Robert A. Emmons Jr.

A love letter to film history, Sickies Making Films looks at our urge to censor movies and asks, Why? By focusing on the Maryland Board of Censors, the nation's longest lasting censor board, we discover reasons both absurd and surprisingly understandable.

In 1950, America was in a state of panic. Juvenile delinquency was destroying the very fabric of society. Ninety percent of all children were reading comic books. In 1954, psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham wrote a scathing indictment of comics called Seduction of the Innocent. Its central premise: Comic books were the leading contributing factor to juvenile delinquency. That same year, Dr. Wertham testified at special hearings on comic books at the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in the United States. Comics were on trial. Diagram for Delinquents captures the zeitgeist of late 1940s and early 1950s America and investigates how the funny books found themselves on the fire. Using expert and comic book insider interviews, never seen before historical photographs and films, and animation, DIAGRAM goes further than any previous comic book documentary to explore and understand the controversial figure at the center of this American tale: Fredric Wertham.

Palimpsest is an interactive documentary that traces childhood fear and anxiety from the Cold War to school shootings in America, while along the way connecting Archimedes, Choose Your Adventure books, Baseball, Ray Bradbury, Charles Dickens, Peter Pan, John Fahey, Turtles, and every demographic cohort from The Greatest Generation to Gen Z. Palimpsest scrapes at this messy history in an attempt to reveal causes and solutions for one of America's greatest public health epidemics.

Jimmy (Noah Bell) has shot a cop and now Tommy (Eric Volm), Frankie (Julio Salas), and Charlie (Andrew Klamo) are working to cover it up after their boss, Tony (Al Scattone) makes an appearance at the speakeasy. Tony has been coming under heat from his connections after the murder, which he didn’t call and he ultimately suspects someone in the group did it. Meanwhile, one of the crew, Danny (Chris Licata), is revealed to be an informant working for Billy (James Kristian). The film explores both criminals and cops, wondering (and as stated in the beginning which is a radio show with Mike (Joey Mazzochette), Eddie (Pavi Pandher), and Larry (Josef Doctorovitz)), if we’re all that different or similar to criminals after all.