Moving Image Fund
Featured Work
A RECKONING IN BOSTON (83 minutes), directed by James Rutenbeck and produced by Kafi Dixon and Carl Chandler, will have its world premiere at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in February 2021. The film follows Carl, James, and Kafi’s experience in a filmmaking project first initiated by James to document Kafi and Carl's participation in a program called the Clemente Course in the Humanities. But over time James is forced to come to terms with a flawed film premise and his own complicity in racist structures that threaten Kafi and Carl's place in the city. The film becomes a reflexive exploration of structural racism that is negotiated and unpacked throughout the process of making the film. Learn more and follow the film at www.areckoninginboston.com.
CITY HALL (240 minutes), directed by Frederick Wiseman, continues its screening and theatrical run this year after its world premiere in September 2020 at the Venice International Film Festival and its broadcast premiere on PBS. The film shows the daily operations of various employees across all levels and parts of Boston city government as they seek to administer services to city residents. Learn more and follow the film at www.zipporah.com
ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (73 minutes), directed by Abigail Child, had its world premiere at the 2020 DOC NYC film festival and continues its festival screening run this year. An experimental feature documentary that explores current realities of android development with a focus on human/machine relations, gender & the ethical implications of this research, the film records cutting edge laboratories in Japan & the USA where scientists attempt to make robots move, speak & look human. These scientists & their discoveries are contextualized with cinematic & pop culture references, to underline the mythic, comic & uncanny aspects of our aspirations. Learn more and follow the film at originofthespeciesfilm.com
PHASES OF MATTER (73 minutes), directed by Deniz Tortum, had its world premiere at the 2020 Independent Film Festival Rotterdam and continues its festival run this year. Filmed at the Cerrahpaşa teaching hospital in Istanbul where the filmmaker's father is a doctor, PHASES OF MATTER follows the living and inanimate residents of the hospital, moving from the operating room to the morgue, between life and other states, the real and the virtual. Learn more and follow the film at deniztortum.com/phases-of-matter
After its premiere in Fall 2020 at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Southern Documentary Feature, MISSING IN BROOKS COUNTY (81 minutes) by Jeff Bemiss and Lisa Molomot will continue its festival-run this year and will have its broadcast premiere on the PBS series Independent Lens in Fall 2021. As the national debate over immigration policy simmers to a boil, the film follows the journey of two families who go to Brooks County, Texas to look for their loved ones who have gone missing along the US-Mexico border. Learn more and follow the film at missinginbrookscounty.com