Amanda Katz

Lee Fields is a funk and soul legend 50 years in the making. In this feature documentary, his journey to find his place in soul music history takes you from vinyl to virtual—and back again. His voice has been compared to James Brown, but Lee Fields is no knock-off. He’s the real thing. For decades, he thought his music dreams were dead. But with one phone call, everything changed … Interspersed with striking, never-before seen performances of new and classic Lee Fields songs, the film takes us through Lee’s memories from the moment soul music began, to his hard-won present-day success, and shows how 50 years of changing technology have conspired to create one beautiful but fleeting moment in music history.

From early morning until night, NYC bustles and creaks, as life inside and outside of buildings is observed, heightened by the juxtaposition of labor versus leisure.

32 words: On my daily commute, I find myself drawn to this underutilized space, tacked-on to a newly constructed condominium. Filmed on the first day of Spring. 210 North 12th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 48 words: Images from the exterior of an underutilized “community room” in a Williamsburg condo are combined with interior field recordings of the space. The film places the viewer simultaneously inside and outside, a 4-minute pause to consider the potential of these empty sites that are mysteriously on display.

When you drop off a bag of dirty laundry, who's doing the washing and folding? The Washing Society brings us into New York City laundromats and the experiences of the people who work there by observing these disappearing neighborhood spaces and the continual, intimate labor that is performed there.

The White House is one of America’s most iconic buildings; it is a symbol of shared national history and is home to the most powerful person on Earth. Here, the president charts the course for the country, and the First Family lives in the spotlight. It's a home, an office, and a museum. It's a bunker in times of war, a backdrop for command performances or state visits, and the heart of the American body politic.

Immigrant residents of a “shift-bed” apartment in the heart of New York City’s Chinatown share their stories of personal and political upheaval. As the bed transforms into a stage, the film reveals the collective history of the Chinese in the United States through conversations, autobiographical monologues, and theatrical movement pieces. Shot in the kitchens, bedrooms, wedding halls, cafés, and mahjong parlors of Chinatown, this provocative hybrid documentary addresses issues of privacy, intimacy, and urban life.

THE DEATH OF FEELING is an impressionistic film. It concerns the struggle to retain ones sensuality and emotion in a depersonalized world. The film was directed by a woman and shot by a man in order to create alluring images of a female who is bound & defined by the patriarchal perspectives of the culture in which she lives. These images were then edited by the filmmaker as a silent visual commentary on her objectification. – Amanda Katz

A dual portrait of a florist named John and the highway that surrounds his small shop in Queens. We turn to John and learn about a history that takes seconds to speed by and is easily overlooked.

A boy. A girl. His story. Of her.

Objects and sounds collected on an early morning walk through Brooklyn, New York billow against a sun-struck floor.