Scripted Short (Horror)
Editor
Director: Jake Myers
A musician stuck in a monotonous office job decides to try the free kombucha that keeps his coworkers cheerful and productive. But the drink comes with a host of unsettling side effects, bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase “consumed by your work.”
*Short film was picked up and developed into a feature. Currently in post-production for release in 2025.
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Ky Dickens
Women have been shut out of the financial world, making it almost impossible to get their ideas and inventions funded. SHOW HER THE MONEY pulls back the curtain on the extreme underfunding of women in the Venture Capital world, with less than 2% of venture capital going to women. It features women entrepreneurs who bootstrap their companies into success stories, and the fierce and financially savvy women who fund them.
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Kristy Guevara-Flanagan
An eye-opening investigation into the making of Hollywood "sex" scenes, shedding light on the real-life experiences behind classic scenes of cinema and tracing the legacy of exploitation of women in the entertainment industry.
Scripted Feature (Comedy)
Director / Writer / Editor: Liz Kaar
A friendsgiving goes awry when the relatives show up uninvited… What do you give up and gain for family?
“Given the yearly barrage of media that seems to greet every American holiday, there are relatively few movies that give Thanksgiving its due. At long last, Turkey Day celebrants will get their fill with this feature comedy debut from director, Liz Kaar. The story follows a young couple, Rita and Marty (Mary Jesse Price and Billie Bullock), as they ready their apartment for an epic Friendsgiving gathering. Or rather we watch Marty painstakingly prepare for the big meal, while Rita guilt trips about not going to her family’s for the holiday. As it happens, her family shows up at her doorstep unannounced, throwing all of her and Marty’s big party plans into disarray. Things go further awry when a surprise blizzard forces everyone to hunker down in their small apartment for the night. While the concept is pure farce, at its heart The Turkey is a loving portrait of the evolving dynamics between friends and family. Relationships are put to the test; some emerge stronger than ever, others disintegrate beyond repair. Kaar’s script keeps the laughs and the horrors coming as resentments rise and inhibitions fall away. The wacky fun of the premise and the frenetic energy of the camerawork are anchored by terrific performances from the cast who ground their characters with real emotional heft. This feature is a must watch for anyone who loves their comedy with a generous helping of cringe and a healthy pour of tenderness.”
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Margaret Byrne
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS:
Honourable Mention | Emerging International Filmmaker Award | Hot Docs
Living with mental illness takes energy, and a lot is often wasted on managing the court system, substance abuse and poverty instead of basic treatment. Filmmaker Margaret Byrne knows that exhaustion. So when Chicago's Cook County Mental Health Court offered a specialized probation for diagnosed detainees, she picked up her camera. What emerged is an exceptionally frank, multi-year diary between Byrne and three defendants: Angela, Dimitar and Daniel. But as Byrne shares the rarely seen nuances of their struggles, from Angela needing police to retrieve her toddler from her ex to Dimitar's mother having to rehouse him for his own safety, she suffers another breakdown. Can an essentially punitive system deliver meaningful treatment? Or will the ties between people with mental illness and their families, institutions and society become more precarious? With complete honesty from all involved, Any Given Day starts the hard work of truly seeing people with mental illness and restoring their dignity. —Myrocia Watamaniuk (Hot Docs)
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Maria Finitzo (Kartemquin Films)
The Dilemma of Desire explores the clash between the external power of gender politics and the equally powerful imperatives of female sexual desire through the lens of our main subjects: provocative women all using their work to challenge and shatter the myths about what women want. No easy task to be sure. Cultural, religious and political forces continue to punish women for wanting sex despite scientific evidence proving that women are highly sexual beings. One question drives our narrative: How different would the world look if women’s libidos were taken as seriously as men’s?
Documentary Short
Editor
Director: Gordon Quinn (Kartemquin Films)
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS:
Shortlist, Best Documentary Short
2019 Academy Awards
Grand Jury Prize, Best Documentary Short
Nashville Film Festival
Audience Award, Best Documentary Short
The Pan African Film + Arts Festival
Best Short Documentary
The Adrian International Film Festival
On October 22, 1963, more than 250,000 students boycotted the Chicago Public Schools to protest racial segregation. Many marched through the city calling for the resignation of School Superintendent Benjamin Willis, who placed trailers, dubbed ‘Willis Wagons,’ on playgrounds and parking lots of overcrowded black schools rather than let them enroll in nearby white schools. Combining unseen archival 16mm footage of the march shot by Kartemquin founder Gordon Quinn with the participants’ reflections today, ’63 Boycott connects the forgotten story of one of the largest northern civil rights demonstrations to contemporary issues around race, education, school closings, and youth activism.
