The American Sector
A documentary about the concrete sections of the Berlin Wall that have been acquired by institutions or individuals since 1989 and are now scattered across the USA. Cherished or abandoned, they have become silent witnesses to recent history.
Pacho Velez
Courtney Stephens
Also Directed by Pacho Velez
A documentary about a group of pilgrims who travel to Nepal to worship at the legendary Manakamana temple.
Amid the aftershocks of socialism's failure, a skeptical American watches three Croatian anarchists fight to create a new leftism.
This film uses the Reagan administration's internal documentation to capture the surreal spectacle of American might at its apex.
Yoni Brook and Pacho Velez's Mr. Yellow Sweatshirt presents New York City in a single-shot (from above) microcosm as an everyman struggles to enter the subway, a droll take on human-versus-machine.
Comprised entirely of archival footage taken during those pre-reality-television years, The Reagan Show looks at how Ronald Reagan redefined the look and feel of what it means to be the POTUS.
Drivers, mechanics and drag racing fans stare at the objects they love.
The Starting Line captures the rhythms of a day at the Tijuana border crossing. But it’s not just any day: as people go through their routines, they listen to the local news report on Donald Trump’s inauguration. By taking the usual viewpoint—American broadcasters talking about life on the Mexican border—and flipping it on its head, The Starting Line presents an unexpected view of America’s capitol, as it appears from just over the border.
Drawing on over seventy-five encounters with New Yorkers of different ages, races, genders, and sexual interests, The Browsers is a portrait of The Big Apple as seen through the eyes of lovers, searching the web for their special someone.
Also Directed by Courtney Stephens
A film comprised of 1960s home movies shot on Muscle Beach, Los Angeles.
The bleached palette and home-movie aesthetics of Super 8 footage provide the image track for this testimonial about an illegal abortion in Mexico City in the 1960s, delivered in voiceover by the filmmaker’s mother. In its account of this intimate and disorienting memory, Lesser Choices summons a time of profound uncertainty—a moment from an era without rights—and offers a warning to the present.
Stricken with an undisclosed illness, the narrator of this reflexive work draws evocative parallels between the darkened hulls of an industrial ocean liner and an increasingly disorienting mental state. Courtney Stephens was inspired by the nautical imagery and turbulent inner monologue of Hannah Weiner’s maritime code poems.
An exploration of the "five labia types," as claimed by an aesthetician.
A would-be exile explores her Georgia O'Keeffe fantasies through customer support calls.
Commission for Cinema-19 (Anthology Film Archives, Zeitgeist Theatre, Northwest Film Forum)
A portrait of the artist and piano tuner Jerome Ellis, and a meditation on intervals in music, nature and language. The act of tuning harmonizes the world, at least temporarily, but time brings suffering and instability.
A collection of 190-second short films created in response to COVID-19, commissioned by filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler.