Carlo Nasisse

Through handmade outfits and dancing, Coby, a 93 year old retired Chinatown nightclub performer, and Stephen, an artist twenty years her junior, find unlikely love, despite dissimilarities in culture and age. As their last performance in Las Vegas approaches, Coby and Stephen prepare a final routine.

A former AI ethicist from Google claimed that LaMDA was sentient. Through a transcript of their conversation, we explore how we form connections and the implications of big tech using this technology.

The 92-year-old previous nightclub dancer Coby Yee decides to get back on stage again after joining the senior dance troupe Grant Avenue Follies. Together they go on a tour for the last time, bridging once isolated Chinese communities in the US, Cuba and China.

Scientists and philosophers work to understand animal vision in this multi textured rumination exploring our relationship to the nonhuman world.

Blair is a transgender young adult living in Texas and transitioning with mixed reactions from his conservative parents.

Pet rams, streetside accordionists: East Austin is certainly not lacking in character. But as Texas’s capital city gentrifies, the neighborhood’s spirit fades. This melancholy documentary is the second film by Indie Grits alum Carlo Nasisse to screen in the festival— Coby & Stephen Are in Love appears in On Love & Other Connections.

Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, was drained by settlers in the 19th century and transformed into one of the most valuable agricultural lands in the world. This visual essay explores the emptiness of the former lake and the ongoing water crisis. Today, farm machinery, animals and people search for water in the resulting dry valley.

In a country with no numerical system for street addresses, a young woman explores the unique system that has taken hold, and the prospect of its rapid disappearance.

Gaspar, a respected community leader, walks a fragile line between protecting his forest and leading his region’s first carbon offset project for the United States. As tradition meets global markets, he must reconcile stewardship with the promises and pressures of a new economy.

Set in San Francisco and Toisan, "The American Relative" follows Pat Chu Nishimoto as she uncovers her late father's secret. In 1980, she visits China for the first time and discovers a family of half-relatives. The film then shifts to these Chinese relatives, who recount the history of their ancestral home, highlighting the erosion of history and culture amidst rapid modernization.

During the first human-driven mass extinction, a filmmaker drifts through churches, ancient DNA labs, and ghostly archives, searching for permanence. What lies beyond our replicas of the lost?