to spiral mentally out of control , stopped paying rent and was eventually evicted. She now lives in Central Park. All of these events have been documented in “Begging Naked”. The events in Elise’s life have dictated the 9 years of production. Trailer + Reviews |
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Photography and Video by Sam Falls May 4 - 7:00pm In a departure from traditional studio portraiture, photographer Sam Falls uses expansive natural settings as the backdrops for carefully constructed portraits. The large color photographs in many of his series depict eerie scenes in which the viewer feels an unavoidable tension between the stillness of the landscape and the urgency of the protagonist. Falls’s large color photographs depict an instant within a longer video piece–or vice versa–the video footage documents the process of taking a still photograph. The installation requires the viewer to literally stand between the static and the dynamic images, and in doing so, it urges the viewer to question notions of time and space in relation to photo-documentation. Pictures and Description |
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Free Translators Tour Monday May 19th 7:00pm In a world that invents and facilitates endless methods and technologies for successful communication, The Free Translators Tour happily construe known grammars and vocabularies in favor of the barely heard and the incomprehensible with the purpose of uniting the political and poetic in language. Culling from a multitude of conflated narratives, The Free Translators present a program of video screenings deliberately complicating the textual content of our everyday lives and dedicated to the idea that multiple translations continually unhinge single meanings. More info |
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Vernon Avenue and Untitled (Hilliard Homes) Sunday June 1st 7:00pm Urban geography and fantastic narratives converge in Vernon Avenue and Untitled (Hilliard Homes), two installations by emerging filmmakers Steffani Jemison, Amiel Melnick, and Andreas Warisz. Featuring a rare performance by R&B sensation SideTrack and other special musical guests. Through a series of documentary and improvised encounters featuring our friends and neighbors, Vernon Avenue turns the vernacular and everyday into the monumental and mysterious, and considers what is at stake in real and fantastic cinematic images of urban living. Along the way: riddles and jokes, allegory, back-story, promises, puppies, boredom. More info |
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Freeheld Sunday June 8th 7:00pm Detective Lieutenant Laurel Hester spent 25 years investigating tough cases in Ocean County, New Jersey, protecting the rights of victims and putting her life on the line. She had no reason to expect that after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, her final battle for justice would be for the woman she loved. The documentary film Freeheld chronicles Laurel’s struggle to transfer her earned pension to her domestic partner, Stacie Andree. Academy Award winner (Best Documentary Short Subject) and winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Freeheld has screened in 45 film festivals in 26 states and 7 countries, garnering eleven additional film awards Trailer + Reviews |
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AUDIO SERIES Radio Diaries Sunday June 15th 7:00pm The award winning Radio Diaries empowers people to “become reporters of their own lives”–then airs their stories on National Public Radio. Finding voices that often go unheard- teenagers, prisoners, AIDS patients- Radio Diaries trains people to share their stories by keeping audio journals, interviewing the people close to them and recording their daily life. The moving, evocative and honest audio portraits that result from this kind of direct documentation create an immediate sense of intimacy with the listener. Listening to an audio diary is a personal experience, it draws us into the lives of others and leaves us with stories we will not soon forget. More info |
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Prison House of Technology Saturday June 28th 8:00pm Technology is frequently thought of as the handmaiden of progress. However, the influence of technology in our everyday lives has become so commonplace, so normal, that many aren’t even aware of it, or of the possible dangers of technological media intruding into and taking over our everyday lives. Whether chained to technology, or freed by technology, the videos and films in this program reflect our immersion in the technological world. Some question development; some reveal confusion; some poeticize technological media; others reflect pre-technological myths, but all in some way or other, disclose the experience of living inside the prison house that technology has become. More info |
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King Corn Sunday June 29th 7:00pm In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm. Trailer + Reviews |
