Urban Studies

Urban Studies

PICTURES OF GHOSTS
PICTURES OF GHOSTS
A wondrous ode to movies and movie-going, Pictures of Ghosts, from acclaimed director Kleber Mendonca Filho (Bacurau, Aquarius, Neighboring Sounds), is a multidimensional journey through time, sound, architecture and filmmaking, set in the urban landscape of Recife, Brazil: a historical and human territory, examined through the great movie theatres that served as spaces of conviviality during the 20th century.
AMERICAN RIVER
AMERICAN RIVER
The thrilling American River follows Mary Bruno, the noted environmental author, and guide Carl Alderson on a 4-day, 80 mile adventure down the Passaic River, from its pristine source in a wildlife refuge to its toxic mouth in Newark Bay.  Engaging residents, historians and advocates in candid conversations, the film asks how the Passaic became one of the most contaminated rivers in America? And can it be saved? The Passaic is an archetype for thousands of rivers facing similar reckonings. 
FAVORITE DAUGHTER
FAVORITE DAUGHTER
An intimate portrait of director Dana Reilly's grandmother Sylvia Weinstock and mother Janet Isa, sheltering in place together in a lower Manhattan apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic. Raw and charming, melancholy and funny—a portrait of two women with vastly different experiences coming together and supporting one another through the uncertainty of spending the next chapters of their lives “alone,” without a partner.
IWOW: I WALK ON WATER
IWOW: I WALK ON WATER
Since 2011, Khalik Allah (Black Mother) has attracted global attention for his radiant portraits of the denizens of 125th and Lexington in East Harlem. In IWOW, Allah returns to the intersection to explore narratives of intimacy, voice, identity and personal transformation. Sometimes painful in its vulnerability, often extremely funny in its candor, and always visually extraordinary, Allah’s one-of-a-kind epic is a contemporary rethinking of the diary film: Gordon Parks meets Jonas Mekas. 
R.I.P. T-SHIRTS
R.I.P. T-SHIRTS
Through the lens of a small t-shirt shop outside Washington D.C. and its young customers, R.I.P. T-SHIRTS intimately portrays the current spike in urban gun violence and its effect on Black youth in America.
17 BLOCKS
17 BLOCKS
In 1999, filmmaker Davy Rothbart met Emmanuel Sanford-Durant and his older brother, Smurf, during a pickup basketball game in Southeast Washington, D.C. Davy began filming their lives, and soon the two brothers and other family members began to use the camera themselves. Spanning 20 years, this story illuminates a national, ongoing crisis through one family's raw, stirring and deeply personal saga. 
UNDER TOMORROW'S SKY
UNDER TOMORROW'S SKY
Under Tomorrow's Sky follows renowned architect Winy Maas, co-founder of MVRDV, whose work argues for transforming cities with “high rises on a human scale,” stacked structural volumes with open spaces and greenery around them that feel like vertical villages. This inspiring documentary shows Maas’ influence on contemporary architecture, and examines how his designs are offering innovative solutions for the city of the future.
THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF
THE MOUTH OF THE WOLF
This haunting documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Pietro Marcello, director of Martin Eden and Lost and Beautiful is a sui generis love story, following the 20-year relationship between a Sicilian heavy named Vincenzo and a trans convict named Mary after their meet-cute in prison. But Marcello isn’t merely content to render their romance in all its love and complexity: The Mouth of the Wolf is also a lyrical, sensuous, and melancholy tribute to the port city of Genoa, capturing its singular aura and its intoxicating air of eternity. 
HERE FOR LIFE
HERE FOR LIFE
“A film of great compassion and political and aesthetic ambition in which the idea of a collective is prioritised for a change, but without sacrificing or downplaying the individual voices and idiosyncrasies that it comprises... Beautifully exuberant and optimistic" (Sight & Sound), Andrea Luka Zimmerman and Adrian Jackson's documentary, Here for Life, follows ten unruly Londoners as they navigate their wild and wayward way towards a co-existence far stronger than 'community'.
HAVANA, FROM ON HIGH
HAVANA, FROM ON HIGH
The chronic shortage of housing in Central Havana has pushed the city upwards forcing some to make their homes on building rooftops. This wondrous documentary tells the story of these remarkable and resilient rooftop dwellers - a secret village, hidden from the clamor of the streets below - who have a privileged point of view on a society in the process of major transformation.
THE HOTTEST AUGUST
THE HOTTEST AUGUST
What does the future look like from where we are standing? The focus of this extraordinary documentary – filmmaker Brett Story’s follow-up to her critically-acclaimed The Prison in Twelve Landscapes – is one city over one month (New York during August 2017), a month heavy with the tension of a new President, growing anxiety over rising rents, marching white nationalists, and unrelenting news of wildfires and hurricanes. Empathetic and incisive, The Hottest August offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation at a unique moment in time.
