Gum-Gam

This Is Your Life In early 2020, this would have been a documentary about freshman initiation rituals, but a pandemic and three months confined at home end up changing the author and the direction of this project.

Backyard on Saint Rose An autobiographical portrait of a backyard from Spring to Fall 2009. This footage was revisited after a 10-year hiatus, and reveals a deeper personal story about our attempts to start a family.

Time Is In a quiet and snowy Chechen village, mother tells her daughter about the return of Zara – their relative, who left this place 20 years ago. Outside, the whole world is hidden in a thick white fog. For both women, the upcoming meeting is a bright event in their dull daily life that they are very much looking forward to.

Mom's Holiday Excited about the chance to take a trip abroad, a grandmother living in a Bruneian kampong cannot help but tell every neighbour she meets about it, even if it is just to nearby Miri. But she is not the only one in the family with holiday plans.

What You Left Behind Throughout my father's life, he struggled with a number of drug addictions, and after he unexpectedly passed away I began collecting an archive of letters, images, and recordings he left behind. The archive held a complex and revealing story of his relationship to prescription and illicit drugs, and glimmers of my distant relationship with him. This led me to consider how I might turn my distant relationship with my father, and his traumatic and sudden death into a purposeful document.

Straight for the Money Eight lesbian and bisexual women who work as prostitutes, strippers, porn stars, and phone sex workers discuss how they negotiate their jobs, intimacy with lovers, and values. With "sexperts" Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Scarlot Harlot, and Joan Nestle who provide insight into the historical presence of queer sex workers.

Beaumonde Scrapping Ilya learned street-smarts in the harsh realities of Russia's Far North, book-smarts in literature class, and the strength of the fist from a father who strived to raise a son following the straight and narrow. His days consist of berating a subordinate and lamenting the days of Stalin; his nights-of scraping metal and composing obscenity-riddled poems. Ilya longs for a life more becoming of his stature, but unbridled personal demons present a major obstacle to his dreams of conquering the nation's capital.

Snowed In Seven snowboarders trek deep into the Cascade Mountains and become desperately lost as they are hunted by a school shooter.

A Boy Twenty-three-year-old Vitaly Akimov portrays his family in the shrinking Russian provincial town of Arsenyev. Ten-year-old Stepan, his brother’s stepson, acts as a guide to this grim environment, appropriately filmed in black and white. He strums his guitar, fetches water, or plays kindly with his little half-brother. He also witnesses another side of life. Slightly embarrassed, he gingerly walks around his stepfather sleeping off the drink, soaked his own urine on the kitchen floor. Stepan talks cheerfully about the horrific events of his life, or shares his deeper thoughts.

rEVOLUTION: Notes for th... I happened to see a documentary by Leni Riefenstahl. German troops were marching, and I found that I could duplicate the drumbeat by typing “mar mar march.” Had not the broadcast of this film taken place while I was typing, I would never have thought of this concept. (Paul Kos)