2026
Sara Yang
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 [...]
Roni Jo Draper, Ph.D.
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. [...]
Daryl Jones
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 [...]
Elisa Leiva Anderson
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.
Amada Torruella
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 [...]
