America ReFramed

Transporting viewers to Missouri towns - then all-Black Kinloch and the all-white community of Ferguson, examining the shared histories and deep racial divides affecting both. Through recordings, photographs and recollections, WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS draws parallels between a 1960s dispute over a physical barricade erected between the towns and the 2014 shooting death by police of Michael Brown.

JADDOLAND is an intimate portrait of the work and process of visual artist Lahib Jaddo while offering a fresh look at the immigrant story in America. Through an exploration of Jaddo's art and connections to her life in Texas, the film also drafts a unique picture of how art can help both the creator and the audience make sense of familial and cultural connections, loss, perseverance and life.

TUTWILER takes audiences into Alabama’s only maximum security women’s penitentiary, Julia Tutwiler Prison, and explores the Alabama Prison Birth Project, helping expectant and new mothers learn childbirth and parenting skills while dealing with the pain of being separated from their children.

A loving and insightful portrait of two transgender siblings - Luca and Ren - and their parents, set in the changing social climate following the 2016 presidential election. LITTLE MISS WESTIE takes audiences behind the scenes as the family navigates puberty, school, dating and more as the children begin living in their authentic genders and Ren participates in the Lil’ Miss Westie Pageant.

Acclaimed director Rodney Evans takes viewers on a personal journey as he ponders how the deterioration of his vision will impact his life and work as a filmmaker. Interviewing blind and low vision artists - a photographer, a dancer and a writer - Evans embarks on a quest to learn how other artists have continued to create art and how their journeys might serve as inspiration for his own.

FIRST VOTE is a character-driven verité documentary with unparalleled access to a diverse cross section of politically engaged Chinese Americans: a gun-toting Tea Party-favorite candidate courting GOP votes in the South; a podcaster in Ohio who became a citizen in order to vote for Trump; a long-haired journalist confronting Chinese Americans for Trump after moving to a battleground state; and a University of North Carolina professor teaching about race and racism in the US. A verité look at Chinese American electoral organizing in North Carolina and Ohio, the film weaves their stories from the presidential election of 2016 to the 2018 midterms, and explores the intersections between immigration, voting rights and racial justice. Until 1952, federal law barred immigrants of Asian descent from becoming U.S. citizens and voting. Today, Asian Americans are the fastest growing population in the United States. More than 11 million Asian Americans will be able to vote in 2020. Directed by Yi Chen, a Chinese immigrant and first-time voter herself, First Vote is a must-watch and rare long-form look at the diverse Asian American electorate.

For Sandy White Hawk, the story of America’s Indian Adoption Era is not one of saving children but of destroying families and tribes. As an adoption survivor, Sandy sets out to reclaim the missing pieces of her stolen past only to discover that her’s was not an isolated case. BLOOD MEMORY explores the communal healing that is sparked by the return of this stolen generation.

A Navajo coal miner, Lawrence, raises his secretive daughter as a single father, while struggling with his part in the irreversible destruction of his tribe’s sacred mountain. This deep spiritual sacrifice has caused him decades of emotional turmoil while providing for his family. Meanwhile, his daughter Caitlin searches for her inner identity amidst the expectations of her traditional father.