Cinemafile

Sherman’s March & Remake - Director Ross McElwee

Sherman’s March - Director Ross McElwee - Armed with a 16mm camera and a grant to make a documentary about the lingering aftermath of William Tecumseh Sherman’s 1864 march to the sea, Ross McElwee gets sidetracked. After his girlfriend breaks up with him, Ross shifts his attention from the historical to the personal, to the battlefield of modern love, and embarks on a sociological chronicle that documents the courting rites and rituals of the New South. Remake - Director Ross McElweeIn Remake, filmmaker Ross McElwee turns his lens on the passage of time and the uneasy space between documenting life and understanding it. The film traces McElwee’s relationship with his son Adrian, and the fragile bond the camera created between them while Adrian was alive, and now that he’s gone. About the filmmaker - Ross McElwee has made eleven feature-length documentaries as well as a number of shorter films. Sherman’s March has won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. Sherman’s March was also chosen for preservation by the Library of Congress National Film Registry in 2000 as a “historically significant American motion picture.”Bright Leaves" premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival’s Directors’ Fortnight and was nominated for Best Documentary by both the Director’s Guild of America and the Writer’s Guild of America. McElwee’s In Paraguay premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2008, and he returned to Venice in 2011 to premiere Photographic Memory. In 2005, complete retrospectives of McElwee’s films were presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New Y ork and later in Paris, Brussels, Milan, Lisbon, New Zealand, Seoul, Quito, and Nyon, Switzerland. Four of his films were featured in a selection of western documentaries shown for the first time in Tehran, and in 2015, McElwee presented his films in Changchun, Guangzhou, and Beijing, China.

Mary Oliver, Saved by the Beauty of the World - Director Sasha Waters

If poetry had a pop icon, Mary Oliver would be it. Celebrated bestseller, Pulitzer Prize winner, lover of dogs and long walks in the woods, openly queer but intensely private, Oliver was America’s unlikely contemporary mystic, stalking the ponds and forests of Cape Cod for nearly 50 years in order to open herself – and her readers – to the known and unknowable world. Featuring interviews with her close friends, including John Waters, never-before-seen personal photos, notebooks, and correspondence from her archive, and recitations of her work by Stephen Colbert, Lucy Dacus, Steve Buscemi, and Oprah Winfrey, Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World considers the poet’s long lifetime of work in context, capturing the uniqueness of her world and the natural beauty that inspired her. About the filmmaker - Director, Producer, Co-editor Sasha Waters is a moving image artist trained in photography and 16mm cinema. Her films pursue ecstatic, metaphorical realism from the relations and materials of ordinary life. Her 2018 feature Garry Winogrand: All Things are Photographable won a Special Jury Prize at the SXSW Film Festival, and her 2024 short Ghost Protists had its premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. She is a 2026-2027 recipient of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship and a Professor of Film at VCU’s School of the Arts in Richmond, VA. Her other films include; This American Gothic (2008), Chekhov for Children (2010, feature), You Can See the Sun in Late December (2010), An Incomplete History of the Travelogue, 1925 (2012), Our Summer Made Her Light Escape (2012), An Incomplete History of Pornography, 1979 (2013), Burn Out the Day (2014), A Partial History of the Natural World, 1965 (2015), Garden of Stone, (2015), dragons & seraphim (2017).

