Directing
Dustin Guy Defa is a film and television actor, writer and director.
In late-90s suburbia, a lonely teenager meets a girl at school who introduces him to a mysterious late-night T.V. show — a vision of a supernatural world pulsing beneath their own. As time goes on, however, questions begin to arise about why the show sometimes seems more real than their own lives. In the pale glow of the television, their view of reality begins to crack.
This eclectic, star-studded anthology follows diverse Chicagoans fumbling through the modern maze of love, sex, technology and culture. First dates, friends with benefits, couples with kids. Whatever your relationship status is, it's always complicated.
At the American Computer Chess Convention, enthusiasts gather to pit their programs against other computer chess programs and human players in a tournament for a grand prize of $7500.
Scenes from the working life of a male director: Defa sophisticatedly lampoons masculinity in filmmaking with this sly, surprising meta-movie. (Courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center.)
Eric returns home for a short visit and finds himself caught between reuniting with his sisters and chasing a victory with his old poker group. As the trip extends, Eric finds it increasingly difficult to avoid confrontations and revelations as his carefully constructed façade of his adulthood gives way to old childhood conflicts.
1950s America. Since his mother‘s confinement to an institution, Andy has lived in the shadow of his stoic father. A family acquaintance, Dr. Wallace Fiennes, employs the introverted young man as a photographer to document an asylum tour advocating for his increasingly controversial lobotomy procedure.
Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. In the process of creating the show, everything can-and does-go wrong. The cast, a who's who of Brooklyn's independent filmmaking community, includes Alex Karpovsky, Eleonore Hendricks, Dustin Defa, and Onur Tukel.
Anger rages in Philip as he awaits the publication of his second novel. He feels pushed out of his adopted home city by the constant crowds and noise, a deteriorating relationship with his photographer girlfriend Ashley, and his own indifference to promoting the novel. When Philip's idol Ike Zimmerman offers his isolated summer home as a refuge, he finally gets the peace and quiet to focus on his favorite subject: himself.
Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.
Set in the Mojave Desert, the film follows a broken-down comedian playing clubs across the Southwest, working his way to Los Angeles to meet his estranged daughter.
A mysterious visitor spends the night at an apartment belonging to a young engaged couple and their friend. Over the course of the night and the following day he sleeps with all three roommates and then disappears, leading to conversations about God, life and filmmaking.
Follows a variety of New York characters as they navigate personal relationships and unexpected problems over the course of one day.
Caveh is commissioned by Fandor to film awkward celebrity encounters at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. This is a documentary about his time at the festival filming those encounters.
In this piece of docufiction, each day of 2024 is represented by one minute of footage. Two transgender artists in a long-distance relationship film their personal lives for an entire year as a form of therapy. The project forces the couple to examine who they are as individuals, lovers, and artists in a world that threatens their existence.
In a desperate search to create a follow-up to Joe Swanberg's 2011 film Uncle Kent, Kent Osborne travels to a comic book convention in San Diego where he loses his mind and confronts the end of the world.
Camila, a young Argentine theater director, travels from Buenos Aires to New York to attend an artistic residency to develop a Spanish translation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Upon her arrival, she begins to receive a series of mysterious postcards which set her down a winding path through her past and towards her future.
Writer/director/star Alex Karpovsky, a familiar face to indie filmgoers, reveals his sterling comic chops in this close-to-the-bone comedy. Teasing the line between fiction and reality, he plays an indie filmmaker named Alex Karpovsky who, dumped by a longtime girlfriend fed up with his refusal to marry, takes to the road with a reluctant old pal for a misbegotten mini tour screening his movie on college campuses and independent cinemas.
When their elderly neighbor suddenly drops dead, a young Brooklyn couple investigates signs of foul play.
Waking up the morning after hosting a party, a man discovers a stranger passed out on his floor. He spends the rest of the day trying to convince her to leave.