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Sergio M. Rapu (Mara Films / Kartemquin Films)
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS:
Winner | Mallku Feature Film Competition | 2019 Arica Nativa Film Festival
Best Environmental/Outdoor Feature | 2019 BendFilm Festival
Jury Grand Prize | 2019 Arkhaios Film Festival
Audience Favorite | 2019 Arkhaios Film Festival
Sustainability Award | 2019 Portuguese Surf Film Festival
Eating Up Easter is the first documentary of its kind to break from sensationalizing the “mysteries” of Easter Island’s past, a remote Pacific island known for its massive stone statues. Instead, this film explores the raw realities of a modern indigenous community transformed by the globalizing effects of tourism. Native filmmaker, Sergio M. Rapu’s own intimate knowledge of island life and unprecedented access to the community provides an insider’s look into the contradictions and complexities his people face as they rapidly develop.
The film follows MAMA PIRU, a passionate hard-headed Rapanui who, as the head of the recycling center, is struggling to find ways to minimize the growing problem of trash. Pursuing change in the social realm are MAHANI and ENRIQUE, musicians devoted to re-uniting the community through their music school. The island itself becomes a character as the complexities of development slowly unfold through these members of the community. Eating Up Easter follows their struggle as they draw on lessons from their past about reuse and resilience to find solutions for the problems they face today, and work to address the universal issues of development with local solutions in order to re-cultivate a sustainable island life.
Documentary Television Series
Co-Director / Editor
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS:
Winner, 2016
Alfred I. Dupont-Columbia Journalism Award
Nominated- Best Limited Series, 2015
International Documentary Association IDA Documentary Awards
Hard Earned, a six-part documentary series for Al Jazeera America, puts aside economic debates and follows five families around the country to find out what it takes to get by on eight, ten or even 15 dollars an hour. The series turns an intimate lens on this group of 21st century American dreamers. They fight against all odds to thrive, when it takes everything they have to simply survive.
EPISODE 1: As Emilia celebrates her 50th birthday, she takes stock of her career as a waitress and struggles to hold onto her house. DJ gets frustrated with working conditions at Walgreens and starts talking to his co-workers about how to make a change. Clerical worker Jose and his girlfriend Elizabeth look for a way to move out of their parents’ basements and give their son his own bedroom.
EPISODE 2: Hilton juggles two full-time jobs, and returns home at night to the one-car garage he calls home in the heart of Silicon Valley. Jose and Elizabeth try to qualify for a mortgage, Emilia reveals a troubling part of her past, and DJ and Takita try to start over in a new neighborhood.
EPISODE 3: A surprise on the housing front leads Jose to think about his future with Elizabeth in a new light. Hilton and Diana prepare for the birth of twins, while Hilton works hard for a promotion at work. Emilia pounds the pavement for a better-paying job. DJ fears recrimination at work for his union activity.
For more episodes and general info go to www.hardearnedseries.com
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Ines Sommer
For a quarter-century, Henry Brockman has worked alongside nature to grow delicious organic vegetables on his idyllic Midwestern farm. But farming takes a toll on his aging body and Henry dreams of scaling back. While his former apprentices run the farm, Henry spends a “fallow year” with his wife Hiroko in Japan. But things don’t turn out as planned, and Henry must grapple with the future of farming in a changing climate on personal, generational, and global levels.
Documentary Feature
Editor (with Leslie Simmer and Katerina Simic)
Director: Maria Finitzo
In The Game is a Kartemquin documentary film that follows the ups and downs of a girls’ soccer team to reveal the very real obstacles that low-income students confront in their quest for higher education. Set in a primarily Hispanic neighborhood, Kelly High School on Chicago’s south side is an inner city public school struggling to provide the basics for their students, many of whom do not make it to college, either because they cannot compete academically or because their families do not have the financial resources to send them to college. The girls face an uneven playing field - or in the case of the girls at Kelly High School, no soccer field at all - little or no support, problems at home, uncertain futures, discrimination, and poverty, but remain undaunted thanks to their teammates and the dedicated mentoring of their coach.
