Breakdowns of 1940(1940)

The 1920s saw a revolution in technology, the advent of the recording industry, that created the first class of African-American women to sing their way to fame and fortune. Blues divas such as Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Alberta Hunter created and promoted a working-class vision of blues life that provided an alternative to the Victorian gentility of middle-class manners. In their lives and music, blues women presented themselves as strong, independent women who lived hard lives and were unapologetic about their unconventional choices in clothes, recreational activities, and bed partners. Blues singers disseminated a Black feminism that celebrated emotional resilience and sexual pleasure, no matter the source.

A man and a woman have an awkward encounter at an indoor playground.

The original documentary on the Wigstock festival, back in the day when it was a much smaller affair in Thompkins Square Park. A full day of peace, love, and wigs…

“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim

In Search of Avery Willard iIlluminates the life and work of the groundbreaking, and mostly forgotten, artist Avery Willard — photographer, filmmaker, writer, publisher, leatherman, pornographer.

A newly arrived guest of a Hollywood hotel charms and amazes the regulars, and they decide to invite him to their Christmas dinner.

Flubs and bloopers that occurred on the set of some of the major Warner Bros. pictures of 1942.

Flubs and bloopers that occurred on the set of some of the major Warner Bros. pictures of 1946.

A very short film about members of a community who one by one suffer murder and assassination by various methods. So much sadness, pain, suffering, by children, mates, couples separated, friends lost. Fear and horror are always present, watching their loved ones being murdered, some in a slow deliberate manner, that will horrify the sensitivities of the tenderest among you.

Four independent short films comprise this quirky anthology. "Coriolis Effect" (1994) is an offbeat love story involving storm chasers. In the Oscar-nominated "Solly's Diner" (1979), a homeless man (Larry Hankin, who also directs) witnesses a holdup. "Looping" (1991) satirizes independent moviemaking. And the dialogue-free "Joe" (1997) features David Aaron Baker as a psychiatric patient searching for enlightenment.

A comedy about a duel at dawn, over a matter of honour.

A heartfelt exploration of the life of a small business owner.