Ask E. Jean - Director Ivy Meeropol

About Gregg Allman: The Music of My Soul - Director James Keach & Producer Michael Lehman

This enthralling music documentary traces the turbulent, transcendent life of Gregg Allman — from a childhood ruptured by his father’s murder to the soulful emergence that reshaped American music. Through archival recordings, candid interviews, and electric performances, the film follows Gregg’s musical awakening amid the blues he worshipped, the creation of the Allman Brothers Band with his brother, Duane that would birth Southern Rock, and the grief that followed Duane’s fatal motorcycle crash. The Music of My Soul explores Gregg’s lifelong battle with addiction, his seven marriages, and the late-life sobriety that allowed him to reckon with his past. The film examines not just the artist’s private wounds but the wider American psyche — race, loss, longing, and reinvention — during Gregg’s lifetime. Musicians, friends, and family illuminate how an integrated band in the segregated South challenged boundaries while forging a sound that was both raw and redemptive. Anchored by Gregg’s gritty, emotive vocals, the Band’s brotherhood, and never before seen interviews, the documentary offers a profound portrait of Gregg Allman: a luminous figure whose life and songs mirror his struggles and salvation.

Skin of Youth - Director Ash Mayfair

Set in the shadowy underworld of 1990s Saigon, Skin of Youth follows San, a transgender sex worker navigating desire, survival, and the fight for self-determination — all while a dangerous oligarch closes in on her relationship with her underground cage-fighter lover. It's a rare film: a queer love story rooted in Vietnamese history, told with uncompromising intimacy by one of Asian cinema's most distinctive voices. Ash Mayfair is an award-winning writer-director based in Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh city. In 2020, Ash’s debut feature film, THE THIRD WIFE earned three Spirit Award Nominations. SKIN OF YOUTH is Ash’s second feature film, is being released by the distributor Film Movement, making its North American premiere on June 26th. About the filmmaker - Ash Mayfair is an award-winning writer-director based in Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh city. After receiving an MFA in filmmaking at NYU, Ash wrote, directed and co-produced her first feature, THE THIRD WIFE. The screen play was a recipient of the Spike Lee Film Production Award 2016. The film premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in 2018 and won the NETPAC Jury Award. THE THIRD WIFE has garnered more than 20 awards worldwide, screened at over 70 film festivals and received distribution in 30+ territories. In 2020, THE THIRD WIFE earned three Spirit Award Nominations in the US including the Someone To Watch nomination for Ash. SKIN OF YOUTH is her second feature. SKIN OF YOUTH is one of 4 winners of the NYU Purple List for the best unproduced screenplays written by graduates and is a semi-finalist of the Academy Nicholls Competition in 2020. Ash is also an alumna of the Sundance Film Two Lab 2020 and a recipient of the Berlinale Nipkow Fellowship 2020.

By Hook or By Crook - Co-directors Silas Howard & Harry Dodge

Groundbreaking when it was made and still fiercely innovative today, BY HOOK OR BY CROOK chronicles three weeks in the life of a handsome, gender-bending, small town dreamer with a nagging messiah complex. Emotionally defeated after the death of his father, SHY heads to the big city to sink himself into a "life of crime." He is quickly distracted by VALENTINE, a deliriously expressive, wise-acre adoptee on a misguided search for her birthmother. The two freaky grifters join forces and learn the true meaning of "poise under pressure" in this visually stunning and wonderfully acted, anti-authoritarian tale of friendship, trust and redemption. BY HOOK OR BY CROOK is a trans-butch queer classic film, groundbreaking when it was made and still fiercely innovative today, and is one of the first successful and critically acclaimed queer indie films shot on Mini-DV. It was an immediate sensation upon its initial screenings at Frameline in 2001 and Sundance in 2002, galvanizing audiences of all stripes with its never-before-seen portrayal of two working-class, trans/butch buddy grifters willfully existing on the margins of society. The film has been digitally restored in 4K by the Academy Film Archive and UCLA Film & Television Archive in conjunction with Frameline, Outfest, Steakhaus Productions, Inc., and the Sundance Institute. The film was remastered using the latest technology with improved color correction to achieve the filmmakers' original cinematic vision. BY HOOK OR BY COOK had an acclaimed World Premiere 4K Restoration Screening in 2024 at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, and this release marks the newly restored film’s availability for audiences throughout the U.S. joining us to talk about the restoration and the high regard that By Hook or By Crook is held, 25 years since its release are the co-directors, co-writers, co-producers and co-lead actors, Howard Silas and Harry Dodge.

