Hot Films in the Making
Hot Films in the Making are films that we highly support. They have excellent concepts and brilliant filmmakers, they should be in our finals in the future.
Fall 2015
Away From the Slough By Danielle Bárcena |
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Cemetery Life By Barbara Politsch |
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Confessions of a Former Bully By Lisa Cohen |
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Displaced By Mary Umans |
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Durable Dreams? By Jonathan Schwartz |
Over the long term, does the hype of green manufacturing and sustainability live up to its promises, or are there pitfalls along the way? |
First Chair By Coleen Davie Janes |
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Flight of the Fields By Barbara Cigarroa |
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From Bottom to Top By Bel Delia |
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Me Japanese By Malena Barrios & Magdiel Aspillaga |
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More Alive Than Dead By Asaf Yecheskel |
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Mount Rushmore By Elizabeth Orr |
A critique of contemporary political fundraising strategy, Mt. Rushmore is a fantastical story about a park ranger interacting with a fictional email interface leading up to the presidential election. |
My Perfect Life…Once I Change You! By Terrah Bennett Smith |
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Sins of Saints By Lacy McClory |
Sins of Saints is a female driven film that expresses the power of truth and forgiveness through the growing relationship between two estranged sisters. |
Sonata Mulattica By Andrew Kalin |
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The Longest Straw By Samantha Bode |
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The Runaways By Dewey Ortiz, Jr. |
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Through Air & Water By Joel McGinty |
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Underdogs By Mused Multimedia |
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Voices Over the Water By Guy Perrotta and Jane Ferguson |
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Willow Creek Road By Jenna Ciralli |
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Without Color By Kyle Rasmussen |
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Summer 2015
Film Title | Type | Filmmaker | Tagline | |
American Dinka | Doc | Alison Fast | AMERICAN DINKA is the story of an emerging leader, Adeng Abur, a “Lost Girl” of South Sudan, raised in the U.S. foster care, who returns to her country after decades of war to be a voice for women and girls. | |
Antarctica | Short | Sarah Seulki Oh | A suburban housewife Kristin indulges in an adulterous fling with the wrong man and things get dangerously awry. | |
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Chill | Doc | Jennifer Frappier | An ambitious, single woman in her mid-thirties freezes as many eggs as science can help her produce to cheat her biological clock. |
Classmates | Doc | Gulzat Egemberdieva | Years after escaping from a village in Central Asia, a young woman returns to find out her relatives and classmates who were kidnapped for marriage. | |
Cop 1 | Doc | Mark Decena | As the 21st year of U.N. Climate Conferences approaches (COP21), follow 7 activists unleash the only force that can stop climate change: the will of the people. | |
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Doeville | Feature | Kathryn A. Pasternak | In this intimate, uplifting tale of the life of a farmer, Gail Rose struggles to keep a promise made to her late husband, Alex — to keep their deer farm alive. |
ELNORA | Feature | Kira Ackerman | ELNORA is about Phoebe (22), who falls in love with the life of ELNORA (60) in the Deep South. Phoebe betrays her, loses her, and comes into herself. | |
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Empty Skies | Short | Luke Fisher | To save his dying Grandma, Li and his zealous friend, Ai, hunt the village’s last sparrow after Chairman Mao decrees the birds should all be eradicated during China’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1961). |
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How Big Little Is | Doc | Jenn Nielsen | A New York furrier meets a young Brooklyn artist and together they embark on an unexpected journey that will give new meaning to their lives. |
Howeds | Feature | Jacob Fertig | Howeds is the story of an NJ teenager who attempts to break away from the troublemakers of his local Jewish community. | |
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Nessun Dorma (No One Sleeps) | Feature | Matteo Servente |
An imaginative 11-year-old boy barrels into a rural town in a stolen Trans-Am, upending the routines of a widowed police dispatcher and a secretive barber. |
Obino | Doc | Balthazar De Ganay | Two Shipibo brothers from tribal Amazonia get caught between tradition and the pull of modernity. Along with their destiny, the future of the Amazon is also at stake. | |
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Path of Dreams | Short | Tamara Ruppart | Inspired by the controversial poet Komachi, this film will be the first Japanese film of Houston’s and the first directed by a women in Niigata,Japan. |
Saving Sea Turtles | Doc | Michele Gomes and Jennifer Ting | The film exposes the current plight of the Kemp’s Ridley, the world’s most critically endangered sea turtle. | |
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Check Into the Darkness | Doc | Ama MacDonald | What factors have contributed to make the infamous Cecil hotel the epicenter for serial killers, mysterious deaths and suicides in Los Angeles for the past 90 years? |
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Transgenesis | Feature | Kristen Gorlitz | After reports of violent attacks, a family fears that the stranger in their cabin suffers from a contagious disease that empties the mind. |
Transient |
Feature | Alexander Stockton | An undocumented immigrant, deported from the only home he’s ever known, risks everything to get back across the border. | |
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Vandal |
Short | Katya Martin | A short film about breaking into a system that won’t recognize your talents. “Exit Through the Giftshop” meets “Devil Wears Prada” VANDAL is the story of a young artist, fighting to make a name for herself in New York’s elite art scene. |
