2025 Documentary Series

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January 29th at 7:30pm EST

Bike Vessel - Virtual Screening

DOCUMENTARY

By Eric D. Seals, Donnie Seals Jr., and Resita Cox

Description: Knowing his dad miraculously recovered from three open-heart surgeries after discovering a passion for cycling, filmmaker Eric D. Seals proposes an ambitious idea: Bike together from St. Louis to Chicago. 350 miles. 4 days. On their journey, the two push each other as they find a deeper connection and a renewed appreciation of their quests for their own health and to reimagine Black health.

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February 26th at 7:30pm EST

Home Court - Virtual Screening

DOCUMENTARY

By Erica Tanamachi, Jenn Lee Smith, and Brandon Soun

Description: Home Court is the coming-of-age story of Ashley Chea, a Cambodian American basketball prodigy in Southern California whose life intensifies as recruitment heats up. As she overcomes injury as well as racial and class differences between her home and private school worlds, in peer groups, and against rival schools, Ashley strives to become her own person and leave a legacy behind.

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March 23rd at 4:00pm EST / In Person Screening at PCF

April 2nd at 7:30pm / Virtual Screening

We Want the Funk

DOCUMENTARY

By Stanley Nelson

Short Description: Stanley Nelson's syncopated voyage through the history of funk music, from early roots to 1970s urban funk and beyond.

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April 27th at 4:00pm EST / In Person Screening at LCF

May 7th at 7:30pm / Virtual Screening

Free for All

DOCUMENTARY

By Dawn Logsdon and Lucie Faulknor

Description: Free for All: The Public Library tells the story of the quiet revolutionaries who made a simple idea happen. From the pioneering women behind the “Free Library Movement” to today's librarians who service the public despite working in a contentious age of closures and book bans, meet those who created a civic institution where everything is free and the doors are open to all.

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May 21st at 7:30pm / Virtual Screening

Matter of Mind

DOCUMENTARY

By Anna Moot-Levin, Laura Green, David Alvarado, and Jason Sussberg

Short Description: Alzheimer’s disease transforms the lives of three families who confront the challenges of becoming primary caregivers.

2024 Documentary Series

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January 24th at 7:30pm EST

Razing Liberty Square

DOCUMENTARY - 86 minutes

Directed by Katja Esson

Description: Liberty City, Miami, was home to one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the U.S. Now with rising sea levels, the neighborhood’s higher ground has become something else: real estate gold. Wealthy property owners push inland to higher ground, creating a speculators’ market in the historically Black neighborhood previously ignored by developers and policy-makers alike.

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February 28th at 7:30pm EST

Breaking the News

DOCUMENTARY - 99 minutes

Directed by Heather Courtney, Princess A. Hairston, Chelsea Hernandez, and Diane M. Quon

Description: Who decides which stories get told? A scrappy group of women and LGBTQ+ journalists buck the white male-dominated status quo, banding together to launch The 19th*, a digital news startup aiming to combat misinformation. A story of an America in flux, and the voices often left out of the narrative, the documentary Breaking the News shows change doesn’t come easy.

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March 27th at 7:30pm EST

Matter of Mind: My Parkinson’s

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Anna Moot-Levin and Laura Green

Description: Three people—a political cartoonist, a mother turned boxing coach, and an optician—navigate their lives with resourcefulness and determination in the face of a degenerative illness, Parkinson’s disease.

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May 1st at 7:30pm EST

The Tuba Thieves

DOCUMENTARY - 92 minutes

Directed by Alison O’Daniel

Description: Three people—a political cartoonist, a mother turned boxing coach, and an optician—navigate their lives with resourcefulness and determination in the face of a degenerative illness, Parkinson’s disease.

2023 Documentary Series

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February 8th at 7:30pm ET

Love in the Time of Fentanyl

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Colin Askey, Monika Navarro, Marc Serpa Francoeur, and Robinder Uppal

Description: As fentanyl overdose deaths in Vancouver, Canada, reach an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society opens its doors—a renegade safe injection site that employs current or former drug users. Its staff and volunteers save lives and give hope to a marginalized community, doing whatever it takes to remain open, in this intimate documentary that looks beyond the stigma of injection drug users.

Short film and description: 21: Mercer County - Following a lifelong battle with addiction, Stacey Ross became sober at age 44 and is committed to helping others do the same as a certified peer recovery specialist providing resources for treatment and mentorship to young women.

Talkback with Colin Askey, filmmaker; Rayce Samuelson, Supervisor of ON POINT - NYC's drug overdose prevention center; Dinah Ortiz, Urban Survivor's Union; Stacey Ross, subject of NJ 21 documentary short, Mercer County | Moderated by Anthony Torres, founder of BCLA Bergen County LGBTQ+ Alliance

Sponsored by YWCA of Northern New Jersey

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March 15th at 7:30pm ET

Storming Caesars Palace

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler

Description: After losing her job as a hotel worker in Las Vegas, Ruby Duncan co-founded a welfare rights group of ordinary mothers who defied notions of the “welfare queen.” In a fight for a universal basic income in 1969, Ruby and other equality activists took on the Nevada mob in organizing a massive protest that shut down Caesars Palace.

Short film and description: 21: Bergen County - When Rhona Vega moved to Bergen County as a single mom, she hoped all future opportunities for her kids and others would be equal. They were not, so she established “Parent Matterz”—an organization that nurtures students’ dreams and ambitions and helps parents prepare for college with tutors, enrichment programs, mentors, and more.

Talkback with Hazel Gurland-Pooler, director; Sondra Phillips-Gilbert, film participant, activist, and Ruby Duncan’s daughter | Moderated by Helen Archontou, CEO of YWCA of Northern New Jersey

Sponsored by YWCA of Northern New Jersey

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April 19th at 7:30pm ET

Free Chol Soo Lee

DOCUMENTARY - 60 minutes

Directed by Julie Ha, Eugene Yi, and Su Kim

Description: Sentenced to death for a lurid 1973 San Francisco murder, Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee was set free after a pan-Asian solidarity movement of Korean, Japanese, and Chinese Americans helped to overturn his conviction. After 10 years of fighting for his life inside San Quentin, Lee found himself in a new fight to rise to the expectations of the people who believed in him.

Short film and description: 21: Cumberland County - Edgar Aquino-Huerta, the son of undocumented migrant workers and a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program beneficiary, is using his protected status and his voice to help educate the local undocumented community and advocate for immigration reform.

Talkback with Filmmakers of "Free Chol Soo Lee" Julie Ha and Eugene Yi and Edgar Aquino-Huerta (subject of short)| Moderated by Amy Torres - NJ Alliance for Immigrant Justice

Sponsored by YWCA of Northern New Jersey

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