Mike Plante

Richard Ramirez, aka the Nightstalker, who terrorized people in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and the police had no clue with him.

While the rest of America slept, DIY filmmaker/musician Giuseppe Andrews has made over 30 experimental features. Set in some demented alternate universe (i.e. Ventura, California), they are populated by real-life alcoholics and drug addicts, trash-talking senior citizens and trailer park residents dressed in cow outfits and costume-shop wigs. Director Adam Rifkin creates a wildly surreal, outrageously funny and strangely touching portrait of a truly Outsider Artist inhabiting a world few of us even know exists.

As one of his generation's quintessential Mad Men, television commercial director Joe Sedelmaier's work was iconic, dynamic, and instantly recognizable--some twenty to thirty years later, people are still wondering 'Where's the beef?” He turned the advertising world on its brain-damaged head by casting offbeat non-actors in still-unforgettable spots. His brilliant, frequently hysterical commercials for Wendy's, Alaska Airlines, Federal Express and others were snappy slices of cultural quirk that tapped into the Cold War-fearing, corporate workaholic zeitgeist of the '70s and '80s with a sense of humor that cracked billions of smiles, sold billions of burgers, and sped up the default rhythm of time-based media.

On June 13, 1978, the punk bands the Cramps and the Mutants played a free show for psychiatric patients at the Napa State Hospital in California. We Were There to Be There chronicles the people, politics, and cultural currents that led to the show and its live recording.

A collection of extraordinary animated short films from around the world, curated by Don Hertzfeldt. Released exclusively to movie theaters to support independent animators, the program includes “Martyr’s Guidebook”, “Zoon”, “The Hill Farm”, “I Am Alone and My Head is On Fire”, “Wednesday with Goddard”, “Jesus 2”, “The Big Snit”, “Untitled Line Drawings” (never-before-seen work by Bruce Bickford), and more.

Behind the scenes of a 102 year old candy kitchen in north St. Louis

Wyatt Earp, one of the most famous lawmen and gamblers of the Old West, is the inspiration behind decades of Hollywood Westerns. This documentary, written by director Plante along with Sam Green and Tim Kirk, highlights the influence of Earp’s legacy on cinema and our perception of the wild, wild West.

Anatomy of an Arthouse: 50 Years of The Loft Cinema in Tucson is a short documentary film about The Loft Cinema, one of the country’s longest-running independent cinemas. As told by the people who made it happen - with its transition from screening X-rated adult films to showcasing acclaimed art films and repertory classics in 1972, its 1991 move from a small church on Fremont and 6th Street to its current location on Speedway Boulevard, its longest run of Rocky Horror in America, to the ups and downs of the independent film exhibition world over the last 50 years.

You know when you go to the mall and get your picture taken with Santa? Filmmaker Mike Plante's family took those Polaroids. It was their job.