2026
Pleasure Seekers
Pleasure Seekers is a vérité feature length documentary following the intertwined lives of three women in Brooklyn, New York. Mayra, a first-generation immigrant from Ecuador, and mother reflects on her life once rooted in survival over pleasure, now reclaims her relationship to sex and aging. Her daughter Sam, a filmmaker in her twenties uninterested in marriage or children, returns home with a camera and a growing desire to understand her mother—and herself. Alongside her is Emily, her childhood best friend and practically a second daughter to Mayra, who is adamant about finding love. Finding intersectional and intergenerational perspectives on the [...]
Untitled EJ Lee Documentary
The EJ Lee film is a feature-length documentary that uses verite and archival footage to take an intimate look inside a female Asian American superstar’s life through two timelines: EJ's historical journey as a trailblazing player and dedicated assistant coach in the 1980s, and her present-day narrative tracking the final chapters of EJ’s 40-year basketball career as a first-time college head coach in West Texas.
KUNIMORI
Under the Japanese colonial occupation of Korea, the policy of sōshi-kaimei forced Korean people to replace their names with Japanese: an act of cultural genocide — the eradication of Korean language, customs, identity. In these years, my grandfather’s family was renamed: KuniMori. The eldest of the brothers, Park Young In, became Masami Kuni. Far beyond the end of the colonial period in 1945, he lived and died by this name. This film explores why, and what he left behind. Masami Kuni became a pioneering modern dancer, performing and teaching across Japan, Germany, Denmark, the United States, and Brazil. Passing in [...]
Película sin fin, 1995
In the wake of her grandmother’s death, a filmmaker discovers Hi‑8 tapes hidden in a closet, revealing an unfinished documentary from the mid‑90s. As she pieces the film together, she uncovers the overlap between her earliest childhood memories, her grandmother’s public fight for justice against the Pinochet dictatorship, and a city emerging from fascism into the new millennium. Reassembled, the inherited images blur history and imagination, as the unsettled past pulses toward possible futures.
We Arrive With Fire | Ne-kah Nuee’m Mehl Mech
WE ARRIVE WITH FIRE explores how fire came to the people, the relationship fire has with the land, how settlers sought to separate fire and land, and the efforts of the Cultural Fire Management Council (CFMC), led by Executive Director Margo Robbins, to reunite fire and the land in a good way. Unlike Western stories that focus on protagonist growth, WE ARRIVE WITH FIRE uses Native storytelling methods focusing on the moral lessons and practices audiences can adopt. WE ARRIVE WITH FIRE is organized around six chapters–Origins, Fire, Air, Land, Water, and Fire–that reflect the cyclical nature of Indigenous storytelling. [...]
Allensworth: The Town That Refuses to Die
Allensworth was founded in 1908 in California’s Central Valley as a haven for Black families. The town thrived on agriculture and small businesses but suffered when drought hit and a land company refused to drill promised wells. Allensworth would nearly vanish after its founder’s death and the diversion of their railroad to a nearby, all-white town. But a few families persisted and fought to preserve the town’s legacy, transforming Allensworth into “the town that refuses to die.” Now, Allensworth is once again put to the test. After years of drought and infrastructure challenges including a failing water system, its roughly [...]
Vena Acuática
In Vena Acuática or Water Vein (in English) water is a conduit, a connective tissue, a collective voice and a carrier of histories, memories and visceral emotions. In El Salvador, dominion over the natural world is championed by those in power, however women have become the veins that carry life throughout the Salvadoran territory, protecting human rights and tending to their environments with love and devotion. Like a river, we flow in and out of the waterways in a bustling tropical region, guided by women who look to their most intimate relationships to nurture their day-to-day and make sense of [...]
The Quiet Hours
After inheriting a nearly abandoned seaside hotel, estranged siblings discover that every room contains traces of a family tragedy no one remembers the same way. Over the course of one storm-filled weekend, they must decide whether to preserve the stories they've inherited—or uncover the truth that could destroy what's left of their family.
Samantha Berlanga
Pleasure Seekers is a vérité feature length documentary following the intertwined lives of three women in Brooklyn, New York. Mayra, a first-generation immigrant from Ecuador, and mother reflects on her life once rooted in survival over pleasure, now reclaims her relationship to sex and aging. Her daughter Sam, a filmmaker in her twenties uninterested in marriage or children, returns home with a camera and a growing desire to understand her mother—and herself. Alongside her is Emily, her childhood best friend and practically a second daughter to Mayra, who is adamant about finding love. Finding intersectional and intergenerational perspectives on the [...]
Jason Rhee
The EJ Lee film is a feature-length documentary that uses verite and archival footage to take an intimate look inside a female Asian American superstar’s life through two timelines: EJ's historical journey as a trailblazing player and dedicated assistant coach in the 1980s, and her present-day narrative tracking the final chapters of EJ’s 40-year basketball career as a first-time college head coach in West Texas.
