Shorts Programs (Alphabetical)
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ADULT SHORTS NIGHT – The Perverse and the Profane
BLASTERCORE – East Coast Premiere
Director: Alessandro Vivarini
Country: Italy, Running Time: 11:25 min
Porn lovers, hardcore music, ninja-police and socially inadequate behaviors are mixed in a low- quality homemade exploitation style short film.
With
THE FROZEN EYE
Director: Karim Oulhaj
Country: Belgium, Running Time: 29 min
Bernard is an average man who is moving into his new apartment. While settling in, he suddenly discovers there’s a hole in his floor, enabling him to spy on his neighbor…
And
HOMELAND INSECURITY
Director: Zeina Barakeh
Country: US, Running Time 9:47 min
This animated piece investigates various mechanisms of war and the fragmentation of the body and the self. It further draws upon current events, as well as cotton as a core resource in the economics and spread of Empire from the Islamic Era, through the Crusaders, through slavery and into the present.
And
PRINCESS EUN HWA
Director: Dave Zhang
Countries: China/South Korea/USA, Running Time: 38:12 min
A dark fairy tale about a young Korean princess who falls in love with princes from different kingdoms in her fantasies.
And
RABBIT BLOOD
Director: Yagmur Altan
Country: USA, Running Time: 4:36
Animated short film looks at an ordinary day at an old mysterious Turkish country house where the residents have an extraordinary way of brewing tea.
And
WADE
Director: Devereux Milburn
Country: USA, Running Time: 12:22 min
A maladroit bumbler pines after a co-worker in the vain hope of catching her eye over the advances of his superior.
HARLEM SHORTCUTS – HOMEMADE CINEMA
BOOK OF DAYS: THE FINAL CHAPTER
Director: Ian Phillips
Country: USA, Running Time: 39 min
A book vendor on the streets of NYC struggles to get his own book published. Shot over the course of 8 years.
With
CURSE OF WAR
Director: Abdul Malik Abbott
Country: USA, Running Time: 16:49 min
A U.S. Marine who’s suffering from PTSD reminisces about his tumultuous past and makes a decision that will affect his future.
And
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE HARRIETS
Director: Clare Kent
Country: USA, Running Time 5:20 min
Three Harriet Tubmans have something to say about how America runs its money, since her face is going to be on it. Featuring a soul/rap track with a gospel finish.
And
NOTHING HAPPENED
Director: Ted Schneider
Country: USA, Running Time: 22:44 min
If a man is stopped and frisked in the middle of Harlem but no one thinks it’s a big deal, did anything really happen?
And
ONE MAN’S TRASH
Director: Kelly Adams
Country: USA, Running Time: 17 min
For 34 years, Nelson Molina has worked for the NYC Department of Sanitation, developing a unique relationship to the objects that fill the garbage bags lining the streets. With a keen curatorial eye for finding treasure in household trash, Nelson has created a collection of found objects in a sanitation garage in East Harlem, which he refers to as a museum of “Treasures in the Trash.”
And
UPTOWN UNDERDOG
Director: Nuhi de Stani
Country: USA, Running Time: 13 min
Film looks at Michael Henry Adams, a Harlem historian and activist who finds himself in a constant battle against greed and cultural destruction.
SUNDAY SHORTS – SCI FI TO SURREAL
GHOSTS IN TIME
Director: Jimmy Nsubuga
Country: UK, Running Time: 8 min
Eve risks her life to travel back in time in order to change the events that caused the death of her parents.
With
IN VIVO
Director: Tamika Guishard
Country: USA, Running Time: 9:22
Using exposure therapy to supplement his PTSD medication, a soldier teeters on the edge of reality.
And
NEUROPHREAK
Director: George Dalphin
Country: USA, Running Time: 20:10
ORANGE is the AI that runs society, to which all humans are directly connected via wireless brain implants. Gwen is a young woman who wants to find the base of reality; Will is a young man who has discovered a meditative method of making use of the mental connection shared by all, to take over the bodies of others, and after they meet, nothing will be the same.
And
SHEN
Director: Jace Alexander Casey
Country: USA, Running Time: 21:33
Seeking solace from her domineering fiancé, a traumatized bride-to-be searches for an artist who appears to be drawing her erotic, ominous fate. Part psychosexual thriller, part art-house film, SHEN is a unique portrait of desire and domination in their most cerebral and bodily manifestations.
