American Meth

Sad Clown Bad Dub 4: The God Loves Ugly Release Parties

2003 · ★ 9

Atmosphere concert and tour footage following the release of the album God Loves Ugly.

Megacities

1998 · ★ 6.7

Megacities is a documentary about the slums of five different metropolitan cities.

The Nightcrawlers

2019 · ★ 6.2

The Nightcrawlers provides unprecedented access to the the Manila Nightcrawlers as they look to expose the true cost of Filipino President Duterte’s violent war on drugs.

Ask the Sexpert

2017 · ★ 7.4

A sex columnist gains popularity even while a ban on comprehensive sex education in schools is adopted by approximately a third of India’s states.

Pay-Off In Pain

1948 · ★ 7

The personal and social tragedy of drug addiction with its evil accompaniment, drug traffic. Over the side of the silent liner in the darkness slips the package of smuggled narcotics, introducing us to the complex problem which involves all races and classes of man. We see many aspects of addiction - the addict preparing an injection, a group waiting tensely for their dope peddler; agents preparing and adulterating the illegal product; the police catching a pusher red-handed. International and national authorities are working from two angles - suppression of the illicit traffic; and where possible, rehabilitation of the addict.

E42

2015

E42 is a cinematic exploration of the area in Rome knows as the EUR, a modernist landscape that was originally designated by Mussolini as the the site of the World Fair of 1942 and as a celebration of the 20 year anniversary of Fascism. Originally designed as a monumental space for public performance and collective acts of solidarity to the Fascist regime, this landscape was in fact never inaugurated. After the war, the 420 acre area was recuperated and today projects a timeless aura of an unfinished and temporary, empty and silent, monumental and imposing as well as an ephemeral landscape.

ḤARĀM

2017

ḤARAM is an essay film portraying the urgent contemporary situation at the Haram Al Sharif/ Noble Sanctuary in the Old City of Jerusalem reflecting on the growing Temple Mount Faithful movement whose goal is to build the Jewish Third Temple on this holy landscape and in turn to assert Jewish sovereignty over this holy Muslim site.

VIVA ÁGUA

2016

VIVA ÁGUA is a meditation on the philosophical work entitled ÁGUA VIVA written by Clarice Lispector in 1973. The film reflects on Lispector’s interior experimental monologue on the “instant-now” of time, the discomforts of language which are “beyond thought” and the harmonious dissonant reminders and remainders of that “sometime what is seen is ineffable.”

Anna Pina Teresa

2015

Anna, Pina, Teresa reinterprets the pivotal scene in Rossellini’s “Roma Città Aperta” where Anna Magnani, who plays the character Pina, (based on the story of Teresa Gullace,) is murdered on the streets of Rome by the Fascist police. This scene is characterized by three movements performed by Magnani — resistance, running and falling. Filmed in the Sala Scherma at Foro Italico in Rome (Mussolini’s fencing studio designed by Moretti) Anna, Pina, Teresa examines the contemporary and historical dynamics between an urban Fascist space and movements of resistance.

State of Bacon

2014

State of Bacon tells the kinda real but mostly fake tale of an oddball group of characters leading up to the annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Bacon-enthusiasts, Governor Branstad, a bacon queen, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, members of PETA, and an envoy of Icelanders are not excluded from this bacon party and during the course of the film become intertwined with the organizers of the festival to show that bacon diplomacy is not dead.

Ascension

2021 · ★ 6.9

The film explores the pursuit of the “Chinese Dream.” Driven by mesmerizing—and sometimes humorous—imagery, this observational documentary presents a contemporary vision of China that prioritizes productivity and innovation above all.

Master Gholamreza

The story of master craftsman Gholamreza, a skilled metalworker who, after overcoming addiction in an unconventional rehab, becomes an inspiration to others.