Documentary Short
Editor / Associate Producer / Additional Camera
Director: Joanna Rudnick
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS:
Audience Choice Award- Best Short Film
Chicago International Film Festival
Jury Award- Best Documentary Short Film
Cleveland International Film Festival
Audience Award- Best Short
Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival
Jury Award- Best Documentary Short
Geneva Film Festival
“ ‘On Beauty’ is, quite simply, a masterful example of how cinema can serve as a humanizing force in the world. We need films like this. We can’t afford to lose them.”— RogerEbert.com
More coverage of On Beauty: the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Newsweek, People, Upworthy, CBS Radio News, Mashable, Bustle, L'Etage, Afropunk, You Beauty, Indiewire, The Today Show, Yahoo! Style, The Huffington Post, Flickr, Popsugar, The Daily Mail (UK), Parents Magazine, and the film was given a 5-star review at Blogcritics.
ON BEAUTY follows fashion photographer Rick Guidotti, who left the fashion world when he grew frustrated with having to work within the restrictive parameters of the industry’s standard of beauty. At the center of the film are two of Rick’s photo subjects: Sarah and Jayne. Sarah left public school for home school in eighth grade because she was bullied so harshly for the Sturge-Weber birthmark on her face. Jayne lives in Eastern Africa where people with albinism are highly discriminated against and are sometimes even killed for their body parts. Rick’s photos challenge both mainstream media’s narrow scope of beauty and the dehumanizing black-bar convention of medical textbooks. ON BEAUTY is part of his movement.
STRANDED BY THE STATE
Documentary Web Series & TV Miniseries
Director / Producer / Cinematographer / Editor
Illinois has not passed a real budget in over a year, the first state to do so since the Great Depression. The ongoing fight over the budget between Governor Bruce Rauner and the Illinois General Assembly has been covered widely, but what do the effects of this lingering crisis look like in people’s day-to-day lives? This new video series—a collaboration between In These Times and Kartemquin Films—follows the families, workers and students living through the de facto budget cuts, showing the ways it deteriorates the fabric of Illinois communities.
www.strandedbythestate.com
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VETERANS COMING HOME
Documentary Web Series
Lead Editor
Executive Producer: Danny Alpert
Veterans Coming Home is an innovative cross-platform public media campaign that bridges America’s military-civilian divide by telling stories, challenging stereotypes and exploring how the values of service and citizenship are powerful connectors for all Americans.
Throughout the spring of 2016, a team of photographers, writers, and filmmakers—both veteran and civilian— crisscrossed the country, creating content around issues of service, citizenship, and veteran’s lives.
CHECK OUT these links to a sampling of videos:
Finding her tribe on the home front - with roller derby
Invisible Wounds: Life after military sexual assault and PTSD
Veteran’s bond: A journey from tragedy to forgiveness
Documentary Feature
Editor (with David Simpson and Katerina Simic)
Director: Steve James
A revealing documentary featuring never-before-seen neurological findings related to rugby and soccer players that will serve as a wake-up call for those who think that the devastating chronic effects of repetitive head trauma are only an American football and boxing injury.
Inspired by events from the book Head Games, written by former Ivy League Football Player and WWE Wrestler Christopher Nowinski, Head Games: The Global Concussion Crisis will capture the attention of a worldwide audience and expose a problem that has undeniably become a silent epidemic on a global scale. Internationally respected medical experts, professional and amateur athletes and their families will offer eye-opening insights and cutting edge science on head trauma that will demand that the perception of concussion change to guarantee the health and safety of athletes as a top priority.
