Lillian Smith: Breaking the Silence is a 50-minute documentary about the life and work of Georgia writer and activist Lillian Smith (1887 – 1966). This documentary explores her legacy and the life journey that led to her awakening, from her childhood experiences in a small southern town, to her years of living abroad in China, to directing a girls' summer camp in North Carolina. By the time she published a bestselling novel in 1944, her moral compass was finely tuned to the changes needed in the southern U.S., and she spent the next two decades confronting the ugly institution of segregation, saying that it harmed whites as much as blacks. In the decade before her death she wrote about the need for freedom and respect for everyone everywhere.
In January of 2016, a dozen members of the Memphis transgender community began meeting for a weekly story circle facilitated by Elaine Blanchard. The program, based on the format of her award winning Prison Stories series, was a time for sharing, healing and enlightenment. Thanks to the generosity of The California Institute for the Contemporary Arts, filmmaker Shelby Fuller Elwood documented their journey. All people have a story to tell, and all people long to be heard, respected and valued for who they are, and what they have experienced in life.
In Tennessee, and across the South, transgender people like Graham and Zeke face a daily struggle in their pursuit of equal protection under the law. From so-called 'bathroom bills' to laws restricting their ability to change their sex on legal documents, not to mention the personal and familial challenges as you transition, life is not easy nor fair for trans folk.
A slice-of-life documentary following a visually-impaired married couple as they prepare for a trip to the grocery store.
Filmed in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, this documentary tells the stories of four twentysomethings who are living their lives under the scrutiny and judgment often faced by those who clash with mainstream gender norms. Lizzy G, Kyta, and Yella Man are lesbian studs, and Ashton is an out trans man. While Lizzy G struggles to overcome abuse from her past, Kyta wants to free herself from her Asian family's expectations about her future. Ashton is navigating the tribulations of transition. And Yella Man? She's just trying to have a good time.
How a group of rebel rock bands including the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd rose up from one of the most marginalised parts of the USA - the Deep South - to conquer the world.
Spotlights the tradition-bearers of Southern foodways, presenting intimate portraits of men and women who grow, prepare and serve Southern food and drink. Examines themes related to foodways, sense of place, civil rights, gender, family dynamics, and diversity in the modern American South.
On a road trip through the American South, two close friends experience a major radio malfunction, followed by curious encounters at an Alabama auto repair shop.
Philoxenia is a short documentary highlighting the synergy between the Greek notion of philoxenia ("friend of the stranger") and Southern hospitality, as expressed through Birmingham, Alabama's Greek-owned restaurants. The film features six local favorite restaurants, two historians and, of course, a lot of mouthwatering dishes.
A stark adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find.
Short opera. A boy falls in love with a girl after an Appalachian prayer meeting, but her father wants her to go to the dance with a local shyster who the father thinks will bail him out of his money troubles instead.
In April 1864, 1,800 Union Army soldiers were attacked along a supply road deep in the muddy forests of South Arkansas. This is the story of those US soldiers, their Confederates attackers, and the battle that ensued during Red River Campaign.
Jimmy is convinced he's found a way to release his inner demons without going against the will of God. He believes that on the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when Jesus is “dead”, our sins are overlooked. Jimmy believes in... DEAD SATURDAY.
A porn-loving, Charles Manson-befriending, Mississippi Republican runs to become the next sheriff.
Filmmaker Dan Murdoch meets America's most infamous supremacist group - the Ku Klux Klan - who say they are in the midst of a revival, with a surge in membership and cross lightings across the Deep South.
In 1937, after seeing a photo depicting the lynching of a black man in the south, Bronx-born high school teacher Abel Meeropol wrote a poem entitled "Strange Fruit" that begins with the words: "Southern trees bear a strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root." He set the poem to music and a few years later convinced Billy holiday to record it in a legendary heartbreaking performance. Intertwining jazz genealogy, biography, performance footage, and the history of lynching, director Joel Katz fashions a fascinating discovery of the lost story behind a true American classic. Written by Excerpted from Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Update
A movie by Jon Jost, who is the maestro of the American experimental movie world. The film tells us the strange incidents that happen in the ruined old village. Comparing to Jon Jost’s previous movies, this film has a clearer narrative and is more experimental with the structure as well. The essay film, which takes place in Missouri where they live an outdated lifestyle and where old culture still exists, confuses the boundary between fiction and non-fiction. The movie is based from a true story but instead of telling the exact story, the director casts real actors and gives a little twist to it. The actors explain about the inhumane incidents that happened in the village and while reviving it, they create their own narratives.
An intimate insider’s journey to uncover buried truths and explore how the community in Monroe, Georgia has been impacted by the 1946 quadruple lynching and decades of racial injustice, shattering a code of silence that has distanced neighbor from neighbor for generations.
Kim lives with his dad, sells weed to skaters, writes poetry, and snorts painkillers to get through the day. One evening, while strolling through the subdivision painted up as his alter ego Shadow Zombie, Kim catches the eye of a registered nurse and part-time clown Brandi. What follows is a brief romance marked by destruction by the very real phantoms emanating from Kim's dead-end present and Brandi's traumatic past. Shooting under near-documentary conditions in and around Lafayette, Louisiana, Jorge Torres-Torres operates peopling his film with a coterie of genuine Acadiana misfits. The merciless and at times unexpectedly poignant observation of Kim's world dares to see through to the human core of a drug addict or clinically depressed clown.
With a single abortion clinic remaining in the state of Mississippi, the city of Jackson has become ground zero in the nation's battle over reproductive health-care. Jackson is an intimate portrait of the interwoven lives of three women in this town. Wrought with the racial and religious undertones of the Deep South, the lives of two women are deeply affected by the director of the local pro-life crisis pregnancy center and the movement she represents.