MANAS - Director Marianna Brennand

On the Amazon rainforest island of Marajó, 13-year-old Tielle lives in an isolated riverside enclave with her family. She idolizes her older sister, who escaped the area with “a good man” (according to her mother) on one of the commercial river barges. But as she matures and learns the true price her sister paid to leave, she fears for the safety of her younger sister and resolves to challenge the normalized abuse of women and girls in her community. Filmmaker Brennand, who spent 10 years researching Indigenous tribes of the Amazonian rainforest, based this feature debut on true stories to create a sensitive and stirring portrait of cycle-breaking resilience. Director / Co-screenwriter and Co-producer Marianna Brennand joins us for an in-depth conversation on her multi-award winning exploration of systemic sexual abuse of girls and young women in Brazil’s Amazonian rainforest region and how this scourge of abuse is happening in all corners of the world. About the filmmaker - Marianna Brennand Fortes was born in Brasília, Brazil. She is a cultural producer and filmmaker, having graduated with a B.A. in Film Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002. She founded Inquietude in 2007 with the aim of preserving and promoting Brazilian cultural values through audiovisual productions. At the moment Marianna is working on Manas, her first fiction feature about the sexual exploitation of children in the Marajó Archipelago, PA, Brazil. 2012 Francisco Brennand (Documentary) São Paulo IFF WIN Best Brazilian Documentary (São Paulo IFF) WIN Brazilian Association of Film Critic's Award for Best Brazilian Film 2007 2007 O Coco, A Roda, O Pnêu e O Farol (Documentary) premiered at Biarritz Festival Latin America WIN Gilberto Freyre Trophy for Best Film at CinePE Audiovisual Festival (Recife, PE, Brazil)

Time and Water - Director Sara Dosa

Renowned Icelandic poet and author Andri Snær Magnason is chasing something elusive. As the glacial ice of his homeland melts, he constructs a cinematic time capsule to hold onto this moment and send it to the future, before everything he loves slips away. Using his own collected archives, his grandparents’ photographs, and films, as well as traditional songs and folktales, Andri interlaces his family’s story with that of the land around him. From Academy Award®-nominated director Sara Dosa, TIME AND WATER is a universal reflection on the power of home and what it means to be alive amid profound epochal change. Oscar nominated (Fire of Love) director Sara Dosa joins us to talk about her frighteningly relevant clarion call to action. About the filmmaker - Sara Dosa is an Oscar®-nominated nonfiction filmmaker whose work centers on the human relationship with more-than-human nature. The films she has directed, “Fire of Love” (2022), “The Seer & The Unseen” (2019) and “The Last Season” (2015), have won numerous awards, including a Peabody and the Directors’ Guild of America Award, and were nominated for over 40 awards, including an Academy Award, BAFTA, Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award. Dosa’s work has been shown at festivals worldwide, including Sundance, SXSW, New Directors/New Films, CPH:DOX and Visions du Réel, and has screened in partnership with museums such as the MOMA, BAMPFA and the Louvre. In 2018, Dosa was named to the inaugural class of DOCNYC’s “40 under 40” and inducted into the Academy of Motion Pictures’ documentary branch. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a double major in sociology and anthropology and has a joint master’s in anthropology and international development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dosa lives and works in California.