On January 20, 2017, protestors took to the streets of Washington DC to disrupt the Inauguration of President Donald J. Trump. America is Waiting presents a chronicle of the day's events, employing affective approaches to observational documentary coupled with on-the-street interviews with protestors and pro-Trump alike. By presenting the day's events in reverse chronological order, the film reflects on the nature of constructed memory, image making, and the production of meaning across an historic event, calling into question the ways in which historical events become narrativized and condensed within popular discourse.
2018
REIFF 2018
REIFF 2018
18-year-old Ally meets 19-year-old Sara, when she moves in next-door. Quickly they form a strong relationship as Ally finds solace with Sara. Soon Sara discovers Ally's secrets and she manipulates and convinces her to participate in an act of naive revenge against Ally's abuser.
REIFF 2018
Based on a true story, "Sac de Merde" tells the tale of Mazel Mankewicz, an unlucky-in-love yet irrationally optimistic New Yorker who thinks her luck has changed when she spends the night with the man of her dreams. As it turns out, he might just be full of shit. Literally.
REIFF 2018
An angry, crackling and defiantly disordered underclass of nowheresville punk- rock kids, see their band Surgeon Generals Warning (SGW) as their ticket out of small town Texas, as 1990 comes to a close. The band drops acid, plays gigs and carries out calculated acts of vandalism around town to the television soundtrack of 24-hour newscasts about Operation Desert Storm and devotion to country at any cost. Faced with the reality of a dead end job at the plastic plant, a life in the oil field, or fighting a war that has no meaning to them, the group's chaos and imminent adulthood leaves them completely vulnerable for what ensues.
REIFF 2018
The 2017 total solar eclipse was undoubtedly one of the most anticipated events in recent history, with Carbondale, Illinois smack in the spot of longest duration. Students, staff and faculty of Southern Illinois University's College of Mass Communication and Media Arts taped hundreds of hours of eclipse-related planning and interviews even before they captured this natural wonder above Southern Illinois. The resulting documentary, In the Shadow, highlights the history, the science and, above all, the sublime human experience of witnessing a total solar eclipse in Southern Illinois on August 21, 2017.
REIFF 2018
In Kentucky, Soup Beans serve as both a culinary staple of the region and a communal dish that connects Kentuckians past and present. Chef Ouita Michel and her mentor Freda Raglin paint a pinto-filled picture of Kentucky in this documentary short.
REIFF 2018
BULLITT COUNTY is an action/thriller about four friends who reunite for a bachelor party in the Fall of 1977 to hunt for buried Prohibition money on the Bluegrass Bourbon Trail, only to become ripped apart by greed, corruption, and murder. The film is an exciting mix between 'No Country For Old Men,' 'Deliverance,' and 'The Shining.'
REIFF 2018
Madison, Tennessee -- a historic music landmark is lost to developers until a curious man sees the need to preserve its artifacts.
REIFF 2018
Two Hasidic teenage girls run away from their strict community and travel across America in the hope of finding real freedom.
REIFF 2018
Purple Songs Can Fly, the first recording studio ever created on a pediatric cancer floor, was founded in 2006 at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston, Texas. Twelve years and thousands of songs later, six childhood cancer patients, Mia, Layla, Dominic, Emily, Stephen and Christian, come together as survivors to share "Journey to Hope" an original musical featuring their own songs, written and recorded in the Purple Songs Can Fly studio during their individual cancer journeys.