Julie Gustafson

BURY THE HATCHET is a portrait of three Mardi Gras Indian “Big Chiefs” of New Orleans, descendants of runaway slaves taken in long ago by the Native Americans of the Louisiana bayous. Once plagued by intertribal violence, today these African-American tribes take to the backstreets of New Orleans on Mardi Gras, dressed in elaborate Native-American influenced costumes they've sewn over the course of the year. When tribes meet, instead of attacking each other with hatchets and knives, they battle over which Chief has the prettiest suit. Director Aaron Walker's 5-year-long intimate entry into this often hidden New Orleans experience also reveals other battles the Chiefs face every day: harassment by the police, gentrification of their neighborhoods, disinterested youth, old age, and natural disaster. Still, the Chiefs prove their determination to survive.

Independent videomaker, Julie Gustafson, invites a diverse group of teenage girls from New Orleans to make autobiographical videos exploring their developing sexuality and identity. An unprecedented long-term collaboration, DESIRE weaves together the girls’ video work, the stories of their changing lives, as well as the family, social and economic contexts in which their desires and choices are shaped.

Set against the background of the Supreme Court’s historic decisions on women's reproductive rights, this documentary looks at the abortion controversy through the eyes of six women activists on both sides of the barricades in Paoli, PA. CASTING THE FIRST STONE focuses on six women who regularly confront each other from opposite sides of the picket line.

A video exploration of the Declaration of Independence’s most ambiguous "self-evident truth" through portraits of six people whose paths intersect at a maximum security prison in Pittsburgh, PA.

In this seminal feminist video, ten women address the camera and seemingly each other in a wide-ranging exploration of such previously taboo subjects as women’s sexuality, power, and fears about intimacy.