Captured over the last four months of 2020, this is a look back at the tumultuous and historic events of the year, filtered through the lens of the Northeast Minneapolis Community.

After leaving NYC for his rural hometown of Bad Axe, MI at the start of the pandemic, an Asian-American filmmaker documents his family’s struggles to keep their restaurant open. As fears of the virus grow, deep generational scars dating back to the Cambodian Killing Fields unearth between the family’s patriarch, Chun, and his daughter, Jaclyn. When the BLM movement takes center stage in America, the family uses their voice to speak out in their conservative community. What unfolds is a real-time portrait of 2020 through the lens of this multicultural family’s fight to keep their American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, racial reckoning, and the trauma of having survived a genocide.

Raw, unedited footage recovered from the iPhone of a YouTuber who went missing while filming in a mysterious forest. Beyond the North Woods is a Duluth, MN based found-footage horror experience.

CUP CONFIDENTIAL is a 43-minute documentary that tells the true story about how a scrappy, semi-pro hockey team won the hearts of the blue-collar city they represented while on their way to winning the very first Colonial Hockey League championship.

DAUGHTER OF A LOST BIRD explores the ethics surrounding Native American adoption, via a singular story as an entry point into a more complicated national issue. In many ways, Kendra Potter is a perfect example of cultural assimilation, a modern representation of the painful phrase, “Kill the Indian, save the man.” She is a thriving woman who grew up in a loving, upper middle-class white family, and feels no significant loss with the absence of Native American culture or family in her life. And yet, as a Blackfeet/Salish woman, director Brooke Swaney could not imagine that Kendra could be content or complete without understanding her heritage. So together they embark on a 7 year journey. 

Freshwater is a documentary that dives into the cold waters of Lake Superior along Minnesota’s North Shore. Despite the fact that it contains ten percent of Earth’s freshwater, this massive force of nature remains largely unexplored. One group of people, however, is intimately aware of its power. From the surfers who catch its waves to the scientists who study its depths, learn why Lake Superior is a precious resource that should never be taken for granted.

A coming-of-middle-age film about a timid Filipino immigrant struggling with the care of an elderly parent while managing his first experience of puppy love.

When a thriving, top-ranked African American elementary school is threatened to be closed and replaced by a new high school that favors the community’s wealthier residents, parents, students and educators fight for the elementary school’s survival.

Queer ceremony. Tierra. Fuego, Agua, Viento. Reclaiming connection to bloodlines through the guidance of plant and land ancestors on Dakota and Anishinaabe land, Mni Sota Makoce. We find ourselves right where we are, as we listen deeply to the plantita ancestors near us. This dance film is the biomythology of bodies in Latine diaspora, Boricua, Chicana, Chilean. We journey with the archetypes which support/guide/mask/empower us, we are LOVER, VIRGEN, SHADOW, SERVANT, SIREN and ALCHEMIST. We are here now, and ancient, elders in training and millennials, we are stress, and meditation, we are tired and we are growing.

Josiah Wilson was adopted as a baby in Haiti and raised in an Indigenous family in Calgary, Canada. Years later, when Josiah is racially profiled at an Indigenous basketball tournament and refused the right to play a sport he deeply loves, his experience makes the news. In the aftermath of this hurtful rejection, Josiah is left to examine his identity, his shaken sense of belonging and the complex relationships he has with this family and community. With the unwavering support of his loved ones, Josiah embarks on the difficult path of healing from his past and finding his footing in the world. With deep compassion for Josiah’s journey, this honest portrayal of complicated family dynamics boldly asks us to create space for non-linear paths to self-acceptance, while revealing the empowering experience of being accepted and loved by your community.

Living in Norway on the border of Russia and Finland Venke Tørmænen has seen her Skolt Sámi culture being crushed between world events. For a long, long time, perhaps since the dawn of time, the Pasvik Sámi managed their small borderless area in harmony with nature. Then Norway, Russia and Finland divided the area between them. Mining and power plants changed the landscape and the river. On the Norwegian side, the language and culture were almost obliterated. But they never managed to eradicate the East Sami genes. In the film, we follow Venke Tørmænen who wants to learn to sew the Skolt Sámi womenś hat her great-grandmother wears on an old picture. – I feel that when I can sew it and put it on my head, the ring is closed. I want the world to know that we exist. We are here and we live here. “

Russel, mid thirties, has wasted his whole life. Devoid of purpose or ambition, all he has to claim as his own, is the bar left to him by his father, a father who never approved of him. All seems to be moving into a positive light for Russel, until he realizes what lives in the loft about the bar.

