Animation / Documentary / Music
Richard Rhodes, AKA Cookie MonStar, has been in the drag industry for 21 years. This Documentary follows the highs and lows of his successes and failures. It focuses on following your dreams, what it is to be a man and the pressures of life within the industry. This is an…

Himself/ Cookie MonStar/ Sheila Simmonds
Himself
Himself

CHASING CHASING AMY explores the transformational impact of a ‘90s rom-com on a 12 year old kid from Kansas, coming of age and contending with queer identity. For young Sav Rodgers, the Kevin Smith cult classic, CHASING AMY, became a life raft. As Rodgers examines the film and its making as a cornerstone of LGBTQ+ cinema, he finds himself at a complicated crossroads.

Each World Trade Center tower consisted of 110 floors. Each floor has a story. In this two-hour special, survivors from two of those floors, many speaking publicly for the first time, tell their stories. Focusing on one floor in the North Tower and one in the South, this film will provide a never-before-achieved intimacy with what it was really like to be inside the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Poet, rapper, playwright and recording artist Kae Tempest is one of the most viscerally exciting artists working in Britain today. They are the youngest ever recipient of the prestigious Ted Hughes prize and have been nominated for both the Brit and Mercury music awards. Tempest has always found support and respect within the queer art scenes, a place close to their heart. In July 2020, they came out as non-binary, announcing that they would publish and perform under the name Kae. This film delves deep into their creative process and gains rare, intimate insights into Kae’s life throughout a period of profound personal and artistic change.
The passionate advocates of the ‘Cigar Box Guitar Revolution’ express their love of making unique instruments and the democratic, re-cycling ethos of the movement. Many are from the UK’s northern, post-industrial towns, recreating self-identity through hand-made guitars. Their emotional connection with their instruments creates a unique sound which is quite magical. A cinematic short, subsequently commissioned by the BBC as Cigar Box Blues. Festivals include: Woodstock, Nashville, Albuquerque (Honourable Mention)

Acclaimed Montreal band Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra is one of a growing number of rock groups to have accepted an infant into their touring tribe. Touring with children is both costly and complicated, yet SMZ are determined to combine family life and being on the road with the band's deep political commitment.

After a quarter-century of political denial and social stigma, of stunning scientific breakthroughs, bitter policy battles and inadequate prevention campaigns, HIV/AIDS continues to spread rapidly throughout much of the world. Through interviews with AIDS researchers, world leaders, activists, and patients, FRONTLINE investigates the science, politics, and human cost of this fateful disease and asks: What are the lessons of the past, and what can be done to stop AIDS?

Self-effacing Hungarian pianist, József, has a unique talent for fusing contemporary jazz with traditional Roma music. This new sound catches the attention of the acclaimed saxophonist Tim Ries and the two begin performing together. József dreams of escaping his humdrum life and making it big in the home of jazz: America. Along the way, he conquers his demons and learns that when shooting for the stars, success is not the destination, but the journey itself.

Georgian director Otar Iosseliani prepares his film Jardins en Automne. Nothing is conventional in the filmmaker's system: Julie Bertuccelli portrays the gestation and production of a film that seems to follow the freest and most unpredictable poetic intuitions of its creator. The constant and hilarious arguments with the producer, Martine Marignac, a Michel Piccoli transformed into an old woman, and the director's peculiar filming system, in which he signals his actors to start with a whistle, paint a picture of one of the most unclassifiable cinematic experiences in contemporary cinema.