And
SISTERS
Directed by David Chontos
Country: USA, Running Time: 3:50
A music video which is part exercise of passion, and part love letter, SISTERS is a fragment of some lost, tragic opera
And
THE SKY OVER BERLIN OF MY CHILDHOOD – New York City Premiere
Director: Bakhtiyar Islamov
Country: Kasakhstan, Running Time: 10:04 min
This is a film about lost children in a strange place and a metaphor of the lost generation born in the post Soviet area between 1980-1990. The images of the film are memories of the young people who passed through the collapse of the empire.
And
TUSSLE IN THE BACKWOODS
Director: Fabio Sousa
Country: Brazil, Running Time: 14:34
An animated short film about a group of farmers in a rickety truck that have an accident and have to finish the trip on foot. That is when they end up face to face with a mysterious creature.
SUNDAY SHORTS – SOULFUL
HENDRIX TRIBUTE
Director: Azar Dagher
Country: USA, Running Time: 4:33 min
Hendrix tribute song from Charlie Sayles 25th anniversary reissue of the classic 1990 sessions.
With
HOW BERLIN GOT THE BLUES
Director: Victoria Luther
Countries: Germany, USA, Running Time: 45:00
The film looks at Eb Davis and the Super band. How a military man, working in a small, clandestine unit in West Berlin, was able to spread the Blues to the people of West and East Berlin, bridging the gap between the cold war and the love of the Blues.
And
MERCURY RISING
Director: Colm Dillane
Country: USA, Running Time: 4:40
A collaborative story between visual artist Colm Dillane and recording artist Zarif Wilder (AKA theMIND). Dillane’s film is a depiction of the streets of Zarif Wilder’s youth in Chicago and Philadelphia. The video’s characters are made out of clay and hand-made clothes from the fabrics from Dillane’s KidSuper clothing line and the sets are made of cardboard, paint and found objects.
And
ONE DAY AT A TIME
Director: Gabri Christa
Countries: Netherlands Antilles, Running Time: 27:18
When a Caribbean Man discovers Yoga and finds his Guru, he discovers that he is more than his blackness and becomes a yoga teacher and health activist in his local island community.
And
SOUL CITY
Directors: Gini Richards, Monica Berra, SheRea DelSol
Country: USA, Running Time: 20:45
The story of a group of Black Power activists who attempt to build a multi-racial utopia in Klan Country, North Carolina during the 1970s.
And
THE CRIP WHO LOVES YOGA
Director: James Wvinner
Country: USA, Running Time: 6:00
A Crip gang member tells the story of the rise and trials of the Shoreline Crip gang in Venice, California and how yoga became a part of his life.
SUNDAY SHORTS – SUSPENSEFUL
A BEAUTIFUL DAY
Director: Phedon Papamichael
Country: USA, Running Time: 21:01 min
Gene Thompson (James Brolin) wakes up knowing that the decision he has made will change his life forever. Following in the tradition of the new Greek Cinema phenomenon, the film’s Athens- born director brings a searing expose of the fragility of the human psyche. Gene gets up day after day and follows the same monotonous routine that he has lived since the death of his wife ten years earlier. He is aging fast from illness and loneliness and has given up on the future. Today, however, he awakens with a new determination to end the life he has known. Today, there is a new resolve that will change the course of everything.
With
ALL MY BLACK SONS
Director: Nicole Lockhart
Country: US, Running Time 5:42 min
Italian art’s iconic Black Madonna comes to life to protect her son, the Black Messiah, from his impending death.
And
BOAT PEOPLE
Director: Paul Meschùh
Countries: Croatia/Germany, Running Time: 29 min
On his journey from Somalia to Europe, shipwrecked Moussa is picked up by a wealthy couple on their luxurious catamaran. The athletic young man is the only survivor of a disaster in the Mediterranean Sea and asks Hannes and Gerlinde to smuggle him across the border. Questioning Moussa’s true intentions, the yacht owners are torn between mistrust, fear and the urge for helping a fellow human being. A political drama of two separated worlds colliding within one global community.
And
THE FIRMEST FRIEND
Director: Andrew Fixell
Country: USA, Running Time: 19:46
The story of human and canine outsiders finding their way into each other’s lives and giving each other hope where previously there had been none.
And
UGLY – New York City Premiere
Director: LeRon Lee
Country: USA, Running Time: 21 min
An urban, coming-of-age story of a boy looking for love in the wrong place..his own environment.