Our Posts from March 2023

Nilima Abrams

Nilima Abrams

Nilima Abrams is a documentary filmmaker and social entrepreneur with extensive experience in India. As an undergraduate she integrated self-taught documentary filmmaking with coursework, and wrote an award-winning honors thesis on schools and media in India. She also made a film on child labor prevention in India, and went on to complete an MFA in documentary film at Stanford. She has taught kids filmmaking in India, as well as native Vermont and Somali refugee youth, in a summer camp she co-created. Nilima received a Fulbright Fellowship to spend a year in India filming for a feature film and guiding students on THE TENT VILLAGE. Nilima teaches social issue and cause marketing documentary film courses at the University of Vermont. Besides filmmaking, Nilima works in various media to make “good causes” accessible.

LUCHINA FISHER DOUBLE FEATURE

DocScapes presents an evening of two films by Luchina Fisher

THE DADS (Luchina Fisher, 2023)
»Trailer on IMDb

MAMA GLORIA (Luchina Fisher, 2020)
»MAMA GLORIA website (trailer and more)

TUE, MAR 28, 7pm

The Loft Cinema / FREE
Tickets available day of screening

In Person: Filmmaker Luchina Fisher and Tucson artist José Trujillo, one of the fathers from THE DADS

Co-presented by Lesbian Looks, Hanson FilmTV Institute, Institute for LGBT Studies

DocScapes presents a Luchina Fisher double feature

 

THE DADS

(Luchina Fisher, 2023, USA, 10 mins, Not Rated)

»Trailer on IMDb

When five fathers of trans kids join Dennis Shepard, the father of slain gay college student Matthew Shepard, for a weekend fishing trip in rural Oklahoma, they find common purpose across races, generations and experiences.

Six dads gather in rural Oklahoma for a weekend fishing trip. As the men cast their rods into the river, share their catch over dinner, and swap stories beside the bonfire, we learn what has brought them to this scenic idyll: the love for their trans and LGBTQ children, their fears for their children’s safety, and the urgency to fight for the ground on which they all stand. The Dads is a quiet meditation on fatherhood, brotherhood and manhood amid the changing American landscape.

MAMA GLORIA

(Luchina Fisher, 2020, USA, 76 mins, Not Rated)

»MAMA GLORIA website (trailer and more)

An intimate portrait of Chicago’s Black transgender icon Gloria Allen, who transitioned before Stonewall and went on to open a charm school for transgender youth in her 60s. The film shares her life and recollections of growing up on the south side with an extremely supportive family, her childhood realization that she was a girl and time spent in the drag ball scene.

»Interview with Luchina Fisher on The Moveable Fest

»Luchina Fisher bio

Jacob Bricca

Jacob Bricca

Jacob Bricca is an award-winning Tucson-based documentary editor, director, and teacher. He has edited over a dozen feature films including the international theatrical hit LOST IN LA MANCHA, the New Yorker Films theatrical release CON ARTIST, the Independent Lens Audience Award Winner JIMMY SCOTT: IF YOU ONLY KNEW and the 2016 Sundance Special Jury Award Winner THE BAD KIDS. His directorial credits include INDIES UNDER FIRE: THE BATTLE FOR THE AMERICAN BOOKSTORE, which won awards at the Newburyport Documentary Festival and the Santa Cruz Film Festival, PURE, which premiered at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, and FINDING TATANKA which premiered at the 2014 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and is distributed by Passion River Films. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Theatre, Film and Television, where he teaches classes on editing and documentary filmmaking. He is the author of Documentary Editing: Principles and Practice (Focal Press/Routledge, 2017).

Jean Carlomusto

Jean Carlomusto

Jean Carlomusto is a filmmaker, activist, and interactive media artist whose work explores the complex nature of unique individuals and marginalized populations. Her films are often unorthodox investigations of LGBT history and HIV/AIDS. Her work has been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. She produced and directed HBO’s Emmy nominated documentary, LARRY KRAMER IN LOVE & ANGER (2015), which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival.

Jean was an early pioneer in the AIDS Activist video movement. In 1987, she started the Media Unit at Gay Men’s Health Crisis. She was a founding member of DIVA TV (a video affinity group of ACT UP) and a member of the Testing The Limits Video Collective. The numerous works that she collaborated on, included: Doctors, Liars and Women: AIDS Activists Say No To Cosmo, Target City Hall, Seize Control of the FDA, Testing the Limits:NYC, and Women and AIDS. Her powerful documentary SEX IN AN EPIDEMIC tells the story of how the safer sex movement was born and how HIV prevention movements continue today. The film premiered on Showtime on World AIDS Day, 2011.

Her 1991 film L is for the Way You Look was featured in the very first season of Lesbian Looks, in Fall 1993.

March scene from AMERICA'S FAMILY (Anike Tourse, 2019)

AMERICA’S FAMILY

(Anike Tourse, 2022)

TUE APR 4, 2023, 7:30pm

The Loft Cinema / FREE

Co-presented with Border Zones Film Series and Racial Justice Studio.

When ICE raids the Diaz family home on Thanksgiving, Mother Marisol is arrested and locked up in detention, son Koke is deported to Mexico, and Father Jorge flees for protective sanctuary in a local synagogue. The two American-born children, young attorney Emiliano and his teen sister Valentina (while also managing her epilepsy), race to do whatever they can to reunite the family while their parents and brother do what they must to get home.

Reviews

“America’s Family is proof of something we need more of in modern cinema.”
— Federico Furzan, Movie Blogger

“An important call for change and respect.”
— Sabina Dana Plasse, Film Threat

Awards

Grand Jury Prize & Audience Award, Dances With Films 2022
Best Narrative Feature Award, Roxbury Film Festival 2022

»Anike Tourse bio