Risa Morimoto

Spies of Mississippi tells the story of a secret spy agency formed by the state of Mississippi to preserve segregation and maintain white supremacy. The anti-civil rights organization was hidden in plain sight in an unassuming office in the Mississippi State Capitol. Funded with taxpayer dollars and granted extraordinary latitude to carry out its mission, the Commission evolved from a propaganda machine into a full blown spy operation. How do we know this is true? The Commission itself tells us in more than 146,000 pages of files preserved by the State. This wealth of first person primary historical material guides us through one of the most fascinating and yet little known stories of America's quest for Civil Rights.

Wings of Defeat is a feature-length documentary exploring the human experience of surviving kamikaze pilots. When director, Risa Morimoto, learned that her beloved uncle had trained as a kamikaze pilot in his youth but carried that secret to his grave, she decided to retrace his footsteps and ask surviving pilots about their provocative experiences. Sixty years later, survivors in their eighties tell us about their training, their mindsets, their experiences in a kamikaze cockpit and what it meant to survive when thousands of their fellow pilots crashed to their deaths. Their stories insist we set aside our preconceptions to relive their all too human experiences with them. Ultimately, they help us question what responsibilities a government at war has to its soldiers and to its people.

MEMORY/LOSS: PARTS I and II is a reflection on the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, told from two viewpoints. Khatharya Um, a professor at UC Berkeley, returns to her homeland and the killing fields to talk with locals about the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, evoking painful personal memories in the process. Born in a refugee camp, Pete Pin is a photographer living in Brooklyn. Though he has never been to Cambodia, he too has seen the long-lasting pain inflicted by the Khmer Rouge. Pete takes photos as a way to help young Cambodian Americans bridge the generational gap between themselves and the Cambodian elders they both revere and fear.

Once a mild-mannered TV director, Hua Ze discovered that an old friend reporting on alleged corruption after the Sichuan earthquake had disappeared, along with any mention of him online. Following a trail of leads over the great internet firewall of China, she discovers a jaw-dropping array of human rights abuses across the country. Her awakening takes her into a new world of dissidents, citizen journalism, human rights lawyers. police harassment and kidnappings. In her own reporting, Hua cannot turn a blind eye to the problems, and is made to pay the price. The film documents Hua’s courage, and her willingness to lose everything in her fight for justice.