Sarah Ema Friedland

Branch Brook Park Roller Rink, located in Newark, NJ, is one of the few remaining urban rinks of its kind. This concrete structure is nestled in a public park bordered by public housing and a highway. Upon first glance, the exterior resembles a fallout shelter; however, the streamers and lights of the interior are reminiscent of 1970s roller discos. This 55 minute documentary depicts a space cherished by skaters and a city struggling to move beyond its past and forge a new narrative amidst contemporary social issues.

For decades, performance artist and writer Kate Bornstein has been exploding binaries and deconstructing gender. And, her own identity. Trans-dyke. Reluctant polyamorist. Sadomasochist. Recovering Scientologist. Pioneering Gender Outlaw. Kate Bornstein Is a Queer and Pleasant Danger, joins her on her latest tour capturing rollicking public performances and painful personal revelations as it bears witness to Kate as a trailblazing artist theorist activist who inhabits a space between male and female with wit, style, and astonishing candor. By turns meditative and playful, the film invites us on a thought provoking journey through Kate's world to seek answers to some of life's biggest questions.

A sci-fi documentary that follows the rise and fall of Lyd — a 5,000-year-old metropolis that was once a bustling Palestinian town until it was conquered when the State of Israel was established in 1948. As the film unfolds, a chorus of characters creates a tapestry of the Palestinian experience of this city and the trauma left by the massacre and expulsion.

A Hemlock forest in Western Massachusetts that is dying due to the Woolly Adelgid beetle infestation tells a larger story about climate collapse and the interconnections between the natural and the built environments.

A collection of 190-second short films created in response to COVID-19, commissioned by filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler.

At a border check point, pregnant people are forced to endure invasive and emotionally abusive measures in order to get an abortion. The dialogue in this film is taken verbatim from State-mandated anti-choice materials, and imagines a world in which the territory of the body and the territory of the nation are collapsed into one space. Ultimately, the film explores whether this fictional world is really that different from the one we live in now. Abortion is already severly restricted in the U.S., especially for people of color and those with lower incomes, but if Roe v Wade were overturned these restrictions could expand to outright bans in up to 21 states.

Evil Flaming Death is one of the most infamous villains of Planet Creation, a planet that divides the citizens from the criminals with a giant wall that completely surrounds the planet. After a failed attempt at making an evil clone of his archrival, Zon Inferno Awesomeness, Evil is now the "father" of a girl named Zonia Sparkles Death. While all his henchman love Zonia, Evil remains extremely distant, but when Father's Day comes around Zonia attempts to crack open his cold, unyielding heart.

A coral reef molded from human cremains so large it will be seen from outer space, an eco burial site that functions as a 130 acre wildlife preserve, and a mass grave of undocumented immigrants waiting to be recognized: in the US, memorials to the deceased have become as diverse as the lives they represent.

Ricki Ticki explores Aunt Ricki’s struggle with early onset Alzheimer’s. After the onset of her illness, she lived the last 10 years of her life —from 50 to 60 years old— in a home for the aged overlooking Coney Island, ironically located blocks from where she was born. This piece uses her loss of memory and character as a metaphor for the effects of development on the neighborhood surrounding her. The piece is displayed on three channels of video and two channels of audio or as a single channel split screen piece.