SUNRISE/SUNSET
SUNRISE/SUNSET
Shot in elegiac black and white, the romantic, wistful medium length Sunrise/Sunset, captures a college student's brief visit to New York from South Korea; recontextualizing all-too-familiar landmarks—Washington Square Park, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge—while subtly exploring the liminal space not only between cultures, but between the possibilities of adolescence and the realities of adulthood.
LOS REYES
LOS REYES
A magical documentary, Los Reyes presents the world, or more specifically, a skate park in Santiago, Chile, from the perspective of two wise and adorable dogs, Chola and Fútbol. As the camera effortlessly follows them throughout the day and night, the conversations of young skaters are heard in the background; frank talk of drug use, sexuality, economic mobility and social marginalization. 
DREAM OF A CITY
DREAM OF A CITY
Between 1958 and 1960 Walter Hess and Manny Kirchheimer shot black and white 16mm film from Wall Street to midtown New York to the Delaware River. The footage was left unedited. Nearly 60 later, Kirchheimer took up the challenge of editing it, adding music and sound that would mesh with the surrealism of the material. The result is a dynamic and compact symphony of a city.
ERIE
ERIE
In this landmark documentary, celebrated filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson presents a series of single-take, black-and-white sequences filmed in and around Lake Erie to draw a profound connection between Black migration from the South to the North and the economic hardships currently facing working class communities.
THE AREA
THE AREA
Filmed over the course of five years, The Area is a panoramic documentary about a neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, home to more than 400 African-American families, that is being displaced by the Norfolk Southern railroad company. It is a complex story of economic revitalization, commercial interests, and community rights.
CANNERS
CANNERS
Manfred Kirchheimer, director of award-winning films such as Stations of the Elevated and Tall: The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan, whom the New York Times recently called "an indispensable New York filmmaker," takes to the streets in an ode to the men and women who earn their daily bread by diligently collecting New York City’s bottles and cans.
BRONX GOTHIC
BRONX GOTHIC
From director Andrew Rossi (Page One: Inside the New York Times, Ivory Tower) comes an electrifying portrait of writer and performer Okwui Okpokwasili and her acclaimed one-woman show "Bronx Gothic," a story about two 12-year-old black girls coming of age in the 1980s.
NIGHT SCHOOL
NIGHT SCHOOL
Emmy-winning director Andrew Cohn’s absorbing documentary observes the individual pursuits of four adult learners seeking a high school diploma, fraught with the challenges of daily life and the broader systemic roadblocks faced by many low income Americans.
MILWAUKEE 53206
MILWAUKEE 53206
MILWAUKEE 53206 is America’s most incarcerated zip code; 62% of adult males in this mostly African-American community have spent time in a correctional facility. This urgent documentary examines how decades of poverty, unemployment, and a lack of opportunity has contributed to the crisis of mass incarceration in this and other communities across the nation.
THE STAIRS
THE STAIRS
Shot over the course of five years, Hugh Gibson's award-winning documentary examines the lives of habitual drug users at an urban health center staffed by both former and current users; expanding into a wide-ranging portrait of the conditions that can nurture addiction and the social and legal structures that surround it.
88:88
88:88
Referencing the digital display of electric appliances after the power’s been repeatedly cut off, Isiah Medina’s audacious experimental work – one of the most acclaimed in recent years – is a personal meditation on family, friendship and the experience of living in poverty.
WORLD WITHOUT END (NO REPORTED INCIDENTS)
WORLD WITHOUT END (NO REPORTED INCIDENTS)
A walk through a quiet waterside town in England yields myriad revelations - from prize-winning Indian curries to a nearly lost world of proto-punk music - in this wondrous new documentary from Jem Cohen, director of Museum Hours and Counting.
WILD PLANTS
WILD PLANTS
From urban farms in Detroit to Native-owned agriculture projects across the midwest to guerrilla gardens in Zurich, Wild Plants is a kaleidoscopic portrait of activists around the world who are creating their own botanic utopias.
HONG KONG TRILOGY
HONG KONG TRILOGY
Renowned cinematographer and artist Christopher Doyle celebrates Hong Kong and its people with this vibrant documentary that focuses on the city's residents in their childhood, youth, and old age.
THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES
THE PRISON IN TWELVE LANDSCAPES
In this remarkable documentary, filmmaker Brett Story excavates the often unseen links and connections that prisons – and our system of mass incarceration – have on communities and industries all around us. Widely acclaimed, The Prison in Twelve Landscapes is an essential documentary, a portrait of our criminal justice system in which we never see a penitentiary.
TASKAFA, STORIES OF THE STREET
TASKAFA, STORIES OF THE STREET
With readings by John Berger, Taskafa offers a brilliantly incisive meditation on urban space and city life by investigating the complex history of Istanbul’s street dogs.
ESTATE, A REVERIE
ESTATE, A REVERIE
The utopian dream of public housing is explored in this incandescent, artful documentary.