Documentary Feature
Documentary Editor / Associate Producer
Director: Xan Aranda
AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS:
Best Director
Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival - Illinois
Jury Prize, Best Documentary Film
Omaha Film Festival
Best Pop Culture Documentary
Documentary Edge Festival - New Zealand
Audience Award
Noise Pop Film Festival – San Francisco
Best Sound
Blue Whiskey Independent Film Festival - Illinois
Best Sound
Southern Appalachian International Film Festival
Best Documentary Feature
SENE Film, Music, & Arts Festival – Rhode Island
Audience Choice Award: Best Feature Film
Gwinnett Center International Film Festival – Georgia
Golden Ace Award
Las Vegas Film Festival
“A cunning hybrid of documentary and concert film.” – Film Society of Lincoln Center / New York Film Festival
Filmed during culminating months of the acclaimed singer-songwriter’s most rigorous year of touring, Andrew Bird crosses the December finish line in his hometown of Chicago – feverish and on crutches from an onstage injury. Is he suffering hazards from chasing the ghost of inspiration? Or merely transforming into a different kind of animal “perfectly adapted to the music hall?” FEVER YEAR is the first to capture Bird’s precarious multi-instrumental looping technique and features live performances at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater with collaborators Martin Dosh, Jeremy Ylvisaker, Michael Lewis and Annie Clark of St. Vincent.
Documentary Feature
Additional Editor
Director: Brad Lichtenstein
Political Thriller! – NY Times
Not to be missed! – Baltimore Sun
Must-See! – Indiewire
AS GOES JANESVILLE reports from ground zero of America’s recession-ridden heartland — the city of Janesville, Wisconsin. When bankrupt GM shuts down the community’s century-old plant, forcing workers to leave their families in search of decent jobs, local business leaders seize the moment to woo new companies with the promise of lower wages, reduced regulation and tax breaks. Their powerful alliance with newly-elected Republican governor Scott Walker starts with an “open for business” manifesto but soon morphs into a “divide and conquer” anti-union crusade that rips apart the state, triggers an historic recall election, and thrusts Wisconsin’s civil war onto front pages worldwide. A cautionary tale for a polarized country falling short of the American Dream, the film follows three years in the lives of laid off workers struggling to survive, business leaders trying to reinvent their local economy, and a state senator caught in the middle, trying to negotiate a peace for his warring state while protecting workers’ rights. AS GOES JANESVILLE, so goes America.
Documentary Feature
Editor
Director: Justine Nagan
Typeface focuses on a rural Midwestern museum and print shop where international artists meet retired craftsmen and together navigate the convergence of modern design and traditional technique. A crowd favorite, Typeface sparked a movement where graphic designers all around the world created hand-made letterpress posters for screenings.
...It's a Thursday afternoon and all is quiet in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. Main Street is virtually empty, and there are “for rent” signs in several shop windows. In the last few years, the un-employment rate has been consistently on the rise in the region. Factories are leaving the heartland for cheaper locales and the little town of Two Rivers is struggling to re-invent itself. Jim VanLanen, one of the town’s most industrious entrepreneurs, began developing small museums as a way to bring tourists and industry to the area.
A few blocks off the main drag, in a section of the old cavernous Hamilton printing factory, a lone employee waits in the most popular of these museums for visitors to come. A couple of individuals straggle in every few days and then, come Friday, the museum fills with life. Machines hum, presses print, artists buzz about. One weekend each month, the quiet of Two Rivers is interrupted as carloads of artisans drive in from across the Midwest. The place comes alive as printmaking workshops led by, and filled with, some of the region’s top creative talent descend on the sleepy enclave. The museum is significant to the town’s history, but more importantly, its existence is critical to the worldwide design community who are passionate about the history of their craft and its function in the contemporary field. They believe the future of their industry may lie in the past.
Documentary Feature
Associate Editor / Post-Production Supervisor
Director: David Simpson
A ferocious kill on the Serengeti… dire warnings about endangered species… These clichés of nature documentaries ignore a key feature of the landscape: villagers just off-camera, who navigate the dangers and costs of living with wildlife on a daily basis. When seen at all, rural Africans are often depicted as the problem – they poach animals and encroach on habitat, they spoil our myth of wild Africa.
Milking the Rhino tells a more nuanced tale of human-wildlife coexistence in post-colonial Africa. The Maasai tribe of Kenya and Namibia's Himba – two of Earth's oldest cattle cultures – are in the midst of upheaval. Emerging from a century of "white man conservation," which turned their lands into game reserves and fueled resentment towards wildlife, Himba and Maasai communities are now vying for a piece of the wildlife-tourism pie.
