The Orchestra Chuck Built

A filmmaker ventures into the archives of her photographer mother to construct a personal story of love, loss, and finding someone in the work they leave behind.

Cecil Gaines was a sharecropper's son who grew up in the 1920s as a domestic servant for the white family who casually destroyed his. Eventually striking out on his own, Cecil becomes a hotel valet of such efficiency and discreteness in the 1950s that he becomes a butler in the White House itself. There, Cecil would serve numerous US Presidents over the decades as a passive witness of history with the American Civil Rights Movement gaining momentum even as his family has troubles of its own. As his wife, Gloria, struggles with alcoholism and his defiant eldest son, Louis, strives for a just world, Cecil must decide whether he should take action in his own way.

Nestled in the woods outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, is a sleepaway camp for kids who are nonspeaking. To express themselves, they must use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices that translate their composed messages into audible speech. Follow the lives and experiences of these campers as a series of immersive, vérité-style character studies.

The real story behind Rudy Giuliani's infamous press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in November 2020, delivered just as the presidential election was being called for Joe Biden. One year after the event, and with exclusive access to the Four Seasons family, learn what really happened that day and what became of the small business that was thrust into the national spotlight.

Within a community of motels infamous for illicit activity, the Shaw Family grapples with housing insecurity and addiction while trying to raise their young son. When California's High-Speed Rail Project displaces them, a glimpse of stability appears within reach. A vérité, street level vantage of post-industrial America, documented over eight years, on one city block.