T. Griffin

The extraordinary story of disco queen Donna Summer through a rich archive of unpublished film excerpts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recordings that span the life of one of the most iconic performers ever to shake a room to its timbers. From her early career with Giorgio Moroder in Germany, to later years more focused on spirituality and family life as a shelter from troubles associated with both notoriety and intimate wounds, her story is all the more special for being told in the first person – both singular and plural.

Brooke Shields, ’80s icon and household name, was a child model before she came to prominence in Louis Malle’s controversial film "Pretty Baby" at age 12. With a series of provocative Calvin Klein jeans ads and leading roles in 1980s teensploitation hits "The Blue Lagoon" and "Endless Love," Shields’ early career was defined by a sexuality that she could neither claim nor comprehend.

In 1969, bankrupt pizzeria owner Richard Davis invented the modern-day bulletproof vest. To prove that it worked, he shot himself — point-blank — 192 times.

In a Texas military town, three teenage girls confront the dark corners of adolescence at the end of a fever dream summer.

Take a stroll down Sesame Street and witness the birth of the most influential children's show in television history. From the iconic furry characters to the classic songs you know by heart, learn how a gang of visionary creators changed the world.

Five Years North is the coming-of-age story of Luis, an undocumented Guatemalan boy who just arrived alone in New York City. He struggles to work, study, and evade Judy - the Cuban-American ICE officer patrolling his neighborhood.

In an unusual experiment, a thousand 17-year-old boys from Texas join together to build a representative government from the ground up.

When artist-turned-filmmaker Jill Magid learns that the archives of Mexico's most famous architect are being held in a private collection, she devises a radical plan to explore the contested legacy of the late Luis Barragán.

Digging through the vast collection of his father's home videos, a young man reconstructs the unthinkable story of his boyhood and exposes vile abuse passed through generations.

Karoline, Christine and Enoch are high school seniors who want to be the first generation in their families to go to college, and they are determined to bring their friends with them. That's why they work as peer college counselors in their schools even as they reach towards their own college dreams. Karoline, Christine and Enoch are fighting for the right to a better future, for themselves and for every single one of their classmates.

Directed by Darius Clark Monroe and executive produced by Spike Lee, this documentary short tells the story of what happened when a group of college athletes decided to protest a long-standing racial injustice.

Filmed and edited in intimate vérité style, this movie follows visionary medical practitioners who are working on the cutting edge of life and death and are dedicated to changing our thinking about both.

The lives of four Syrian families, resettled in Baltimore and under a deadline to become self-sufficient in eight months.

Traces the life and mental illness of New York artist and photographer Ruth Litoff, and her sister's struggle to come to terms with her tragic suicide.

Penetrating the insular world of New York's Hasidic community, focusing on three individuals driven to break away despite threats of retaliation.

For over a decade, this portrait of a North Philadelphia family and the creative sanctuary offered by their home music studio was filmed with vérité intimacy. The family's 10-year journey is an illumination of race and class in America, and it's a testament to love, healing and hope.

At three years old, a chatty, energetic little boy named Owen Suskind ceased to speak, disappearing into autism with apparently no way out. Almost four years passed and the only stimuli that engaged Owen were Disney films. Then one day, his father donned a puppet—Iago, the wisecracking parrot from Aladdin—and asked “what’s it like to be you?” And poof! Owen replied, with dialogue from the movie. Life, Animated tells the remarkable story of how Owen found in Disney animation a pathway to language and a framework for making sense of the world.

In September 2012, the tiny prairie town of Leith, North Dakota, sees its population of 24 grow by one. As the new resident's behavior becomes more threatening, tensions soar, and the residents desperately look for ways to expel their unwanted neighbor.

An idealistic collective launches a TV channel in the very early days of portable video cameras. This wonderful lesson in journalism makes it clear just how perilous it is to promote your own view of society via autonomous media. From the tumultuous period of Woodstock, the Black Panthers, women’s lib and anti-Vietnam demonstrations.

Desperate, broken men chase their dreams and run from their demons in the North Dakota oil fields. A local Pastor's decision to help them has extraordinary and unexpected consequences.

A fearless sea captain, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, sails a ship through loopholes in international law, providing abortions on the high seas, and leaving in her wake a network of emboldened activists who trust women to handle abortion on their own terms.

THE EDUCATION OF MOHAMMAD HUSSEIN is an intimate look at how the largest Muslim community in America responds to the provocations of an anti-Islamic preacher. Through the eyes of children, the film examines what it is like to come of age as a Muslim in the United States ten years post 9/11.

Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day. Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. LA CAMIONETA follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected worlds in which we live.

Dragonslayer documents the transgressions of a lost skate punk falling in love in the stagnant suburbs of Fullerton, California in the aftermath of America's economic collapse. Taking the viewer through a golden SoCal haze of broken homes, abandoned swimming pools and stray glimpses of unusual beauty, Dragonslayer captures the life and times of Josh 'Skreech' Sandoval, a local skate legend and new father, as his endless summer finally collides with the future. Set to the alternately roaring and dreamy soundtrack of bands from the indie labels Mexican Summer and Kemado Records including Best Coast, Bipolar Bear, Children, Dungen, Eddy Current and the Suppression Ring, Golden Triangle, Jacuzzi Boys, Little Girls, Real Estate, The Soft Pack, Saviours, as well as DEATH and Thee Oh Sees. Dragonslayer is a punk-rock manifesto to youth, love and learning to survive after the decline of western civilization.

Until an FBI bust upended her life, Jeanette Maier was a successful New Orleans madam. Her discreet clientele included a number of powerful, high-ranking politicians. The ensuing very public trial - both in the courtroom and in the media – focused salaciously on the fact that Jeanette’s brothel was a family affair – Jeanette ran the business with her mother and she employed her own daughter as an escort. Jeanette and her family ended up infamous, their futures blighted by felony convictions, yet their well-connected clients escaped exposure. Now, the Canal Street Madam sets out to reinvent herself, to reclaim her public persona, and to protect her family as she fights back against a system that silences the powerless and protects the elite.

Throughout human history, people have had giddy dreams and fantastic notions about what the future would bring. Today the future has become more of a threat than a promise-a knot of intractable problems looming menacingly on the horizon. With a powerful sense of poetry, Utopia in Four Movements uses the collective experience of cinema to explore the battered state of the utopian impulse at the dawn of the twenty-first century.

Filmmaker Kimberly Reed returns home for her high school reunion, ready to reintroduce herself to the small town as a transgender woman and hoping for reconciliation with her long-estranged adopted brother Marc. Things are complicated by the shocking revelation that Marc may be the grandson of Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth, forcing Kim and her family to explore questions of sexual orientation, identity, severe trauma and love.

This surreal art-movie/live-performance hybrid is comprised of New York filmmaker Jem Cohen's original 16mm and DV movie footage combined with concert clips of Vic Chesnutt and members of Silver Mt. Zion, among others.

One year after Hurricane Katrina, troubles arise for a surgeon who, despite remarrying his ex-wife and starting his life anew, becomes reacquainted with an former girlfriend.

A short musical film