Underground Zero

A very gentle middle-aged man is married, but when he falls in love with another woman, he decides that to divorce his wife would humiliate her too much – so instead he decides to kill her.

A Russian woman living in Memphis with a much older rock-n-roll legend experiences a personal awakening when her husband's estranged son comes to visit.

Jake is a quiet, sensitive middle schooler with dreams of being an artist. He meets the affably brash Tony at his grandfather's funeral, and the unlikely pair soon hit it off. The budding friendship is put at risk, however, when a rent dispute between Jake's father, Brian, and Tony's mother, Leonor, threatens to become contentious.

The story revolves around the Christodora, an East Village apartment building that was ground zero for the AIDS crisis.

In this short film Ira decided to pay tribute to another one of Strand’s filmmakers, Jacques Nolot. His film is a meditation on not only the passage of time but on how we remember our lives through recorded images

About two men who’ve been together for fifteen years, and one of them has an affair with a woman.

A portrait of the filmmaker's father, an American businessman on a quest for money and women in modern Moscow.

Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Norman René, Peter Hujar, Ethyl Eichelberger, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cookie Mueller, Klaus Nomi... the list of New York artists who died of AIDS over the last 30 years is countless, and the loss immeasurable. In Last Address, filmmaker Ira Sachs, who first moved to the city himself in 1984, uses images of the exteriors of the houses, apartment buildings, and lofts where these and others were living at the time of their deaths to mark the disappearance of a generation. The elegaic film is both a remembrance of that loss, as well as an evocation of the continued presence of their work in our lives and culture.

After 39 years together, Ben and George finally tie the knot, but George loses his job as a result, and the newlyweds must sell their New York apartment and live apart, relying on friends and family to make ends meet.

Set in the modern South, a drama which speaks of the troubled intersection of race, class, and sexuality; it unfolds during a few pivotal days in the summer vacation of Lincoln Bloom, a handsome student from a wealthy Jewish family. Unbeknownst to his friends, family and girlfriend, Lincoln periodically and furtively prowls the late night cruising zones of Memphis in search of male partners. On one such outing he picks up Minh Nguyen, a half Vietnamese refugee recently transported from Southeast Asia. Whet begins as a random encounter deepens when the two spontaneously sail up the Mississippi river in Lincoln's father's boat. But when their romantic idyll -- which gives Lincoln his first taste of freedom and Minh his first taste of romance -- ends in betrayal, Lincoln decides to slip back into his sheltered, seemingly "normal" life

1995 video art piece by Caveh Zahedi documenting his small role in Alexander Payne's CITIZEN RUTH

This film is a birthday gift to Caveh Zahedi's girlfriend Amada (Mandy) Field. Mr. Zahedi arranged for one of his friends to film her all day on her birthday as his special birthday gift to her.

An off-screen narrator remembers a time he was five years old, walking to school in a heavy rain, wearing a yellow slicker and cap. He relates to us that a boy he'd never seen before ran up to him and said that it was raining worms. Our lad of five is on the cusp between believing anything he hears and entering the age of reason. He asks for proof. He holds out his hand.

Focus Features commissions Zahedi to make a one-minute film about his one-year old to promote the film Babies.

Another meditation on loss.

Caveh Zahedi takes DMT.

Experimental short film by Caveh Zahedi featuring the music of Debussy.

Video correspondence with filmmaker Bill Brown.

With longtime collaborators Greg Watkins (A Little Stiff) and Thomas Logoreci, the charismatic, experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi approaches legendary songwriter Will Oldham (Palace Brothers, Bonnie "Prince" Billy) in an unconventional interview. Caveh offers up a serving of psychedelic mushrooms and a view on the relationship between the musician and his fan.

Just moments before his third wedding, Zahedi relates with utter sincerity and astonishing candor his obsession with prostitutes. He retraces his romantic and sexual history, including his ideological commitment to open relationships, that led to two disastrous marriages and several very pissed off ex-girlfriends. I Am a Sex Addict is Zahedi's unique brand of comedy at its confessional best.

Accomplished documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeff Friedman take a trip across the American South and Southwest, asking people about their hopes and fears.

Filmed and edited in intimate vérité style, this movie follows visionary medical practitioners who are working on the cutting edge of life and death and are dedicated to changing our thinking about both.

Harvey Milk was an outspoken human rights activist and one of the first openly gay U.S. politicians elected to public office; even after his assassination in 1978, he continues to inspire disenfranchised people around the world.

When AIDS struck in the early 1980s, a scientist and a movie star did not have to respond - but they did. Dr. Mathilde Krim and Elizabeth Taylor joined forces to create amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. The fight against HIV has never been the same. The Perfect Host reveals how two powerful and very different women came together, and what their combined efforts achieved. With passion and wit, Taylor wielded celebrity as a weapon against government indifference while Krim's commitment to science ensured support for the most promising research areas. Today, the only man cured of AIDS can thank research championed by Mathilde Krim. Visually dazzling and emotionally compelling, this story offers a surprising perspective on the still ongoing fight against AIDS.