At the age of 89, Julián takes one last bus ride to El Paso, Texas, to visit his daughters and their children — a lengthy trip he has made without fail every month for decades. After returning to rural Mexico, he quietly starts building a house in the empty lot next to his home. In the absence of his physical visits, can this new house bridge the distance between his loved ones? Over several years, director Iliana Sosa films her grandfather’s work, gently sifting through Julián’s previously unspoken memories brought up by the construction project and revealing both the daily pragmatism and poetry of his life. WHAT WE LEAVE BEHIND unfolds as a love letter to her grandfather, as well as an intimate and insightful exploration of Iliana’s own relationship with him and his homeland.

Starting in 1997, Jane’s life changes every time a mysterious comet enters the solar system.

Science fiction or everyday reality? An intimate, wordless portrait of a couple riding out the pandemic in a small cabin in the woods – filmed entirely from outside the cabin with long lenses.

When Jamie’s quiet rural life is disrupted by a signal from Noa’s one-woman space shuttle, they find a powerful connection. Can it be sustained even though they’re worlds apart?

 Lorena wakes up on a strange planet. She discovers that she is the captain of a Mars exploration troop.

Twin brothers conduct a series of electrochemical experiments in an attempt to transfer skills by linking minds.

In this film I wanted to show how I go about my daily life with ADHD and to help educate others, as it is still a widely misunderstood condition.

A Hmong American woman finds healing and solace in sewing Paj Ntaub while persevering through traumatic events during the COVID pandemic.

A dysfunctional relationship with America depicted though movement, song, and spoken work.

Consumption considered, the din of dining. Using reference videos from my front yard, I created animations and collaged them with cyanotypes of garden material and audio field recordings from travels near and far.

Official music video for Patty PerShayla & The Mayhaps’ song SLO MO off their new album “Cheap Diction.”

Dance film directed and performed by Kealoha Ferreira for Red Eye Theater’s New Works 4 Weeks Festival. Heʻe is an octopus; a line that supports the mast; it is the process of melting, flowing, spreading; an avalanche; a softening. What is the sickness you wish to cast away?

Hastings, Minnesota 1987…Steve was helping a neighbor tear down a home. During the demo process, Steve discovered logs under the siding of the home that dated back to the 1850’s. Instead of continuing to demolish the structure, Steve saved the cabin and moved it to his farm.

When a young social elite at the turn of the nineteenth century explores life as a modern woman, she risks losing the man she loves and a certain future.

When the director is drunk and a producer demands results, the gutsy scenario writer on a 1920’s movie shoot is determined to start and finish the film, even when she’s faced with pushback from her cast and crew.

Five friends come together for their yearly ritual they call the Digestif.

Brad does not know if he wants to leave his family and friends behind for his dream of being a sailor.

For many, deer hunting in Minnesota is a tradition passed down to mostly the men in the family. But this deer shack in Aitkin County tells a much different story.

This film is a reflection on descendants and ancestors, guided by a 50 year old audio recording of my grandmother learning the Pechanga language from her mother.

An experimental tribute film to the artist’s relationship between her father and how they contradict yet blend together. 

After experiencing the prolonged illness and eventual loss of my father, I went through a mental and physical breakdown. In particular, I suffered from an eating disorder. I sometimes binge eat and other days, I barely eat. I think fasting is the only way to get closer to my father and punish myself by suffering from guilt. While attempting to manifest his presence through his absence, how do I use the cinema to express something unseeable and immaterial?

One overseas phone call, but one phrase was lost to the receiver of the call.

An eerie yet touching story of a son’s unyielding love for his immobile father.

Alex is tasked with cleaning up his late father’s house the day before the funeral, and deals with how to present himself come time for him to attend.

Disaster brews when Seher gets accepted to a boarding school-a dream come true-on the evening of a big family dinner.

An incident of an inconvenient attack at a parking lot. Panic attacks sometimes strike at an unsuspected moment.

MNI SOTA MAKOCE IS THE ANCESTRAL LAND OF THE DAKOTA PEOPLES. THIS LAND LOOKS VERY DIFFERENT NOW THAN IT ONCE DID.

Pottero uses a reflexive framework. It’s a folktale within a folktale featuring my family monster, a violent beast who suffers from a disturbing anatomical abnormality.