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While the Trees Sleep | Short | Emilie Sabath | While the Trees Sleep is a fictional narrative exploring the true death of white Civil Rights activist Viola Liuzzo by an undercover FBI informant. |
Spring 2015
Film Title | Type | Filmmaker | Tagline | |
Alien-The Unfulfilled American Dream | Doc | Vidyut Latay | Immigration laws created to protect Americans are limiting the contributions of the highly skilled, sorely needed legal immigrants, and forcing them to return to their home countries. | |
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Caretakers | Doc | George Loomis | What if you were caregiving for a patient who lost the will to live? Jones refuses to give up on former United States ambassador Chris. |
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Evergreen | Short | David Scott McDougall | Beau Townsend goes into the forest to find his missing family, but something else finds him. |
Faking It | Doc | Gisele Roman | Kenneth Jay Lane is a dazzling paragon of excellence whose legacy inspires. Through his art and humanity, a universal story emerges that transcends design. | |
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Greywater | Documentary | Jeff Unay | An aging cage fighter’s life at home begins to unravel as he prepares for the biggest fight of his career. |
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Gypsytania | Documentary | Gregory Jackson | Pressured to mainstream into 21st century Europe, Gypsies reveal principles, lost to Western Civilization, which keep their community and culture strong and thriving despite challenges. |
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Halfway | Feature | Jonny Paterson | A physically enormous black man finds himself trapped between his urban criminal past and his new life on probation in a conservative Wisconsin farm town. |
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Horse Shelter Diaries | Doc | Donna Wells | Spotlighting the This documentary follows 9 horse trainers as they train 9 Shelter horses in 100 days, compete against each other, and find the horses forever homes. |
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John Hemmer & The Showgirls | Doc | Kirsten Larvick | Through an immersive web-based storytelling experience, a senior entertainer and his cronies, look back on a golden age of live entertainment while living fully today. |
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K.I.A. (Killed In Action) | Short | Christine Weatherup | A traumatized WWII Veteran tracks down the widow of a fellow soldier to tell her the truth about how her husband died in the war… |
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Last Days of Chinatown | Doc | Nicole Macdonald | Detroit’s Cass Corridor, one of the roughest areas in the city for the last one hundred years, is now scheduled for a complete overhaul in 2014, as long-awaited change finally hits Detroit. In their own voices, we hear how residents survived, how they died, who fled the area and why — as gentrification now remakes the corridor — long home to the poor, the destitute, the disenfranchised, the artists, and visionaries of the city. |
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Lights Out in the Rockaways | Doc | Elif Alp |
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, an eclectic group of Rockaway residents are faced with a critical question: what makes a place worth saving?
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Living While Dying | Doc | Cathy Zheutlin | A spiritual seeker prepares herself for the imminent passing of her 88-year old mother, while also documenting the final days of four terminally ill friends |
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Ofelia | Other | Francesca Fini | Ophelia is a project for an experimental surrealist movie. The movie will integrate materials from the Istituto Luce; the Italian national archive of documentaries on Italian society since the dawn of cinema to the 80s; and original videoperformances conceived and authored by contemporary artist Francesca Fini.. |
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‘Shiner | Short | Jenna Payne | Set in early Great Depression Appalachia, an out of work coal miner tries to refrain from the dangerous life of moonshining as a way to feed his family. |
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Solace | Feature | Tchaiko Omawale | A coming of age drama about an idealistic teenage girl who finds solace in her friendship with the troubled girl next door. |
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The Bomb Hunters | Doc | Rick Minnich | A bomb victim, a small-town mayor and an intrepid bomb squad race against time to liberate their city from over 300 undetonated World War II bombs before they go off.. |
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The Longest Straw | Doc | Angela Jorgensen | In the feature-length film The Longest Straw, director Samantha Bode and crew will spend seventy days backpacking the 338 mile path of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, including the Mono Extension. |
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Truth be Told: Irving Norman and the Human Predicament | Doc | Ray Day | Truth be Told, documents one artist’s passionate, singular vision, a unique and bold view of our human predicament. |
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Waters of Summer | Feature | Katherine Boynton & Ward Morehouse | Waters of Summer is set in The Thousand Islands on the St. Lawrence River in 1928 — the days of prohibition, speakeasies, rum running, gangsters and hot jazz. Actress Kay Eagles has all the Roaring Twenties could give — fast boats, riches and a fabulous career. Yet she feels empty. When life takes an unexpected, turn it causes her to realize what she values most, and she knows she must find the courage to leap into the unknown. |
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What Would Beethoven Do? | Feature | Jonathan Keijser | Music is universal; it is about creating a connection between people–not just in the concert hall but in daily life. For most people, classical music is something never experienced in their lifetimes. But it doesn’t have to be this way. |
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Why American Men Dance | Doc | Keith Glassman | Why American Men Dance: a feature length documentary that explores the male experience in ballet and modern dance. Men talking and dancing about their lives. |