memoirs (shorts)

A 17 year old boy is sent to an adult prison for robbing a Fotomat with a toy gun. He thinks he's going to a minimum security camp where they send non-violent, first-time offenders, but the prison psychologist rattles his world by informing him that he's going inside (inside the walls of a maximum security prison). Shot in the Hampton's, (at the Sag Harbor historic jail) this film is a short adaptation from the award winning book, Fish: A Memoir of A Boy in a Man's Prison.

It's every Rookies dream to make a difference when they join the police force but after years of being on the job and doing under cover narcotics work you start to wonder who the good guys are. For one NYPD Narcotics Detective named Mark Martinez that was his dream. He spent 10 years on the police force protecting and servicing the City of New York. After being transfer to a new narcotics unit, his new boss Sergeant Donato, an old school cop, who plays by his own set of rules begins to wonder if Detective Martinez has what it takes to be on his unit. Now caught in a web of corruption, racism and betrayal he is writing his memoirs from inside a federal prison doing fifteen to life and exposing the same people he thought was his Police brothers. This Cop is telling it all but in doing so he breaks the one code of all Police brothers "The Blue Wall of Silence".

A climber survives a near death experience on a Himalayan mountain, but when he returns home to London - to write his memoirs - he fails to credit the mysterious forces that saved him, and for his sins gets trapped up his own chimney with a mischievous pigeon.

The twisted, sexually offbeat memoir by author Jonathan Ames becomes this original adaptation about the sexual peccadilloes of the writer (playing himself) as he experiences masculinity first hand and lives to write about it. Based on Ames' inflammatory, exquisitely worded, and often tastelessly brilliant columns for the "New York Press."

Trevor is a recluse who believes the only way of dealing with the death of his murdered wife Jasmine is by abusing drugs and alcohol, attempting to NUMB the pain. His depression sinks into a suicidal state as he visualizes the life he once shared with his lost soul mate. The haunting visions begin to drive Trevor's sense of reality into the brink of insanity. A memoir of a tortured soul whose journey this past year has left him with only one place to go.

Memoirs is an intimate portrait of 4 voices that have yet to be heard and their inner most thoughts and feelings towards their Double Minority. Memoirs characters are based upon the four strongest emotions one in confronted with in the face of adversity (Anger, Sad, Love and Empowered). These emotions are the undertones for their voices throughout the film. The film explores these differences and shows them in a very up-close and personal first hand look.

Retraces the journey of the Lost Boys from Sudan to Ethiopia to Kenya, as Joseph Makeer interviews officials, clergy, and the children themselves.

This beautiful Technicolor short features the songs of the great American popular composer Stephen Collins Foster. Lovely antebellum costumes and atmosphere foreshadow the MGM production values for Gone with the Wind (1939). Based on Foster's memoirs.

In 1969, when Fred Sondermann is presented with the opportunity to return to his native Germany, thirty years after he and his parents narrowly escaped to the United States just days before the outbreak of WWII, he said yes. Dr. Sondermann, a Jew and a political science professor at Colorado College, with his wife and three children traveled to Germany for four months. And though the trip is ostensibly professional in purpose, Sondermann is affected most deeply by the return to his childhood hometown, Horn. This first-person narrative, adapted from Sondermann's memoirs of the trip, walks the viewer through the experience, contemplating victimization, the nature of blame, the appropriate issuance of forgiveness, and the determination to move forward unburdened by ghosts of the past.

Joe Brainard (1941-1994) was an artist and writer whose evocations of memory and desire found their greatest expression in his memoir-poem 'I Remember.' Composed of a sequence of brief recollections, the poem's standardized format admits an incredible variety of images and feelings: 'I remember Greyhound buses at night...I remember candy cigarettes like chalk...I remember leaning up against walls in queer bars...' 'I Remember: A Film About Joe Brainard' is an archival montage that 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.

The short film 'Presence' is a memoir of a young Muslim Arab woman. It is a four-minute journal attempting to understand where does she stand in the midst of change, how does she connect back to her roots, and still reach out to new dreams. Through a childhood story, a little Syrian poem, and faith, is a vain attempt to realize her place in life.

Perfection is a documentary about the real story behind eating disorders. It follows 3 young women as they struggle with their disorders, while a school social worker mediates the discussion.

A visual memoir of one family's life in Iraq before escaping to a new home in Canada in the fall of 1970. Featuring a never-before-seen collection of archival images, home movies, and family photographs from Baghdad, the film pulls back the curtain on Iraq's once-thriving Jewish community, its perilous final years, and its remarkable ability to find solace in the shadow of fear.

Brian Fawcett examines the seemingly "normal" life of his parents, only to discover a rich vein of history - his parents were complex people, leading lives filled with challenge, laughter, sickness and success - that helped him find his own story. "A characteristic modern memoir... occasional extremes of indelicacy ... a series of undramatic incidents that pierce the heart ... such plain and serviceable language is a light shining in the darkness." - Philip Marchand, National Post

"Shadow Sailing" is a twenty-one minute psychological journey that charts one man's downward spiral into madness as he tries to take the trip around Cape Horn that he and his father were never able to make together. In his father's place, Brad brings his new wife and begins to chronicle his childhood, and the series of events that finds the two of them alone on the open ocean. Obsessed in writing his memoirs, he becomes increasingly oblivious of Emily, and her pleas to go to land. The more he delves into his traumatic past, the more Brad takes on certain aspects of his father that he'd rather forget. As the voyage stretches on and his psychosis deepens he begins to see his wife as an impediment to finishing a journey that began long ago and decides to quell the voices that torment him.

The story of the life of Roni Bowers. Missionaries to Peru, South America, Roni's family was shot down by the Peruvian government mistaking them for drug couriers.

Every picture can say a thousand words. It can cause an instant memory of that very moment. The moments you hold onto for the rest of your life. 'Memoirs' is a story that follows a young girl Lilly, who has a close relationship with her grandfather, Grandpa Ray. After Grandpa Ray is taken to hospital, he learns that he has been diagnosed with MND. Much to the sadness of Lilly, the reality that she will never be able to hear his voice again, becomes harder than she imagined. But when she comes across Grandpa Ray's 'Memory box', she discovers a lifetime of his treasured memories and goes on a journey through her grandfather's past to relive them once more.

The celebrated African-American author and long-time expatriate Chester Himes discusses his life and work with the young poet-author-political activist Nikki Giovanni. Himes also relates an illustrated memoir of Harlem in the 20's and 30's that he wrote especially for this interview. It features many personal photographs that trace his life and many archive pictures of the times. Himes has had an "underground" following for years for his "surreal" detective fiction and his best known work "Cotton Comes to Harlem." Here he reminisces about the Harlem he knew so well before World War Two, and about America's racial situation which finally drove him into his long exile in Europe. He and Giovanni also discuss the art of fiction and the role of the black writer in America today.

Murdered, Intersecting Memoirs-a series of video ruminations on various high profile murderers who passed through the notorious 9th Precinct (front for NYPDBlue and Kojak). Using text, narration, and multiple images, each crime is examined through the prism of memory and media.

An old man sits in a small coffee bar and thinks about his past life. He recounts his past life, where he had very little money but had a small and happy family. Now time has changed and it hurts him a lot. He has all the time and money in his life now, but he is alone. All he has is just his MEMOIRS. A salute to all the elderly people in this world who sacrificed so many big things in life so that their children grow up to be successful and well settled in life. But when the time comes for the children to look after their parents, all they do is, send money to the lonely old people from a far away land. But considering that at least their child is happy and settled in life, do the elderly people complain about their loneliness to the society or simply live with the loneliness?