The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.

More than two dozen men and women of various backgrounds, ages, and races talk to the camera about being gay or lesbian. Their stories are arranged in loose chronology: early years, fitting in (which for some meant marriage), coming out, establishing adult identities, and reflecting on how things have changed and how things should be.

A recording of a play about the intangible impacts AIDS has on a community. This is a moving, beautifully photographed combination of theater and documentary that captures the incredible excitement of live theater and intensifies the power of the play's message.

This documentary highlights the historical contexts that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals have occupied in cinema history, and shows the evolution of the entertainment industry's role in shaping perceptions of LGBT figures. The issues addressed include secrecy – which initially defined homosexuality – as well as the demonization of the homosexual community with the advent of AIDS, and finally the shift toward acceptance and positivity in the modern era.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

With one of the most memorably stunning voices that has ever hit the airwaves, Linda Ronstadt burst onto the 1960s folk rock music scene in her early twenties.

Accomplished documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeff Friedman take a trip across the American South and Southwest, asking people about their hopes and fears.

Filmed and edited in intimate vérité style, this movie follows visionary medical practitioners who are working on the cutting edge of life and death and are dedicated to changing our thinking about both.

When AIDS struck in the early 1980s, a scientist and a movie star did not have to respond - but they did. Dr. Mathilde Krim and Elizabeth Taylor joined forces to create amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. The fight against HIV has never been the same. The Perfect Host reveals how two powerful and very different women came together, and what their combined efforts achieved. With passion and wit, Taylor wielded celebrity as a weapon against government indifference while Krim's commitment to science ensured support for the most promising research areas. Today, the only man cured of AIDS can thank research championed by Mathilde Krim. Visually dazzling and emotionally compelling, this story offers a surprising perspective on the still ongoing fight against AIDS.

The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.

This documentary highlights the historical contexts that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals have occupied in cinema history, and shows the evolution of the entertainment industry's role in shaping perceptions of LGBT figures. The issues addressed include secrecy – which initially defined homosexuality – as well as the demonization of the homosexual community with the advent of AIDS, and finally the shift toward acceptance and positivity in the modern era.

It's San Francisco in 1957, and an American masterpiece is put on trial. Howl, the film, recounts this dark moment using three interwoven threads: the tumultuous life events that led a young Allen Ginsberg to find his true voice as an artist, society's reaction (the obscenity trial), and mind-expanding animation that echoes the startling originality of the poem itself. All three coalesce in a genre-bending hybrid that brilliantly captures a pivotal moment-the birth of a counterculture.

With one of the most memorably stunning voices that has ever hit the airwaves, Linda Ronstadt burst onto the 1960s folk rock music scene in her early twenties.

Story of Linda Lovelace, who is used and abused by the porn industry at the behest of her coercive husband, before taking control of her life.

Fifty years after the Stonewall uprising, Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman travel to three diverse communities – Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Tuscaloosa, Alabama – for an unflinching look at LGBTQ Pride, from the perspective of a younger generation for whom it still has personal urgency.

During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.

Three women are in enclosed psychological zones that function as both refuge and jail.

A father takes us through one year of trying to teach a preschooler how to make a film.

Period Piece is a 30 min. documentary about menarche--a girl's first menstrual period--which is a fundamental experience in every woman's life, yet one that is rarely celebrated. Women of different ages (8-84) and multi-cultural backgrounds tell their menarchal stories.

An off-screen narrator remembers a time he was five years old, walking to school in a heavy rain, wearing a yellow slicker and cap. He relates to us that a boy he'd never seen before ran up to him and said that it was raining worms. Our lad of five is on the cusp between believing anything he hears and entering the age of reason. He asks for proof. He holds out his hand.


Faith and fear. Duck and cover. One response to 9/11.
 Official Selection, Toronto International Film Festival


Found Footage Rock Video

An imagined therapy session that obliquely suggests the seeds of "Trump" and the subsequent fear and anxiety he evokes.

A haunting and humorous film about romantic relationships and insects.

A mind-boggling "coincidence" leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class – and fifth grade teacher – to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident fifty years ago.

After a bitter argument, a mother and her teenaged son each have a moment of quiet contemplation in Frazer Bradshaw's affecting portrayal of a fragile relationship.

Already bent by the demands of his home life - fatherhood, a faltering marriage, and a submerged mortgage - a tradesman struggles to balance his own appetites and expectations with those of a friend in need. "Everything Strange and New" is an intimate portrait of ordinary people and their longing for certainty in uncertain times.Wayne is a carpenter, no longer young but uneasy with the emotional complexities of adulthood. Aimless hours spent with Leo, his newly-divorced drinking buddy, offer some relief to the heavy gravity at home, where his kids run roughshod over his increasingly unstable wife. Living between these worlds leaves Wayne feeling like a character in someone else's story. Ultimately, a violent spasm rouses him from this fevered American dream.

A narrative short film from the director of EVERYTHING STRANGE AND NEW.

