DC/Dox
We are excited to host and present you some of the films in the DC/Dox lineup. List of screenings below:
FRIDAY, JUNE 16
SHORTS PROGRAM #1: AGAINST THE GRAIN
Dir. Various | 11 AM
Against the Grain showcases provocative and inspiring stories of individuals and institutions who challenge the status quo, break away from conventional thinking, and push boundaries, even if it means delving into uncomfortable and complicated places.
PAY OR DIE
2 PM | Dir. Rachael Dyer, Scott Alexander Ruderman
The US healthcare system is the most expensive in the world and close to half of all Americans reportedly struggle to pay for their healthcare. Pay or Die explores the crushing financial reality for millions of insulin-dependent Americans living with diabetes, as pharmaceutical companies push the price of this life-saving medication to exorbitant levels, making record-breaking profits. This is only further bolstered by the government’s lack of regulation. Pay or Die voices the stories of families struggling to afford their life-saving medications in one of the richest countries in the world, the United States of America. This enraging and enlightening film lays bare the human cost of the United States’ insulin affordability crisis and serves as a call to action against the medical-industrial complex that monetizes our bodies and lives.
Courtesy of MTV Documentary Films
BAD PRESS
5 PM | Dir. Rebecca Landsberry-Baker, Joe Peeler
Imagine you lived in a world where your only reliable news source became government propaganda overnight. That’s exactly what happened to the citizens of the Muscogee Nation in 2018. Out of almost six hundred federally-recognized Native American tribes, the Muscogee Nation was one of only five to establish a free and independent press – until the tribe’s legislative branch abruptly repealed the landmark Free Press Act in advance of an election. The tribe’s hard-hitting news outlet, Mvskoke Media, would now be subject to direct editorial oversight by the tribal government.
One defiant journalist refuses to accept this flagrant act of oppression. As brave as she is blunt, veracious muckraker Angel Ellis charges headfirst into battle against the corrupt faction of the Muscogee National Council. Angel and her allies rally for press freedoms by inciting a voter-supported constitutional amendment, just in time for the start of a new election cycle. An enthralling, edge-of-your-seat nail-biter that unfurls with the energy and suspense of a political thriller, Bad Press is a timely and unprecedented story about the battle for freedom of the press and against state-censored media.
ART FOR EVERYBODY
7:45 PM | Dir. Miranda Yousef
You’ve seen his cozy cottages, idyllic gardens, and welcoming village streets on everything from canvas to commemorative plates. Both celebrated and disparaged for his kitschy signature settings, the “Painter of Light” Thomas Kinkade rocketed to popularity in the ‘90s by marketing himself to American evangelicals and pitting himself against the elite art establishment. Yet beneath the pristine public persona were demons that would drive him to alcoholism, scandal, and death from an overdose in 2012. After his passing, Kinkade’s daughters uncovered a trove of unseen, unexpectedly dark paintings, a discovery that launched an investigation into their father’s true personality. Through the voices of skeptical critics, adoring fans, and Kinkade’s closest friends and family, Art For Everybody digs deep into Kinkade’s life and work to elucidate the real man behind the persona. Accomplished editor Miranda Yousef’s directorial debut is an insightful documentary that peels back the layers of Kinkade’s facade, delivering a portrait of a complex man divided by the same forces that continue to pull us apart as a nation.
SATURDAY, JUNE, 17
A STILL SMALL VOICE
11 AM | Dir. Luke Lorentzen
In most US hospitals, alongside medical responses to illness and injury, lesser-known interventions take place every day. Responding to patients, family members, and hospital staff who are experiencing spiritual and emotional distress, chaplains sit at bedsides, helping people to deepen connections with themselves, to one another, and to a world beyond this one. A Still Small Voice follows Mati, a chaplain completing a year-long residency at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital, as she learns to provide spiritual care to people confronting profound life changes. Following his acclaimed 2019 film Midnight Family, director Luke Lorentzen digs into Mati’s spiritual work as an entry point to explore how we seek meaning in suffering, uncertainty, and grief. Through Mati’s experiences with her patients, her struggle with professional burnout, and her own spiritual questioning, we gain new perspectives on the significance of meaningful human connection and the pain of its absence.
I LIKE IT HERE
2 PM | Dir. Ralph Arlyck
We talk or laugh about aging; its irritations and relentless progression, but we rarely confront the reality of dying or being left alone. Nor do we consider the lightness and calmness that can come when the success race seems not so crucial. I Like It Here is about all those things and, finally, about the pleasures of being alive. Filmmaker Ralph Arlyck tries to convey how it feels to be seeing the winding down of your life. He spends time with older friends from his past and present, most of them rather lively, plus children and grandchildren. Woven in with these scenes are personal reflections on the challenges of getting old; of feeling your joints and thoughts stiffen, as the camera confronts – both seriously and humorously — the obstacles that loom up in front of anyone who is on the last lap. The tone of the film isn’t sad; more wistful. The title’s declaration has a double meaning. The “here” that the filmmaker likes is both his immediate rural surroundings (the fields, water and neighbors he sees out his window) – and life itself.
Courtesy of Argot Pictures
THE ETERNAL MEMORY
4:30 PM | Dir. Maite Alberdi
The Eternal Memory tells a profound and moving love story that balances vibrant individual and collective remembrance with the longevity of an unbreakable human bond. Augusto and Paulina have been together and in love for 25 years. Eight years ago, their lives were forever changed by Augusto’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. As one of Chile’s most prominent cultural commentators and television presenters, Augusto is no stranger to building an archive of memory. Now he turns that work to his own life, trying to hold on to his identity with the help of his beloved Paulina, whose own pre-eminence as a famous actress and Chilean Minister of Culture predates her ceaselessly inventive manner of engaging with her husband. Day by day, the couple faces this challenge head-on, relying on the tender affection and sense of humor shared between them that remains, remarkably, fully intact.
Courtesy of MTV Documentary Films
TIME BOMB Y2K
7 PM | Dir. Brian Becker, Marley McDonald
As the year 2000 approached, rumblings started to spread outside of the world of computer engineers and into the mainstream consciousness about a ubiquitous error in computer code that would cause computers to reset during the transition from “1999” to “2000,” causing the world’s computerized systems to grind to a halt. This fully archival feature (no interviews, verité, etc.) documents the countdown to Y2K against the backdrop of the mass hysteria that infiltrated everything from politics to pop culture. Doomsday prepper communities started to proliferate and businesses popped up with products, books, and any way to make a quick buck off the looming disaster. Time Bomb Y2K is a wild ride through the final days of the ’90s and a compelling portrait of a turning point in the digital revolution. By examining this hingepoint between millennia, the film interrogates our ever-changing relationship to technology and each other.
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
CONFESSIONS OF A GOOD SAMARITAN
11 AM | Dir. Penny Lane
Director Penny Lane’s decision to become a “Good Samaritan” by giving one of her kidneys to a stranger – someone she’s never met, and never will meet – launches her on a provocative, intimate, and unexpectedly funny quest to understand the nature of altruism. Confessions of a Good Samaritan is a provocative inquiry into the science, history, and ethics of organ transplantation, asking an ancient question in a whole new way: who is your neighbor, and what do you owe them?
IT’S ONLY LIFE AFTER ALL
2:15 PM | Dir. Alexandria Bombach
With forty years of making music as the iconic folk-rock band Indigo Girls, Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have made their mark as musicians, songwriters, and dedicated activists. They have represented radical self-acceptance to many – leading now multiple generations of fans to say, “the Indigo Girls saved my life.” Still, Amy and Emily battled misogyny, homophobia, and a harsh cultural climate chastising them for not fitting into a female pop star mold. With joy, humor, and heart-warming moments, Sundance award-winning director Alexandria Bombach brings us into a contemporary conversation with Amy and Emily – alongside decades of the band’s home movies and intimate present-day verité.
YOUR FAT FRIEND
5 PM | Dir. Jeanie Finlay
Aubrey Gordon began her career writing with candor and humor as the anonymous blogger “Your Fat Friend”. Her searingly honest writing describes what it’s like to be a fat woman in the world, how the fantasies peddled by the diet and wellness industry are worth $26 billion a year, and how the biggest threat to fat people’s health might just be the bias that some many health care providers hold for fat people. Aubrey spent a decade campaigning for LGBTQIA rights so she knows that change is possible. Now it’s time to advocate for herself. For Aubrey, this isn’t about “body positivity” co-opted by brands to sell fat-kinis to size 16 women, it’s about bringing about a paradigm shift in the way that we treat fat people and the fat on our own bodies. It has brought her an insatiable worldwide audience, and threats to her life. Your Fat Friend follows Aubrey’s rise from anonymous blogger to NYTimes best-selling author and co-host of the podcast Maintenance Phase, and charts the complexities of finding a place in the world when you don’t quite fit in.
QUEENDOM
7:30 PM | Dir. Agniia Galdanova
Gena, a queer artist from a small town in Russia, dresses in otherworldly costumes made from junk and tape, and protests the government on the streets of Moscow. Born and raised on the harsh streets of Magadan, a frigid outpost of the Soviet gulag, Gena is only 21. She stages radical performances in public that become a new form of art and activism. By doing that, she wants to change people’s perception of beauty and queerness and bring attention to the harassment of the LGBTQ+ community. The performances—often dark, strange, evocative, and queer at their core—are a manifestation of Gena’s subconscious. But they come at a price.
Courtesy of The Film Collaborative