Portrait

In Dani Leventhal's video, 17 New Dam Rd., we are invited along on a house visit with a familial group. There's trash in the garden, guns on the sofa, and marshall arts in the living room. A photo session records a young woman throwing punches at a man, playacting for the camera, but sweating anyway. A kitten ignores the bullets littered on the ground. Despite the foregrounding of violent pursuits, lost teeth and pool hall fights, there's a rough camaraderie here, a feeling of loyalty and belonging.

A wide-screen video diptych of scenes shot during two different periods in Moscow––old footage from 1990 and newer from 2009. There's no linear narrative as the "story" is told principally in the juxtaposition of the two images of the city with this almost 20yr gap. It runs 31 minutes as a single screening, but it is meant to be seen as an installation since its visual theme, from an American perspective, is the recurring cycle of Russian upheaval. It is also principally a "fractal" piece, meaning that its story is replicated in every scene.

–– Ken Kobland

The sonic fabric of 2nd Person, [originally] a multi-channel video installation, is formed through an array of women’s voices orchestrated as parallel tracks in a musical composition. The speakers, all women I have intimately known at different points in my life -- my child, my mother, my best friends, students, mentors -- talk with me about aging, growing up, death, motherhood, love and loss.

Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas documented the preparations and opening of the Marina Abramovic Videoinstalaciones exhibit at Mexico City's Laboratorio Arte ALameda, the first Abramovic exhibition ever to take place in Mexico, in November of 2008.  Cuevas captures the self proclaimed "performance grandmother" in a number of personal and performative moments as she readies for the opening.

A brief visit with a graduate student in the painting department of the art college where Kuchar teaches and the discussion that follows the unveiling of his work. Stroll through a gallery of acryllic-rendered innocence gone awry and the yo-yo generation in heat.

A son discreetly records fleeting moments in his parents’ suburban home. An intimate portrait of a stable life lived according to the rules of society.

amaurosis is an experimental documentary about Dat Nguyen, a blind guitarist living in Little Saigon, Orange County, California. Dat Nguyen was a "triple outcast": blind, Amerasian, and an impoverished orphan. His American father left Viet Nam in 1973, and his mother died in 1975. Living on the streets of Saigon, he sold lottery tickets for food money. At the age of 12, Dat met a classical music teacher who was also blind and who taught him to read Braille as well as supported him.

A musical portrait of Vic Chesnutt and company recording the song, CHAIN.

The piece was shot during the recording session for the album, At the Cut, at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal, and features appearances by musicians including Efrim Menuck, Guy Picciotto, Jessica Moss, and Chad Jones. CHAIN was written by Chesnutt after viewing Cohen's feature film of that name.

A cold stone structure stands in frigid defiance to the moral decay which shrivels the leaves of erect extensions to the human lust for creative expression. This video portrait of art in the making and cats on the prowl will let out of the bag a Pandora's mix of cat chow and chit chat befitting upright blokes.

This video features California artists: drawer and painter Deanne Belinoff, sculptor and poet Sana Krusoe, wood relief carver and painter Palema Holmes, and New York-based video artist Shirley Clarke.

The Artists: Part 1 was produced in concert with the exhibition Four Solo Exhibitions at the Long Beach Museum of Art in 1988. The artists are introduced by LBMA’s senior curator Josine Ianco-Starrels. The video presents and contrasts the diverse styles, media, and personalities of these four women artists.

Atomic Ed & the Black Hole tells the story of a scientist-turned-atomic junk collector known as Atomic Ed. More than 30 years ago, Ed quit his job making “better” atomic bombs and he began collecting what he calls “nuclear waste,” non-radioactive high-tech discards from the Los Alamos National Laboratory. As the self-appointed curator of an unofficial museum of the nuclear age called “The Black Hole,” Atomic Ed reveals and preserves a history of government waste that was literally thrown in a trash heap.

Spanish subtitled version available.

CB is an experimental bio-pic: its heroine, Charlotte Brontë. A collaboration between Doug Ischar and Tom Daws, CB was commissioned by the Laumeier Museum, St. Louis, for their inaugural Nightlight series.

CB is an experimental bio-pic: its heroine, Charlotte Brontë. A collaboration between Doug Ischar and Tom Daws, CB was commissioned by the Laumeier Museum, St. Louis, for their inaugural Nightlight series.

