Sierra Pettengill

In 1979 Santa Barbara, California, Dorothea Fields is a determined single mother in her mid-50s who is raising her adolescent son, Jamie, at a moment brimming with cultural change and rebellion. Dorothea enlists the help of two younger women – Abbie, a free-spirited punk artist living as a boarder in the Fields' home and Julie, a savvy and provocative teenage neighbour – to help with Jamie's upbringing.

For more than thirty years, and through his television program, Fred Rogers (1928-2003), host, producer, writer and pianist, accompanied by his puppets and his many friends, spoke directly to young children about some of life's most important issues.

In this true crime docuseries, some of the most dramatic trials of all time are examined with an emphasis on how the media may have impacted verdicts.

Elliot Page brings attention to the injustices and injuries caused by environmental racism in his home province, in this urgent documentary on Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures.

No other band in rock'n'roll history has rivaled The Stooges' combination of heavy primal throb, spiked psychedelia, blues-a-billy grind, complete with succinct angst-ridden lyrics, and a snarling, preening leopard of a frontman who somehow embodies Nijinsky, Bruce Lee, Harpo Marx, and Arthur Rimbaud all rolled into one. There is no precedent for The Stooges, while those inspired by them are now legion. The film will present the context of their emergence musically, culturally, politically, historically, and relate their adventures and misadventures while charting their inspirations and the reasons behind their initial commercial challenges, as well as their long-lasting legacy.

An archival documentary about the U.S. military’s response to the political and racial injustices of the late 1960s: take a military base, build a mock inner-city set, cast soldiers to play rioters, burn the place down, and film it all.

An oral history of Artists Space, the legendary New York artists organization. Told through the voices of the artists, critics and curators who formed it, the film is narrated by voiceover culled from 30 hours of archival cassette tape interviews over a 45 year period. Artists such as Laurie Anderson, Mike Kelley, Hito Steyerl and David Wojnarowicz walk us through the decades. A formally-experimental and raucously-told chronology composed of rare archival documentation, The Business of Thought... is a reminder of the radical potential of the arts and the importance of collective, cultural spaces.

Comprised entirely of archival footage taken during those pre-reality-television years, The Reagan Show looks at how Ronald Reagan redefined the look and feel of what it means to be the POTUS.

The Triangle Fire chronicles the 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killing one hundred and forty-eight young women and forever changed the relationship between labor and industry in the United States.

This American Experience tells Whitman's life story, from his working-class childhood in Long Island, to his years as a newspaper reporter in Brooklyn when he struggled to support his impoverished family, then to his reckless pursuit of the attention and affection he craved for his work, to his death in 1892.

An all-archival excavation of the links between gun culture, the National Rifle Association, and the U.S. Border Patrol across five decades.

Hybrid documentary film

BAD BLOOD chronicles how a "miracle" treatment for hemophilia became an agent of death for 10,000 Americans.

Using over 100 years of archival footage, director Sierra Pettengill explores the history of the largest Confederate monument, Georgia’s Stone Mountain.

This candid New York love story explores the chaotic 40-year marriage of famed boxing painter Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko. Anxious to shed her role as her overbearing husband's assistant, Noriko finds an identity of her own.

Made in 1977 for German public television, a rare look at Harun Farocki’s films for children. Harun Farocki's twin daughters, Lara and Anna were also shown in this documentary.

An inside look into two years in the lives of Katy and John, Tea Party activists from Central Pennsylvania, as they fight to preserve the America they fear is slipping away.

Two rival juice companies, Eco-Elixir and Jock Juice, accidentally unleash an experimental formula of energy drink on an unsuspecting group of concert- goers. This formula turns whoever is unfortunate enough to drink it into flesh-eating crazies!

“How do you make sense on an emotional, intellectual, and pragmatic level of the visual residue one leaves behind?” This is a pivotal question for Adam Pendleton’s recent abstract paintings on view here, which involve a process of accumulation in which the surface of the canvas teems with sweeping gestures, language, drips, splatters, and moments of erasure in a reflection of how we evolve in life. Pendleton has explained that these works “verge on the monumental; they can take months to make and capture a deep history of marks and impressions. Minor moments become major moments because of how they articulate who we are or who we might be at any given moment. It’s a visual poetics of disruption.” These paintings, Pendleton has suggested, ask: “how do you leverage, subvert, and deploy your subjectivity? We all are doing it all of the time. It becomes more interesting when we’re aware that we’re doing it.”

This film uses the Reagan administration's internal documentation to capture the surreal spectacle of American might at its apex.