Current Projects
Peak Moment: Community Responses for a Changing Energy Future
Peak Moment: Community Responses for a Changing Energy Future is a television series showcasing perspectives and initiatives being undertaken by individuals and communities moving towards local self-reliance in response to declining energy supplies, uncertain economies and potentially catastrophic climate change. The weekly 28-minute programs feature host Janaia Donaldson's conversations and onsite tours with guests. Sample topics include local food production; renewable energy; transportation alternatives; sustainable building and economic, business, and governmental responses.
Penny
Elizabeth Sher
Elizabeth Sher
Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a-Changin’” perfectly describes the multi-faceted life of Penny Cooper. Her life as a celebrated criminal defense attorney, art collector, feminist, and philanthropist mirrors the transforming decades, during which she has lived. Penny shares stories of her life against the stunning backdrop of her world class art collection and extensive personal archive, of photos and press clippings. Archival stills and footage, along with interviews of her life partner Rena, former law partners Jim and Christina, nephews Colin and Kelly, and other dear friends fill out the picture, of this amazing woman. Penny is truly a woman for and of our times.
A People Without a Land
Pennie Ungar-Sargon
Pennie Ungar-Sargon
For decades, the prevailing wisdom has been that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would come in the form of a two-state solution. Yet today, peace seems more elusive than ever. Why isn’t this approach working? Is it too late for a two-state solution? What will it take to achieve a lasting peace? "A People Without a Land" seeks to answer these difficult questions and suggest a new way forward.
The People's College
Michelle Blair
Michelle Blair
An ex-convict. A wheelchair-bound grandmother. A Vietnamese soldier. An undocumented teenager. A 5th-grade dropout. Each a community college student. Follow them over two years, in and out of the classroom, as they strive to reach their dream: a college degree. With a slashed education budget, and an increasing disregard toward the needs of the non-traditional student, The People’s College shows just what community college means to the people who need it the most.
Petals In The Dust: India’s Missing Girls
Nyna Pais Caputi
Nyna Pais Caputi
Petals In The Dust: India’s Missing Girls explores the reasons and attitudes behind the elimination of Indian baby girls in India and US. The film tackles the complexity of and dichotomy of a culture that reveres goddesses while casting aside so many of its females and pushing its own future onto a precipice of an irreversible gender imbalance.
The Phonographer
Edward Feldman
Edward Feldman
The Phonographer is the story of Karl, a field recordist of natural sounds who lives alone in the far reaches of Northern California. His quiet life is suddenly disrupted one day when his younger brother Ray shows up. As the day wanes the two find themselves deep in the forest where something ominous and primordial between them begins to emerge from the shadows.
The Pickled Head
George Csicsery
George Csicsery
Joaquín Murieta was a major figure in the history of California from the moment of his purported death in 1853. Murieta remains an iconic character, a hero who championed disenfranchised Latinos against the injustices of the 1849 Gold Rush. The Murieta story epitomizes the clash of two cultures. The Pickled Head aims to entertain, educate, and preserve a rich cultural heritage while investigating how legends are created.
Pipe Dreams
Jason Blalock and Richard Parks
Jason Blalock and Richard Parks
Pipe Dreams follows three diverse theater organists as they carry on an increasingly rare American tradition. This trio has defied modernization and kept three antique theater organs operating in the Bay Area—at three distinct theaters, all bound in a common fight for survival.
Portland Maine Film Festival
Tyler Johnston
Tyler Johnston
The Portland Maine Film Festival is an annual film Festival in Portland, Maine. The Festival works to bring established filmmakers, industry leaders, and innovators to present their work alongside local filmmakers, creating unique networking, educational, and creative opportunities. In addition to hosting screenings, the Festival also serves the community by organizing workshops and forums on the art and business of filmmaking. The next Portland Maine Film Festival will take place in fall 2013.
Pretty People
Arika Yanaka (director/producer) Mary Baker (producer)
Arika Yanaka (director/producer) Mary Baker (producer)
The documentary Pretty People follows the careers of several actors with different physical disabilities. Performers with a physical disability have had a long history in the entertainment industry. However, historically they have had limited employment opportunities and still do even today. Pretty People will lead audiences to discover why these disabled actors choose their careers, the unique issues they face, how they view their personal body image and how traditional definitions of beauty affect them. It is the filmmaker’s hope that this will be a powerful, true story that will entertain and encourage the audience to view people with physical disabilities in a new way.
Pretty Slick
James Fox
James Fox
Filmmaker James Fox grows frustrated by the lack of plain talk and BP's inability to plug a gushing well after its Deep Water Horizon rig exploded and sank in the Gulf of Mexico. During the summer of 2010, Fox travels across all four Gulf states documenting the largest man-made environmental disaster in U. S. history. He flies over ground zero with Marine Biologist Dr. Carl Safina who warns him that BP is sinking the oil with the chemical dispersant Corexit, sweeping it under the rug. He investigates this further and conducts his own independent water tests to determine toxicity levels. The results show that public safety takes a backseat to a tourist-based economy and the symbiosis between big oil and government becomes clear.
Prodigal Daughter
Mabel Valdiviezo
Mabel Valdiviezo
Prodigal Daughter is a one-hour personal documentary which chronicles the filmmaker's return to Peru and her realization of the cultural rift caused by 16 years of separation from her family. The tenacious pursuit of a better life has ironically dissipated her family's assets, causing misery and poverty while destroying the tight bond which they all once shared. Economic desperation drove family members to go their separate ways, creating a family diaspora reaching from Peru to the United States, Japan and beyond.
Progressive Pupil
Robin J. Hayes
Robin J. Hayes
Progressive Pupil creates educational documentary films and digital humanities projects about the politics, history and culture of communities in the African diaspora, and utilizes digital media to encourage dialogue and collaboration between scholars, teachers, students and leaders in global civil society. Our current documentary project, Black and Cuba: Find your Revolution, follows Ivy League African Americans as they travel to Cuba and discover that inequality cannot be addressed by silencing discussions about race.
The Purple Onion
Mathew Szymanowski
Mathew Szymanowski
Chinese-American comedian Johnny, and his African-American comedian friend Jules, both struggle to get recognition on the San Francisco comedy scene. As if to make matters worse, Johnny’s immigrant mother moves in with him after recently getting laid off. As Johnny's personal and professional prospects begin to fade his mother becomes the target of his frustration until he realizes she is the only one who truly accepts him as he is.