From 1970 to 1972, Arthur Ginsberg and Video Free America recorded the private life of a not-so-average American couple-Carel Row and Ferd Eggan. She is a porn actress and filmmaker; he is a bisexual junkie. The video verite camera captures the desires and frustrations of their evolving relationship and their responses to the ongoing videotaping exercise. The tape, a study in "the effect of living too close to an electronic medium," reveals attitudes and discussions that also render it a fascinating social document of the west coast counterculture.

Stephen Varble (1946-1984) staged gender-confounding costume performances on the streets of 1970s Manhattan, and he became infamous for his anti-commercial disruptions of galleries, banks, and boutiques. In 1978, he retreated from this public work to focus on the making of an epic, unfinished piece of video art, Journey to the Sun, until his death in the first days of 1984. Lush, ribald, and unorthodox, the video mixed non-narrative costume performances with a surrealist fable of a messianic martyr, the Warbler.

Uncomfortable journeys through the work and ideas of Christopher Cozier, a leading contemporary artist in the Caribbean. The video presents Cozier's witty and incisive drawings, installations and videos in the context of post-independence Trinidad with its oil-rich economy, complicated ethnic politics, and vibrant cultural forms.

A portrait of Luce Vigo, film critic, educator, and the daughter of pivotal French filmmaker Jean Vigo. Commissioned by the Spanish documentary festival, Punto de Vista, the film incorporates Luce's memories of her extraordinary life, reflections on her father, and images of Northern Spain.

I was an Artist in Residence for three months on Five East, the ward for chronically ill adolescents at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles. Five East is a series of video portraits. I went from room to room on the ward and asked each adolescent if they would like to make a video portrait of themselves. The children had a variety of chronic illnesses including cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia. However, I did not ask them to speak about their illness. I let them speak for themselves on whatever might be of interest to them.

Gay Tape: Butch and Femme is Cecilia Dougherty's first video work. She was immersed in two things at the time: making artwork, and being a part of the Oakland, California lesbian bar scene. The tape is the child of those two activities. Dougherty asked her friends, Ann and Joanne, and her girlfriend at the time, Rosa, to speak on camera about dating and the emergence of butch-femme relationships, which alluded to not so much a regression to old-time lesbian subculture, as to a quotation of those times, and an appreciation of that kind of lesbian eroticism.

This fictional memoir gives voice to the woman who haunted Andre Breton's 1927 Surrealist novel Nadja. Speaking from the sanitarium as World War II approaches, she recounts their nine-day love affair in the streets of Paris. Nadja is imaged following the game of exquisite corpse, with staged and framed gestures, excerpts from Surrealist films and archival newsreels as well as fragments from the walks of the filmmaker as flaneur.

“A soldier’s trip to Syria is complicated when he accidentally impregnates a friend. Meanwhile, a horse breeder from Ohio is driven away from home by her own desire to become pregnant. In Hard as Opal the lines between truth and fiction, fact and fantasy, are reined in and treated not as fixed, divisive markers but as malleable threads of narrative potential. Buckhiester and Leventhal perform alongside other non-actors who are filmed in their own varying domestic and professional environments.

“A soldier’s trip to Syria is complicated when he accidentally impregnates a friend. Meanwhile, a horse breeder from Ohio is driven away from home by her own desire to become pregnant. In Hard as Opal the lines between truth and fiction, fact and fantasy, are reined in and treated not as fixed, divisive markers but as malleable threads of narrative potential. Buckhiester and Leventhal perform alongside other non-actors who are filmed in their own varying domestic and professional environments.

A portrait of a studio photographer, Her + Him VAN LEO also examines the photography of the 1940s and 50s from a critical perspective rather than a nostalgic one. This documentary utilizes traditional portrait photography and video in a dialogue between two media: crafted black and white print, and the electronically colored and manipulated screen. This dialog comments on the transformations in art practices and terminologies, and evokes some of the social/urban/political transformations that took place in Egypt over 50 years of its recent history.

Sable Elyse Smith's How We Tell Stories to Children is a single channel video that combines found footage, music clips, and audio of the artist reading with video clips of her father recording himself from prison. Focal points and significant moments seem to always occur just offscreen, or quickly flash away.