Boy George & Culture Club - Director Alison Ellwood

For the first time, band members Boy George, Roy Hay, Mikey Craig, and Jon Moss come together to share their complete story, offering candid insights into their creative process, personal relationships, and the cultural impact that defined a generation. At the heart of the documentary is the previously unexplored love story between George and Moss — a relationship that inspired some of the band’s biggest hits but also contributed to their eventual breakup. Director Alison Ellwood joins us to talk about her insightful and entertaining look at the band’s musical and lasting cultural impact. About the filmmaker - Alison Ellwood is an award winning documentary director, producer and editor. Most recently, she directed a feature-length documentary about the rise and demise of the classic American rock & roll band, The Eagles (title TBD). In addition, Ellwood directed a follow-up film on The Eagles covering the years between the break up of the band through their reunion and up to present day. A long time collaborator with Alex Gibney, in 2011, she directed with him the offbeat feature-doc, Magic Trip: Ken Kesey’s Search for a Kool Place, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Other feature-documentary film credits include producer/editor for Gibney’s Academy Award nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. She was also producer/editor of Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S Thompson, My Trip to Al Qaeda, Casino Jack and the United States of Money and Catching Hell for ESPN films, which was nominated for a Sports Emmy Award. Alison’s television documentary directing credits for television documentaries include the Emmy Award winning series American High, TheTravelers and Sixteen. Her television producing credits include The Human Behavior Experiments, The Residents, 30 Days and Brick City. As an editor, Ellwood earned her first Emmy Award for Frontline’s “Living Below the Line,” a cinema verité exploration of the impact of the welfare system. The film was also awarded an Emmy for best single current story, the Grand Prize of the RFK Awards and a blue ribbon at the American Film Festival. She has also edited award-winning films for Bill Moyers, American Experience, the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Showtime and HBO: America Undercover.

mother, you have not died yet, but you will, and when you do,... - Director Advik Beni

Director Advik Beni's winsome and unconventional narrative drama "mother, you have not died yet. but you will. and when you do, you will finally be alive again" takes place in Cato Manor, Durban, where Lishana has spent over two decades caring for her elderly mother, Leela. Their lives unfold through ordinary rituals: preparing meals, tending the garden, watching television, praying before bed, feeding the cat, and reciting favorite scenes from old films. Together they inhabit a world governed by repetition, where time seems to linger rather than pass. Yet the film begins from a different understanding of reality. Leela is both alive and dead, present and absent. What begins as a personal practice gradually expands into an encounter with the histories carried by the people and places around her. Portraits converse with family archives, historical photographs, paintings, and fragments of collective memory, revealing a landscape where the violences of apartheid continue to shape the present long after its official end. About the filmmaker - Advik Beni (director) is a South African filmmaker and curator currently based in Los Angeles. Through a practice steeped in South African traditions of orality, their work aims to create imagined spaces for marginalized people to express grief and trauma. They are interested in how these non-hierarchical, hybrid models of filmmaking can encourage a collective mutability amongst rhisomatic pathways—that may lead to an actuality of positive impact on communities; whilst preserving a cultural tradition eclipsed by Western modes of storytelling. Advik is focused on how we can witness each other’s existence, and all that entails, in an attempt to facilitate a tangibility of cross-border solidarity that prioritizes care. Their work has been supported by San Sebastián International Film Festival, Sundance, FIDMarseille, Prismatic Ground, New Orleans Film Festival, Flaherty Film Seminar, Points North Institute, and the Edinburgh International Film Festival amongst others.

The Last Place on Earth - Director David Booth Gardner & Producer Shayne McGrath

THE LAST PLACE ON EARTH is a thrilling, nine-year journey into the heart of Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem—a 2.6-million-hectare rainforest where tigers, elephants, rhinos, and orangutans still roam free. Filmed by a dedicated mostly Indonesian crew, this investigative documentary follows a group of extraordinary wildlife activists as they risk everything to save one of Earth’s last untouched wildernesses from the devastation of the illegal palm oil industry. From dramatic animal rescues and high-stakes arrests of poachers to the reforestation of thousands of hectares, each victory underscores the power of human determination in the face of overwhelming odds. “The Last Place on Earth” reveals the urgent need to protect our planet’s most irreplaceable treasures before it’s too late. Director David Booth Gardner joins us in conversation. About the filmmaker - A visionary entrepreneur, David Booth Gardner possesses a diverse professional background in sports PR/management and as a writer, director and producer. Having produced hundreds of hours of programming for leading networks and Fortune 500 companies, Gardner knows exactly what it takes to successfully execute media projects for brands of all sizes. CEO & CO-FOUNDER, LIKUID ART