Arianna jumps off a bridge and is saved by the Water Lady, who gives her a choice between life and death.

An attempt to regain attachment following a period of heroin addiction, near-death experiences, and oxytocin deficiency. The camera shifts between moments of fragile devotion as it searches for a higher power in threads of shared suffering. Oliver, is heaven only for the high?

Men Who Talk sits with the stories of Brazilian men who grapple with new understandings of race that validate their experiences and traumas.

A lesson in compassion and generosity results in a lifelong gift. Set in a small Northwestern Ontario town, a father takes an opportunity to pass on important teachings to his daughter.

A tiny dinosaur dreams she is a scary big dinosaur. When danger strikes, she learns it’s what’s on the inside that counts. Literally.

A white bird living in a black world encounters a black cat living in a white world. The moment they meet, their backgrounds literally collide. An animated short film for the whole family.

Something About the Stars is a short, animated, poetic documentary that depicts my memory of looking at the stars in the Cook Islands. Through silhouette stop-motion, this film explores the juxtaposition of the reality of memory versus the perception of memory.

Rayna and Nora are teammates on a high school volleyball team, but will Rayna’s intolerance over Nora’s friendship with Cole, who is trans, cost them a championship?

Gerry lives a monotonous, daily routine led by her optimistic great-nephew & caretaker. Although he tries to make her smile, she’s rarely in the mood. Gerry’s already found her new source of joy, but she can’t access it while awake.

Diary is an essay film that uses personal reflections and landscapes of the city to document the larger forces acting on Baltimore during the summer of 2020.

 In “A Valley Without Trees,” the lowly onion that burrows into the soil and spends most of its life underground is cast as an interpreter or potential sensory prosthetic that offers a different way of understanding (and perhaps communicating with) the land, planet, and cosmos in which it grows.

Catamenial seizures, tidal correspondences, a sonic EEG, and a lullaby in partial translation. Highlighting the seams with the darts. An exploration of epileptic rhythms and sensations through moving image practice.

Encounters at the edges of imperialism. An experimental documentary concerning mega-corp Foxconn’s Wisconsin Deal.

Filmed on the former grounds of Black Mountain College, Looking Backward is a brief elegy to the legacy of a utopian college and other impossible projects.

The Reversal animates a collection of thousands of glass-plate negatives with an original sound composition to evoke the reverse-engineering of the Chicago River and the invisible and haunted histories of our capital-driven infrastructure and landscapes.

Based on the poem, “The Boy Who the Bullet Followed” by Russell Nichols, this animated short tells the tale of a boy who could use a friend and finds in the street a stray bullet in need.

In summer 1856, the state of Arkansas and lynch mob executed three enslaved individuals: Anthony, Aaron, and Randall. They were accused of killing a white slave owner. Just one side of their story has been told by the white family over successive generations. An oral account of the events preserved in the Black community helps bring out the truth and honor their memories.

On a reservation in Montana where tribal members are outnumbered four to five, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal community fight to protect their people during the covid-19 pandemic.

While navigating a virtual rendering of an ancestral home in Goa, 16mm direct animation, digital renderings, and surveillance technologies form a poem-reflection on colonialism’s legacy on a family and land.

A single guy wakes to the sound of his front door closing.

In the middle of the night, a woman is awakened from a deep sleep by a mysterious flashlight that directs her on a dark journey toward clues that reveal glimpses into the night’s events.

When a woman jogging at night notices a man stalking her, she flees for her life through a cemetery.

After the sudden and surprising loss of her parents, Aurora fights to keep her grasp on reality under the care of her disgruntled uncle.

A lonely college student contending with a recent breakup receives a gift from a secret admirer with an ASMR YouTube channel–– only to find her hypnotic online attention more visceral than what she’d been hoping for. 

During a viral outbreak that alters humans into something sinister, a father and daughter risk everything to bring their family back together after an infected loved one is taken by their own kind. 

A group of friends come together for a barbecue in the park. Happiness all around until Kenneth stops smiling.

FAVORITE DAUGHTER is a story of an intergenerational odd couple sheltering-in-place in a lower Manhattan apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We follow two interconnected groups as they’re affected by a mysterious social media influencer: a man in need of confidence, a woman who just wants to see her friend — strangeness abounds!

Detective Drews learns to overcome her fears in an unusual way at her very first crime scene.