Cathy Quinlan

It begins with footage from a stylish old potboiler about an isolated convent, whose tale of passions leashed and unleashed provides the leitmotif for a young lesbian who watches it and the lonely nun she pursues and seduces. As the two women's lives come closer to joining, voiceovers from the biography of a 16th century lesbian nun and the reminiscences of a woman's closeted romances at a Catholic school flesh out the theme.

Su Friedrich's personal essay charting the destruction of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. After living in the neighborhood for 20 years, the filmmaker was one of many who were forced out after the city passed a rezoning plan allowing developers to build luxury condos where there were once thriving industries, working-class families, and artists. Filmed over many years, it is a scathing portrait of one neighborhood's demolition and transformation.

Su Friedrich has taken up the camera again in her ongoing quest to film the battleground of family life. Her mother Lore--who played the lead in The Ties That Bind (1984), a film about her experiences growing up in Germany during the Second World War--plays the lead again, this time kicking and protesting against being moved at the age of 94 from her home in Chicago to an “independent living” facility in New York. Friedrich and her two siblings fill out the supporting roles, cajoling, comforting, and freaking out.