Movies: First Run Features

This essential new documentary pays tribute to the legacy of the late, legendary casting director Marion Dougherty and shines a light on one of the most overlooked and least understood crafts in filmmaking....

For 40 years, the community-organizing group ACORN advocated for America’s poorest communities, while its detractors accused it of promoting the worst of liberal policies. Riding high on the momentum of Barack Obama’s presidential victory in 2008, AC...

When Nicole, a young copy-shop employee, is hired to translate an ancient Chinese manuscript, she soon finds that the document has strange powers that little by little begin to exert an eerie influence over her life....

This sequel to "Before Stonewall" documents the history of gay and lesbian life from the riots at Stonewall in 1969 to the present. Narrated by Melissa Etheridge, the film explains the work, struggles, victories, and defeats the gay community has wea...

A film about modern Japanese architecture, its roots in the Japanese tradition and its impact on the Nordic building-tradition. Winding its way through visions of the future, traditions, nature, concrete, gardens and high-tech, KOCHUU tells us how co...

The true story of a young teenage girl whose mother is incarcerated for murder. Living in a Catholic Children's home run by an order of nuns, she provides poignant commentary about her mother, her own situation and her outlook for the future....

Once upon a time in the village of Kromer lived two beautiful young wolves. Cocksure Gabriel takes newcomer Seth under his paw and helps reconcile him to the vilification associated with being a wolf. They fall head-over-heels in puppy love, playing ...

Brothers Joel, Dennis and Sonny work together as dancers at a low-rent gay bar in downtown Manila, in the Philippines. Despite his mother's pleas, Sonny decides to quit college to work full-time at the bar, while Dennis has moved beyond dancing into...

Haile Gerima and Ryszard Kapuscinski travel around Ethiopia talking to people about their current situations and what needs to be done for a prosperous country....

A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music. For nearly a millenniu...

In 1986, Ross McElwee (Sherman's March) and Marilyn Levine were making a film about the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, when the imposing structure was still very much intact as the world’s most visible symbol of hardline Communism and Cold War ...

A busload of women become stranded in an isolated part of the Canadian countryside. As they await rescue, they reflect on their lives through a mostly ad-libbed script....

In a rapidly changing America where mass inequality and dwindling opportunity have devastated the black working class, three Detroit men must fight to build something lasting for themselves and future generations....

On August 3rd, 1979, a Vietnamese refugee shoots and kills a white crab fisherman at the town docks in Seadrift, TX. What began as a fishing dispute erupts in violence and ignites a resurgence of the KKK and open hostilities against the Vietnamese al...

Documentary about the influence that master cello player Paul Katz has on four gifted cello players over the space of several years. It explores how music can influence and enhance the lives of both the teacher and his students....

A documentary film about the exploits of the 10th Mountain Division, an elite group of mountain climbers who fought decisive battles against the Nazis in the Italian Alps during the final days of World War II. From the intensive training atop the Col...

Since its inception, performance art provided a forum for those artists whose work challenges the dominant aesthetic and cultural status quo. In "Sphinxes Without Secrets", performers, curators and critics unravel the mysteries of performance art and...

One of Mark Rappaport's later narratives (which won the Gold Hugo for Best First Feature at the Chicago International Film Festival in 1979), Impostors is an off-kilter comedy/mystery focused on two magicians trying to find Egyptian jewels, their pro...

Twenty years after a beloved local fisherman, Richie Madeiras, goes missing off the shores of Martha's Vineyard, a distant cousin locates Richie's kind, indelible spirit in the stories of family, friends, and the sweeping sea which has defined their ...

In a triumphant career that lasted forty years Erroll Garner pushed the playability of the piano to its limits, developed an international reputation, and made an indelible mark on the jazz world. And yet, his story has never been told. Until now. T...