Changed Landscape

On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.

In a hellish future where human beings have become stupefied by the state of permanent happiness they have been genetically altered to experience, Jack offers relief via drugs that cause his customers the welcome phenomenon of pain. But when Jack receives a mysterious videotape of his dead father, he sets out to unmask the dangerous conspiracy that has created this dystopian world.

Did you know that clownfish change sex from male to female? (So if Nemo’s mom had died in real life, his dad could have become his mom!) Did you know that albatross, penguins and swans parent in same sex pairs? Or that bonobos, who are just as closely related to us as chimps, are matriarchal and have same-sex sex every day?! Narrated by Elliot Page, Second Nature follows trailblazing Evolutionary Biologist Dr. Joan Roughgarden as she meets groundbreaking scientists exploring the 1500+ animal species who engage in same-sex sexual behavior and parenting, change sex, form matriarchies, and more, debunking myths that females are “inferior” and that being queer is “unnatural.” SECOND NATURE — everything you didn’t learn in high school biology.

Julie Wyman’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. As Julie unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being tokenized and put on display.

A Field Guide to Coastal Fortifications is an essay film charting the technological evolution of military bunkers built within the San Francisco Bay’s eroding coast. The film observes a dynamic geological relationship between the literal structures of colonial power, and the land itself. As symbols of military might, the bunkers were tasked with protecting the coast from ‘perceived threats.’ Constructed, reconstructed and updated over time, these structures stood and waited for the enemy that never came. Against the backdrop of a changing landscape and its mythology, the film looks at the evolution of military technologies of seeing.

A look at the transparency of a political process and the veneer of its bureaucracy.

A documentary from Stripe Press that follows the evolution of a rudimentary gaming network between friends in Cuba into a DIY internet that serviced most of the island.

A meditation on the sight of a blue whale beached on a California shore. The film observes the onlookers and the nature of their looking.

"A coastal sand dune is transformed and reshaped into digital ether. The film focuses closely on sand as a material, which is composed of silica, the mineral that is a primary ingredient in manufacturing silicon chips, lenses, binoculars, microscopes, and mirrors—devices that extend our vision. The film uses these devices to visually capture the sand dune and evoke the transformation of materials that goes into their production. Through 16mm analog techniques, the elemental forces of a sand dune merge with the physical properties of the celluloid." (TP) Commissioned for Canyon Cinema's Print Generations project.

Quiet images and disembodied voices drift across the landscape. Someone who left this place a long time ago longs to see it anew. Twenty years after the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina its repercussions still loom over the everyday life of the residents.