Tijana Petrović

On June 3, 1973, a man was murdered in a busy intersection of San Francisco’s Chinatown as part of an ongoing gang war. Chol Soo Lee, a 20-year-old Korean immigrant who had previous run-ins with the law, was arrested and convicted based on flimsy evidence and the eyewitness accounts of white tourists who couldn’t distinguish between Asian features. Sentenced to life in prison, Chol Soo Lee would spend years fighting to survive behind bars before journalist K.W. Lee took an interest in his case. The intrepid reporter’s investigation would galvanize a first-of-its-kind pan-Asian American grassroots movement to fight for Chol Soo Lee’s freedom, ultimately inspiring a new generation of social justice activists.

From homosexual penguins and sex-transitioning fish to pregnant male seahorses and sexually dominant female bonobos, thousands of species defy our expectations of gender and sexuality. Director Drew Denny takes the nature documentary to a whole new level in this eye-opening and entertaining expedition to the places David Attenborough overlooks, where giant duck penises and corkscrew vaginas take center stage. Debunking myths that females are “inferior” and being queer is somehow “unnatural,” Second Nature explores the 1500+ animal species that engage in same-sex sexual behavior and parenting, change sex, form matriarchies, and more.

In a hellish future where human beings have become stupefied by the state of permanent happiness they have been genetically altered to experience, Jack offers relief via drugs that cause his customers the welcome phenomenon of pain. But when Jack receives a mysterious videotape of his dead father, he sets out to unmask the dangerous conspiracy that has created this dystopian world.

Julie Wyman’s quest to find her place within the little people (LP) community at a moment when dwarf identity is poised to radically change. As Julie unpacks the rumors of “partial dwarfism” in her family she finds that hers is the last of a body type she has inherited. She joins forces with a group of dwarf artists to confront the legacy of being tokenized and put on display.

A Field Guide to Coastal Fortifications is an essay film charting the technological evolution of military bunkers built within the San Francisco Bay’s eroding coast. The film observes a dynamic geological relationship between the literal structures of colonial power, and the land itself. As symbols of military might, the bunkers were tasked with protecting the coast from ‘perceived threats.’ Constructed, reconstructed and updated over time, these structures stood and waited for the enemy that never came. Against the backdrop of a changing landscape and its mythology, the film looks at the evolution of military technologies of seeing.

A look at the transparency of a political process and the veneer of its bureaucracy.

A documentary from Stripe Press that follows the evolution of a rudimentary gaming network between friends in Cuba into a DIY internet that serviced most of the island.

Changed Landscape observes the mundane lives of cows, donkeys, ducks and humans, and juxtaposes them with the soundtrack of spectacular and catastrophic news headlines happening in the world at large. It depicts a natural world moving towards an ominous shift.

Quiet images and disembodied voices drift across the landscape. Someone who left this place a long time ago longs to see it anew. Twenty years after the war in Bosnia & Herzegovina its repercussions still loom over the everyday life of the residents.

A meditation on the sight of a blue whale beached on a California shore. The film observes the onlookers and the nature of their looking.

"A coastal sand dune is transformed and reshaped into digital ether. The film focuses closely on sand as a material, which is composed of silica, the mineral that is a primary ingredient in manufacturing silicon chips, lenses, binoculars, microscopes, and mirrors—devices that extend our vision. The film uses these devices to visually capture the sand dune and evoke the transformation of materials that goes into their production. Through 16mm analog techniques, the elemental forces of a sand dune merge with the physical properties of the celluloid." (TP) Commissioned for Canyon Cinema's Print Generations project.