Matt Wolf returns to Joe Brainard's iconic poem I Remember (1970) in this videowork. His archival montage combines audio recordings of Brainard reading from the poem, as well as an interview with his lifelong friend and collaborator, the poet Ron Padgett. The result is an inventive biography of Joe Brainard, and an elliptical dialog about friendship, nostalgia, and the strange wonders of memory.

In Taiwan, Traditional Taiwanese Opera (gēzǎixì 歌仔戲) and Puppet Plays (bùdàixì 布袋戲) aren’t just performances for human audiences—they are also sacred rituals, that honor and entertain local gods, deities and spirits, particularly during temple fairs. In conversation with eteam, filmmaker S. Leo Chiang, who was born in Taiwan, moved to the U.S. as a teenager and recently returned to Taipei, dives into his childhood memories to rejoice and explore the cultural significance of traditional folk art forms.

J. Morgan Puett is an internationally renowned artist living on a 95-acre compound in the deciduous forests of northeastern Pennsylvania. Touching on ideas of creative domestication, radical pedagogy, and a critical engagement with one’s environment, Ms. Puett describes her unique home, which she calls Mildred’s Lane.

“It (J. Morgan Puett: A Practice of Be(e)ing) tells a unique story of an important artist that truly lives her art. It’s an exclusive biography of a woman who is widely known to the art world but, as yet, undiscovered by our culture.”

—Roderick Angle

A portrait of New York author Joe Westmoreland. Joe is reading from his short story Sweet Baby Joe. This video was shot in 2014 in Joe's Chelsea loft, and the reading was recorded in 2016. 

"Between March 1972 and February 1977, the Videofreex aired 258 television broadcasts from a home-built studio and jerry-rigged transmitter in an old boarding house they rented in the tiny Catskill Mountain hamlet of Lanesville. It was a revolutionary act in defiance of FCC regulations — the first unlicensed TV station in America."

"It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances" wrote Oscar Wilde. Lay Bare is a composite portrait of the human body, revealing it as it is only rarely seen in the most intimate relationships we have with our family or our lovers -- erotic and comic, beautiful and vulnerable.

Music, sound design and mixed by Andy Cowton

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

A collaboration with writer Luc Sante made in Tangier, Morocco, a city where neither of us had ever been. En route from the airport to the city center, we found ourselves amazed by the landscape outside of the car windows; a massive construction project under way in all directions. While not in itself unusual, we were by struck dumb by the epic scale and seemingly incomprehensible plan of the development and were drawn to return together to this puzzling zone.

-- Jem Cohen

A selection of Love Tapes — a collection of video recordings of 2,500 people from diverse backgrounds who share their personal feelings about love. Love, as described throughout the tapes, is not defined by any one singular meaning, but is instead contextualized by the variety of personal perspectives and experiences within this collection. Such interpretations of love explore lust, friendship, first love, and familial love. This selection consists of 32 edited tapes from 1978-2011. The Love Tapes project began in 1977 and is ongoing.

An independent film portrait of singer/songwriter Elliott Smith in Portland, Oregon in 1996, wherein he plays three songs. The songs were done live acoustic--in his old studio, a living room, and a bathroom (it was quiet in there). It's also a small portrait of Portland, Oregon.

The songs are "Between the Bars", "Angeles", and a cover of "Thirteen" by Big Star.

This is Elliott as I remember him, at his simple finest as musician. 

LYNDALE is a story of shifting family dynamics, told through the relationship of two brothers. Shot on ten different video formats, this experimental documentary is both the story of a Chicago family, and a record of the digital revolution in the early 2000s. The piece takes place over a six-year period during which filmmakers Oli Rodriguez and Victoria Stob shared a house with Rodriguez’s brother, Jeff.

LYNDALE is a story of shifting family dynamics, told through the relationship of two brothers. Shot on ten different video formats, this experimental documentary is both the story of a Chicago family, and a record of the digital revolution in the early 2000s. The piece takes place over a six-year period during which filmmakers Oli Rodriguez and Victoria Stob shared a house with Rodriguez’s brother, Jeff.

