Ursula Liang • USA • 2020 • Two communities are caught in the divisive politics of police violence.
In November 2014, Chinese-American police officer Peter Liang was dispatched to a Brooklyn community housing building. Performing a vertical patrol in a darkened stairwell, he accidentally shot and killed Akai “Bliss” Gurley, a young father. Yet another police killing of an unarmed black man set off a wave of Black Lives Matter protests—yet Liang’s conviction resulted in counter-protests among New York’s Chinese community, incensed by the hypocrisy that the first NYPD officer to be charged in 14 years was also a person of color.
Offering a timely and topical cross-section of a tragedy in Brooklyn, Down a Dark Stairwell incisively explores two communities pulled asunder by the divisive politics of police violence that should unite them. Ursula Liang’s second film premiered at Vancouver, True/False, and Ashland Independent Film Festival, where it won Best Documentary Feature.
Hubert Sauper • France, Austria • 2020 • An interrogation of time, imperialism, and cinema itself.
In 1898, the U.S.S. Maine sank in Havana Harbor, triggering the Spanish-American war. Cuba has since experienced imperialism in many forms, shaping the fabric of its society. Young Prophets populat...
Gianfranco Rosi • 2016 • Italy
A small fishing town emerges as the nexus of the refugee crisis.
Halfway between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia lies a tiny island with a dwindling full-time population of several...
Brian Perkins • Myanmar-USA • 2015 • Four orphans living in a Myanmar monastery come of age.
Four orphans live in a Buddhist monastery in northeast Myanmar. Surrounded by verdant hills and distant mountains, t...
