Thomas Logoreci

Just moments before his third wedding, Zahedi relates with utter sincerity and astonishing candor his obsession with prostitutes. He retraces his romantic and sexual history, including his ideological commitment to open relationships, that led to two disastrous marriages and several very pissed off ex-girlfriends.

Independent Filmmaker Caveh Zahedi is trying to make a television show. He persuades BRIC TV, a Brooklyn non-profit Arts organization, to finance a television show whose premise is that every episode will be about the making of the previous episode. In the process of creating the show, everything can-and does-go wrong. The cast, a who's who of Brooklyn's independent filmmaking community, includes Alex Karpovsky, Eleonore Hendricks, Dustin Defa, and Onur Tukel.

Sixty years after the nuclear devastation, a few survivors cling to life in a ruined industrial zone. Ten-year-old Niko lives with his grandfather Lexi, convinced that their territory is a "paradise" worth defending. Lexi indoctrinates Niko to hate the rival survivors across the railroad tracks. A violent confrontation with a feral child triggers a brutal conflict in which the children serve the adults' power struggles. As the adults' violence escalates, Niko realizes that Lexi is not the man he thought he was. The arrival of Xeni's family reveals that borders are a prison, and escape threatens deadly consequences for the children.

Bota (Albanian for “the world”) is a cafe situated on the edge of a vast area of marshland in a remote part of Albania, and it is here that the lives of the protagonists intersect in this compelling debut by Iris Elezi and Thomas Logoreci. The directors skilfully exploit the genius loci of the desolate landscape and, aided by a period score and beguiling long shots, they flawlessly evoke the atmosphere of a place where the past still encroaches upon people’s lives.

On Valentine's Day, 1993, Caveh Zahedi decided to ingest 5 grams (a very large dose) of hallucinogenic mushrooms. For the first time in his mushroom-taking history, he had an experience of "divine possession," in which he felt that a divine being took possession of his body and spoke through him, in a voice that was not his, and with knowledge that he himself did not possess. He later tried several times to repeat the experience. I WAS POSSESSED BY GOD is the documentary record of one such attempt.

On January 1st, 1999, Caveh Zahedi started a one-year video diary. The idea was to shoot one minute each day. This is the result.

With longtime collaborators Greg Watkins (A Little Stiff) and Thomas Logoreci, the charismatic, experimental filmmaker Caveh Zahedi approaches legendary songwriter Will Oldham (Palace Brothers, Bonnie "Prince" Billy) in an unconventional interview. Caveh offers up a serving of psychedelic mushrooms and a view on the relationship between the musician and his fan.

The Darkness of Day is a haunting meditation on suicide. It is comprised entirely of found 16mm footage that had been discarded. The sadness, the isolation, and the desire to escape are recorded on film in various contexts. Voice-over readings from the journal kept by a brother of the filmmaker’s friend who committed suicide in 1990 intermix with a range of compelling stories, from the poignant double suicide of an elderly American couple to a Japanese teenager who jumped into a volcano, spawning over a thousand imitations. While this is a serious exploration of a cultural taboo, its lyrical qualities invite the viewer to approach the subject with understanding and compassion.

For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking her the same questions. In just 29 minutes, we watch her grow from a toddler to a young woman with all the beautiful and sometimes awkward stages in between. Each phase is captured fleetingly but makes an indelible mark. Her responses to her father’s questions are just a backdrop for a deeper story of parental love, acceptance, and ultimately, independence.

A semi-fictionalized day in the life of independent filmmaker Caveh (Caveh Zahedi) and his girlfriend Laura (Laura Macias) as they struggle with a series of challenges and accidents (including eviction from their apartment, possible pregnancy, and a car crash) while desperately seeking a sign from God about the future of their troubled relationship.

Filmmaker Mark Cousins goes to Albania for five days, and films what he sees. He discovers that the movie prints in the country's film archive are decaying. In investigating this, Cousins begins to encounter bigger questions about the history and memory of a place. Perhaps a country whose 20th Century, dominated by its authoritarian ruler Enver Hoxha, was so traumatic, should allow its film heritage to fade away? Perhaps a national forgetting should be welcomed? Influenced by the films of Chris Marker, Cousins' film broadens to consider the architecture of dictators and the great icon paintings of Onufri. In the past, when cartographers knew little about a country, they wrote on it Here be Dragons. Albania was, for decades, one of the least well know countries in the world. Cousins' road movie meditation takes the advice of Goethe: "If you would understand the poet, you must go to the poet's land."

It all started out innocently enough. Filmmaker and thirty-year veteran of the Albanian movie industry, Kujtim Cashku, attempted to hold a press conference to discuss a land dispute with his film academy and city officials. No one could believe what happened next in the former communist nation. Led by an half-drunk bureaucrat in long overcoat and fedora, police disrupted the peaceful gathering then tried to seize the school's garden and open air cinema. Gentian Koci's doc captures the dramatic days that followed when students, professors, activists and lovers of cinema battled to save the outdoor movie screen from destruction by police and corporate interests.

Anna's work day begins badly and culminates in one very special, unique moment.