Lenora and Arlan have a stable, long-term relationship when they make a considered decision to open it up to additional partners. Their intention is to engage in casual sexual experiences, but when they meet the mysterious and beautiful Nina, they decide to see her again. Over the following months their connection grow deeper, but over time Lenora and Arlan are stressed by the love triangle, culminating with Nina's disclosure of a secret. The Deep Sky is a poetic film that employs experimental flourishes and magical realist notes to create a visceral experience. Focused on its characters as richly developed individuals the story navigates the emotional and philosophical complexities of the world the three lovers have created.

Hundreds of refugee children in Sweden, who have fled with their families from extreme trauma, have become afflicted with 'uppgivenhetssyndrom,' or Resignation Syndrome. Facing deportation, they withdraw from the world into a coma-like state, as if frozen, for months, or even years.

The portrait of a city: ancient yet constantly remaking itself. A poem in images: stillness, patterns, urban motion. And in words: a tofu seller, a homeless woman, a Buddhist priest, contemplating nature, the metabolism of their city, mortality. And 20,000 crows, unruly avatars of the natural world, sardonically observing it all.

EMPIRE OF THE MOON wryly deconstructs the experience of being a tourist. Paris, gorgeously photographed in black-and-white, is the setting for cultural explorations ranging from the mundane to the sublime, as visitors trek from icon to icon, snapping the same photos, climbing the same steps and at times experiencing the transformative wonder they came to find.

Hundreds of refugee children in Sweden, who have fled with their families from extreme trauma, have become afflicted with 'uppgivenhetssyndrom,' or Resignation Syndrome. Facing deportation, they withdraw from the world into a coma-like state, as if frozen, for months, or even years.

New day films

The portrait of a city: ancient yet constantly remaking itself. A poem in images: stillness, patterns, urban motion. And in words: a tofu seller, a homeless woman, a Buddhist priest, contemplating nature, the metabolism of their city, mortality. And 20,000 crows, unruly avatars of the natural world, sardonically observing it all.

EMPIRE OF THE MOON wryly deconstructs the experience of being a tourist. Paris, gorgeously photographed in black-and-white, is the setting for cultural explorations ranging from the mundane to the sublime, as visitors trek from icon to icon, snapping the same photos, climbing the same steps and at times experiencing the transformative wonder they came to find.

Shelia, a single mom and sometime paranormal investigator, is enlisted to investigate a possible “haunting” at a widower’s farmhouse in East Tennessee.

When a tragedy shatters her plans for domestic bliss, a seemingly typical Southern newlywed gradually transforms into a spiritual seeker, quietly threatening the closest relationships around her.

A young woman's hopes of moving up are tied to a minor league baseball player. As he falls deeper into a batting slump, the couple must cope with the day-to-day realities of being young and poor, and they must confront the prospect that they may never make it to the big leagues.

A struggling young actress lands her first job...only to discover that her "part" is to lie to an assembly of factory workers to keep them from unionizing.

Beautiful aspiring rock star Jude is stuck in a rut - relegated to recording commercial jingles and lost in a series of one night stands. When she is evicted from her Brooklyn apartment, she is forced to move into the Hamptons home of her wealthy - and selfish - father Paul Lombard, an over-the-hill, Sinatra-esque crooner angling for a musical comeback.

A soldier recounts his relationship with a famous political prisoner attempting to overthrow their country's authoritarian government.

The Chinese Gardens looks at the lost Chinese community in Port Townsend, WA, examining anti-Chinese violence in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1800s and drawing connections between past and present race relations in the United States. Through text, brief interviews, and images of the empty spaces of Port Townsend's former Chinatown, the film examines early instances of racism against the Chinese in the U.S., from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 through various lynchings, beatings, and murders. The Chinese Gardens also documents Chinese American resistance to these crimes, illuminating the hidden history of that tumultuous time.

A look at the Taiwan Love Boat, where college-aged Taiwanese-Americans get closer to their history, their culture and each other.

This is a short anti-racist film trying to invoke and combat stereotypes. I'm not sure how succesful it is, but it is still written about in Asian American film studies. Clearly as the film shows all Orientals (a term that Edward Said has helped denaturalize) do NOT look the same!

Joel Hunt served as a combat engineer from 1998-2007, with multiple tours in Iraq. While there, he endured more than 15 roadside bombs, and experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Today, with the help of his dog, Barrett, he uses sports to push through the challenges of having a TBI.

Laura Plotkin's 1998 video documents the life of boxer Gina “Boom Boom” Guidi. Skillfully intercutting diverse voices with Guidi's, Plotkin captures the woman's energy and emotional strength: the oldest child of a single mom, Guidi had to raise three younger brothers and recover from drug and alcohol abuse to become the thoroughly grounded person we see in the film. Though she's openly lesbian, she argues that her sexuality has nothing to do with her being a boxer, and while she's mature enough to ignore a homophobic slur from a magazine publisher, she's clearly hurt by it. Her vulnerability is visible in the ring too, her face registering fear and hesitation as well as aggressiveness.