This 12-minute video by Tom Palazzolo and Chicago writer Jack Helbig tells the story of the recently discovered Chicago street photographer Vivian Maier. Though she was unknown in her lifetime, her extensive body of work is rewriting the history of post-World War II American street photography. The video, told from the point of view of Maier herself, recounts her life and work, from her childhood in France to her move to NYC in 1951 and subsequent relocation to Chicago, where the majority of her work was done.

Merce by Merce by Paik is a two-part tribute to choreographer Merce Cunningham and artist Marcel Duchamp. The first section, “Blue Studio: Five Segments,” is an innovative work of video-dance produced by Merce Cunningham and videomaker Charles Atlas. Cunningham choreographed the dance specifically for the two-dimensional video monitor screen. Atlas uses a variety of video imaging effects, including chromakey, to electronically transport Cunningham’s studio performance into a series of outdoor landscapes. The audio track includes the voices of John Cage and Jasper Johns.

Mohamed Yousry: A Life Stands Still (also known as Good Translator) is a short documentary about Mohamed Yousry, a naturalized American citizen who's life changed radically after September 11, 2001. Mohamed immigrated to the United States in 1980. For the next twenty years, he developed a full and happy life, as a husband, father, and academic. On September 13, 2001 Mohamed was approached by the FBI on his doorstep in Queens, NY. After appeal processes and an attempt to extradite him, Mohamed was sentenced to four years in a federal penitentiary in Fort Worth, TX.

Mohamed Yousry: A Life Stands Still (also known as Good Translator) is a short documentary about Mohamed Yousry, a naturalized American citizen who's life changed radically after September 11, 2001. Mohamed immigrated to the United States in 1980. For the next twenty years, he developed a full and happy life, as a husband, father, and academic. On September 13, 2001 Mohamed was approached by the FBI on his doorstep in Queens, NY. After appeal processes and an attempt to extradite him, Mohamed was sentenced to four years in a federal penitentiary in Fort Worth, TX.

Cyclops / "monitor" / minotaur.

Note: A 20-second video loop self-portrait.

In a fragrant garden warmed by the sun, a young man inhales the atoms of the world and exhales thoughts that probe the very essence of his existence. 

Embraced by a gentle breeze in that tranquil place kissed by the sun, he embarks on a journey inward to that spiritual and sensual state best described as the "cosmic consciousness", - the "quest" to "understand" and "accept".....to have "peace of mind".

A.L. Steiner’s video More Real Than Reality Itself expands the structures of documentary works while challenging its conventional reliance on linear narratives. This critique takes shape through Steiner’s reconsideration of the history of political activism and its representations — configuring a story that emphasizes the embodied, romantic aspects of activism rather than a singular, dominant history.

Three insightful and funny vignettes highlighting Segalove's father's quirky traits, habits, and interests.

Adapted, quite loosely, from interviews with the composer Karlheinz Stockhausen in the late 60s and early 70s.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

A sound-essay set in the Tallahatchie County Second District Courtroom in Sumner, Mississippi, mythicPotentialities is an exploration of the event said to have galvanized the civil rights movement in America, the murder of Emmett Till, the trial that followed, and the way these event have been mediated through documentary text like Eyes on the Prize, The Murder of Emmet Till, and numerous other books, plays, poems and articles.

Nang has lived outside the box. Born in a Trinidadian village in 1934, she grew up poor, illegitimate, mixed-race and female, but she survived by defying convention. She left the first of five husbands when he cheated on her. With no formal training, she danced with choreographer Geoffrey Holder, who later won Tony Awards for The Wiz.

Enter the classic world of a haunted creature destined for stardom in the astrological realm beyond our heads. Visit a haunted soul in her house of horrors and heavenly delights. Sip tea with a sorceress of song and sorrows, earthly eloquence and ephemeral effusions. Taste her ghoulish goulash and smack thy lips with a forked tongue, for Lucifer and Lilith reside within us all.

The Only Ones Left (three-channel video installation*), featuring actor Jim Fletcher, weaves film noir and mafia genre references with CEO diatribes, while also exposing the conventions of the feature film climax. The three channels of video depict all plot points of the Hollywood film climax concurrently. The channels are arranged chronologically from left to right. This simultaneity draws attention to the familiarity of the subject matter and the inevitability of the violent consequences awaiting the characters.

