SHORTS & ANIMATION!

This month, watch leading-edge shorts from around the world. Then experience the pilot episode of an animated series about climate change. Hayti Film Next Level series presents innovations in area of fictional short-form storytelling.

MINE

MINE is an animated series that explores the difficult and worthwhile fight for the community you love.

Set in the near future, siblings Blaze and Mia live in Beauvoda — a community built around a supernatural source of water that influences their livelihood, culture and health. When the water seems to run out during an important coming-of-age ritual, panic ensues and the latent virus of capitalism is unleashed, threatening to undo this utopias’ progress. In order to save their community and their sister, Blalze must learn how to harness the power of the collective to find a cure.

MINE is a part of the Rise-Home Stories project, a groundbreaking collaboration that aims to reimagine the past, present, and future of our communities by transforming the stories we tell about them. In 2018, a group of multimedia storytellers and housing, land, and racial justice advocates came together and began a unique co-creative process. They’ve created a suite of five multimedia narrative projects, including MINE, that speak to the power of abundance and collective action in the face of increasingly toxic narratives of scarcity and individualism while planting a long-term vision for a just future.

**The pilot episode is followed by a panel discussion of the project’s creators.

WHO WILL START ANOTHER FIRE

Dedza Films is a distribution initiative dedicated to curating & facilitating the distribution of films from the next wave with a focus on underrepresented communities and early works of emerging storytellers. WHO WILL START ANOTHER FIRE is Dedza’s first release, featuring nine stories hailing from Nigeria, Uganda, the Philippines, Israel, and more from emerging BIPOC, LGBTQ, and international filmmakers who are defining the future of cinema.

INTRODUCING:

Like Flying (USA)

Directed by Peier Tracy Shen

A young Chinese-American girl navigates her childhood through her parents’ broken relationship.

Family Tree (Uganda)

Directed by Nicole Amani Magabo Kiggundu

A man whose wife has died visits a tree that has special significance to him. He recounts to his son what happened there many years previously.

Troublemaker (Nigeria)

Directed by Olive Nwosu

Obi’s best friend, Emeka, gives him a packet of firecrackers, the boys decide to have some fun. However, things escalate in unexpected ways, as Obi learns for the first time that actions have consequences, and that there are still things he cannot understand.

Polygraph (Israel)

Directed by Samira Saraya

Based on a true story, Yasmine, an openly lesbian Arab nurse living in Tel Aviv, finds out that her lover Or, an intelligence officer in the Israeli army, has been reporting on their relationship.

The Lights Are On, No One’s Home (USA)

Directed by Faye Ruiz

Mar, a trans woman who left home years ago, returns to her old neighborhood to find her childhood home. Upon her return, she’s confronted with the changes that gentrification has brought to the place she once knew so well.

By Way of Canarsie (USA)

Directed by Lesley Steele & Emily Packer

A wandering portrait of an oft-neglected shoreline community, By Way of Canarsie imagines possible futures at odds with a peaceful present. Through brief encounters, observational mise-en-scene, and expressive use of analog film, we begin to understand this predominantly black New York City neighborhood’s shared desires for recognition and respect.

The Rose of Manila (Philippines)

Directed by Alex Westfall

An imagining of the formative years of Imelda Marcos, who, as one half of the Marcos regime, would become infamous for embezzling billions from the country to sustain her extravagant lifestyle.

Slip (USA)

Directed by Nicole Otero

A woman arrives home at the end of a regular day, but as she begins to turn in for the night, she is overcome with a sense of restlessness. Unable to fit inside her own world, she goes back out into the night. Her journey around a mostly vacant city, obscured by darkness, cascades in space and time, away from one feeling and in search of another.

Not Black Enough (USA)

Directed by Jermaine Manigault

A young African-American man struggling to find his identity within his community meets a persuasive relic of the past.

PLEASE NOTE:

This month’s screenings are available online only.