America ReFramed

Some think an in vitro fertilization contest sounds crazy, but countless Americans desperate to start a family believe this social media experiment is their only hope.

A New Color - The Art of Being Edythe Boone focuses on the life and work of muralist, activist and educator, Edythe (Edy) Boone, a self-taught artist from East Harlem who moved to the San Francisco Bay area in search of a safe environment for her children. Filmed over five years, filmmaker Marlene "Mo" Morris follows Boone, the spirited and captivating septuagenarian who became an artist/activist simply because empowering and building community is “the right thing to do.” Concerned about the exceedingly high number of senseless deaths amongst young Black men in the U.S., Boone uses these injustices as part of the narrative in her murals.

Home to thousands, misunderstood by millions, Cabrini Green once towered over Chicago’s most valuable neighborhoods. A looming reminder of inequality and poverty, Cabrini’s high-rises were demolished and an African-American community cleared to make room for another social experiment: mixed-income neighborhoods. Shot over the course of 20-years, 70 Acres in Chicago documents this upheaval, from the razing of the first buildings in 1995, to the clashes in the mixed-income neighborhoods a decade later.

The Cherokee Nation, a wealthy tribe, with land, casinos and various business holdings, argues that Freedmen descendants are not members of their tribe “by blood” because they descended from the tribe’s former slaves. The Cherokee Nation and another former slave-holding nation, the Seminole Nation, began denying tribal rights to Freedmen descendants more than a decade ago.

In 2012, The Vatican censured American nuns. "Radical Grace" follows three U.S. nuns, who refused to back down and continued to challenge the patriarchal system, are willing to lose it all and risk their place within the Catholic Church for their devotion to social justice and to meet their higher calling - to apply their faith to action.

As the Arctic warms, the tiny island of Kivalina, built on merely a sliver of sand and permafrost grows dangerously smaller, and its foundation is disintegrating at an alarming rate. With increasingly less fall sea ice to protect the shore, the island is vulnerable to worsening storms and is admittedly unequipped for an evacuation. Fearing that a powerful wave could wash them away, the villagers of Kivalina are desperate to relocate before it is too late.

Eddy Zheng came to America with his family when he was 12 years old. Then at the age of 16, he committed a horrible crime: home invasion and kidnapping. Year after year he hoped for parole, and after almost 20 years in prison, Zheng was released, a model prisoner who wanted to become a community leader. But his victims insisted he should still be deported.

The 'Hillbilly Heroin' epidemic that's slowly rotting the soul of rural America.

90% of Americans want to age at home, but many of them have to rely on paid care workers because their families can't provide the support they need. CARE illuminates the many challenges and deep attachments that can be formed between the elderly and the home care workers they depend on - and exposes the cracks in a system that is poorly serving both.

A documentary about three students determined to graduate from their high school in Indianapolis, despite the fact that the institution has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country.

This movie explores the lives of four Alaska Native people who are determined to break free from personal histories of trauma and suicide.

Farewell Ferris Wheel explores how the U.S. Carnival industry fights to keep itself alive by legally employing Mexican migrant workers with the controversial H-2B guestworker visa.

Deej is DJ Savarese, a nontalking autistic man who was abandoned by his birth parents and remained uneducated until his adoptive parents helped him pursue an education. This film deals with Deej's transition to college life and the difficulties and growth that Deej pursues at Oberlin. He is a wordsmith who uses a machine to talk and he and his community know something you don't.

The coming-of-age story of George Dull Knife, a Lakota teen growing up on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation. Inspired by his family's history of fighting for justice for Native Americans, George is focused on shutting down liquor stores in Whiteclay, a tiny town nearby that exists only to sell beer to the reservation's vulnerable population.