A commissioned portait of Pamplona, a small city in the North of Spain, shot and edited there in under 2 weeks. The film is a humble set of observations of place, people, atmospheres, and local rituals. (It is also a tribute to the art of film projection). As there is a large presence in the town of the conservative religious order, Opus Dei, which translates to 'Work of God,' I chose to name my film, Works of Light and Man.

-- Jem Cohen

Paint drips and body fluids ooze in this "tell all" and "hide nothing" documentary about two San Francisco males.

Ken Mate, a 56 year old solipsistic individual, recites Finnegan's Wake while doing sit-ups, talks about talking, and kvetches when a neighbor "steals" the first tomato from his hand-cultivated garden. Drawn from the inside out, this portrait describes who Ken is rather than describing what he does. Commissioned by and presented at the Second Annual Silver Lake Film Festival, 2001.

In Dani Leventhal’s Platonic, geometric specters twirl in space; pet cats foam at the mouth; a little boy mistakes his junkie dad for a superhero; and a confused adolescent worries he has sired a centaur. Platonic references both the ancient philosopher’s metaphysics of ideal Forms, which simultaneously exist outside our perceptions and yet give rise to them, and the related meaning in common parlance of non-romantic love.

An up-close compilation of interviews and discussions with people living with HIV in the early 1990s. 

A series of vignettes, anemic in color, as the absence of light threatens the vibrancy of those depicted: a Bostonian painter and her bloated model. A brunette guitarist and her assault weapon on the ear drums, and a lady from London in makeup and mourning. A canvas of black dahlias and white noise intent on smothering life, limb and vocal chords.

In a celebrity-obsessed culture, filmmakers often exploit the downfall of a star to amplify the emotional undertones of the fictional films in which they perform. POSTFACE takes a look back at the filmography of Montgomery Clift whose private life and career spiral downward after a 1956 car crash that left his face scarred and partially paralyzed.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

An ex-model struts her stuff amid the dolls of desire that drive the demented to deeds of depravity and decapitation. A glitzy portrait of the vulnerable and the vulgar on the brink of disaster and a glimpse of the gaseous God who mocks their morality.

The scene: the industrial neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn.

The players: wind, a flooded road, passersby, and birds...

The time: shortly before the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Note: This title is intended by the artist to be viewed in High Definition. While DVD format is available to enable accessibility, VDB recommends presentation on Blu-ray or HD digital file.

This short piece introduces the visual artist German Bobe. A narrator explains Bobe’s background in various media, stressing that his work—the media he chooses and the themes he revisits—presents a synthesis of the concerns of his generation.

In Spanish. 

A look at the town of Rome N.Y., including an arts panel visit to the Art and Community Center.

A picture of the day-to-day life of Shomõtsi, an Ashaninka Indian living on the border of Brazil and Peru. Valdete, a teacher and one of the village video makers, highlights his hardheaded and witty uncle.

Directed by Valdete Pinhanta Ashaninka; edited by Mari Corrêa.

In Ashaninka with English subtitles.

Sirrocco was a drag performer and club icon in Cincinnati, Ohio during the 1980s and 1990s, and was also a close neighbor and friend of Teramana’s. In a series of short interviews, Sirrocco talks about visiting her hometown in Kentucky, hormone therapy, and dating as a transgender woman. 

On May 11 2004, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report Hope, his wife of 20 years, was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.

Authorities later said that Kurtz's wife had died of "heart failure," but he wasn't allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.

On May 11 2004, Steve Kurtz phoned 911 to report Hope, his wife of 20 years, was unresponsive. When paramedics came to his house, one of them noticed that Kurtz had laboratory equipment, which he used in his art exhibits. The paramedics reported this to police and the FBI sealed off his house.

Authorities later said that Kurtz's wife had died of "heart failure," but he wasn't allowed to return to his home for two days while the FBI confiscated his equipment, and biological samples. They also carted off his books, personal papers and computer.

still/here is a meditation on the vast landscape of ruins and vacant lots that constitute the north side of St. Louis, an area populated almost exclusively by working class and working poor African Americans. Though it constructs a documentary record of blight and decay, still/here is a refusal of closure that dwells within the space of rupture and confronts the presence of a profound absence.

