Directing
Calling All Earthlings explores a mid-century UFO cult led by one-time Howard Hughes confidante, George Van Tassel. Van Tassel claimed to have combined alien guidance with the writings of inventor/physicist Nikola Tesla, and other controversial science, to build an electromagnetic time machine he dubbed “The Integratron.” Was he insane? Or could the dome really break through the boundaries of space, time, and energy? FBI agents worked against Van Tassel and the alternative community that formed out of his work. Would he finish the Integratron before the government finished him?
Filmmaker and professor Pearl Gluck’s provocative latest dramatic short film centers on Malke, a Holocaust survivor and sex-ed teacher who has been leading a secret life for decades: performing slam poetry on the Lower East Side. Castles in the Sky features commanding performances from actor Lynn Cohen, who died in 2020, and poet Venus Thrash, who died in 2021.
In 1968, Elsa and Richard Marley founded an alternative-living community, named Black Bear, in the remote Northern California wilderness with the motto "Free Land for Free People." This film tells the story of that intended utopia. Through archival footage and interviews with former residents, director Jonathan Berman explores the problems and realities of communal living and the evolution of a community that endured FBI harassment, cult leadership and more.
Albert is an introverted travel agent living a lonely life in New York. When Louie, his best friend from childhood, appears having just escaped from prison, Albert's quiet existence is permanently disrupted. what ensues is one long, crazy night in New York that will change both their lives forever.
A group of teenagers take refuge in an old, deserted mansion. Soon the members of the group start turning up dead, and the teenagers realize that they're not alone in the mansion.
A look at the unlikely community forged in the 200 degree heat of the last traditional steam baths in the U.S. From gamblers to "new age" masseuses, from poets to rabbis, the characters form a sometimes conflicting, yet often compelling voice. The film uses the baths to give a perspective on the evolution of city life, while bringing up issues of ethnicity, nostalgia, sexuality, spirituality and ritual. "When we sit in this intense heat", says one patron, "we're all the same - millionaire and pauper".