–– Christopher Harris

Camera, sound, edit: Christopher Harris

Additional camera: Joel Wanek

A sculptor dabbles in the wetness of his craft while the skies threaten a soaking to the winterized wonderland of a western shoreline.

Words of wisdom issue from the mind of a maligned artist as his calendar of kitsch and comfort flap their pages amid a tempest of sea foam and pigeon wings.

Shrimp is gnawed upon in dwellings of nutritional notoriety while the hunger of more carnal need feeds the mind with fantasies best left as fodder for a more potent farter.

The latest in Marie Losier's ongoing series of film portraits of avant-garde directors (George and Mike Kuchar, Guy Maddin, Richard Foreman), DreaMinimalist offers an insightful and hilarious encounter with Conrad as he sings, dances and remembers his youth and his association with Jack Smith.

In Northern California, land of mystery, there stands an edifice of stone that probes the heavens above and the subterranean secrets below the threshold of credibility. Its occupant, Dr. Jacques Vallee, scientist and author, peers into the darkness of inner and outer space to document the elusive interactions of mortals and Magonians (folks and folklore) that inspire our dreams and evolution.

Part of a trilogy of works known as the Video Wallpaper Series in which George tests out his new audio/video digital mixer and creates a range of impressions of people and places. "A collage of serpent-infested gruel from Haitian hybrids." —George Kuchar

A short portrait of artist Anne Truitt (1921-2004). The film consists of an interview and 16mm footage made in and around her studio at the Yaddo artist colony, as well as footage from her home studio in Washington D.C.  Rather than an attempt to depict her art, which is in many respects un-photographable, the core of the film is found in Truitt speaking about the course and meaning of her work. Says Cohen, "I was honored to know Anne Truitt, and doubly so when she allowed me to make a short record of her presence and thoughts.

tryphon: three sounds is a candid portrait of the artist Thomas H. Kapsalis (b.

In 1959, Jean Seberg stares into Raoul Coutard’s 35mm camera lens and then turns – the closing frame of Godard’s Breathless is the back of her head. For the film it is a closing. For her character it is less clear. Is it a refusal? A denial? A shying away from? An admission of guilt or not caring? A disappearing act? In 2017 on the streets of Berlin, twenty-three women, friends and passersby, reverse Seberg’s action. 

On February 10th, 2005, Lynne Stewart was convicted of providing material support for a terrorist conspiracy. She is the first lawyer to be convicted of aiding terrorism in the United States. Stewart was convicted on charges of conspiracy and providing material support to terrorists in 2005, and sentenced to 28 months in prison. Her felony conviction led to her being automatically disbarred. She was re-sentenced on July 15th, 2010, to ten years in prison in light of her perjury at trial.

Cartoonist Ben Katchar is profiled in his old diamond district studio. A Big Apple pumpkin patch that's 100% kosher.

In a garden of roses and memorabilia from darkest Africa, a man and woman ponder the joy of cooking and the companionship of cats. Goodies for the guts abound in this visual essay on feline friendship and far away places. An electronic voyage beyond the stench of house and garden that transports the viewer- and cat- to the promised land.

A series of portraits either stroked on canvas or snapped on photo emulsions becomes the theme of this travelette as the viewer relives the visions that confronted me during a hop and skip excursion over state lines and bodily curvatures.

Vera is an assisted self-portrait of consumption. The subject is a woman whose passions and compulsions are of spending and loss, taste and subjectivity.

Curt McDowell, the director, on his feet and weaving in and out of this televised tapestry with gracious grossness and Hoosier-based hospitality.

A story about a young woman in Jerusalem.

Music by Toshi Reagon

Five improvisers are asked to ‘channel’ the psyche of Tony Blair. George Barber asks questions, and also feeds the improvisers anecdotes from various sources about Tony Blair’s life and experience as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The work’s unifying themes are: Tony Blair landing in the Iraqi desert at night; meeting George Bush, and the regrets of his key decisions.

This moving video portrait follows a group of teenage boys who attend the Masada School, a school for juvenile delinquents and social misfits. The boys worked on every phase of the video, and present a picture of themselves that challenges society’s, and their own, typecasting. The humor, philosophy, and honest retelling of the students’ stories details the Catch-22 of living on the street, how parents' problems are passed on to the boys through abuse and neglect, and the struggle each feels to keep hope for a better life.