About the Film
By the time the second wave of Los Angeles punk rock began to crest in the early 1980s, most historians had already closed the book. But things were just starting to get interesting. The music was getting harder and faster, politics became integral to the scene, police-on-punk violence and massive riots were de rigueur, and the concept of DIY transformed from a necessity into a battle cry. It was at this time that the Better Youth Organization was born. Founded by Canadian brothers Shawn and Mark Stern of the influential L.A. punk band Youth Brigade, the BYO was part political movement and part business venture. Even though they were only teenagers at the time, Shawn, Mark, and the BYO crew found a way to organize punks to take positive action to help sustain their scene and way of life. Among other things, they helped countless bands put on shows, they were instrumental in the creation of the landmark punk documentary Another State of Mind, and they started BYO Records, which remains one of the oldest surviving independent punk rock labels in the world.

About the Film
The SXSW Special Jury Award winning The Way We Get By is a deeply moving film about life and how to live it. Beginning as a seemingly idiosyncratic story about troop greeters — a group of senior citizens who gather daily at a small airport to thank American soldiers departing and returning from Iraq — the film quickly turns into a moving, unsettling and compassionate story about aging, loneliness, war and mortality. When its three subjects aren’t at the airport, they wrestle with their own problems: failing health, depression, mounting debt. Joan, a grandmother of eight, has a deep connection to the soldiers she meets. The sanguine Jerry keeps his spirits up even as his personal problems mount. And the veteran Bill, who clearly has trouble taking care of himself, finds himself contemplating his own death. Seeking out the telling detail rather than offering sweeping generalizations, the film carefully builds stories of heartbreak and redemption, reminding us how our culture casts our elders, and too often our soldiers, aside. More importantly, regardless of your politics, The Way We Get By celebrates three unsung heroes who share their love with strangers who need and deserve it.

About the Film
Wheelchair bound, without a larynx, and diagnosed with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm, Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet now lives only (and barely) so he can travel to India to perform free operations in marathon-like surgery sessions where up to 700 children receive treatment for their cleft lips and other deformities. Although Dicksheet survives off of social security while living in his Brooklyn apartment, his life is drastically different in India where the eight-time Nobel Prize nominee is treated like a living god. Flying On One Engine shows how this quirky, funny, and sometimes difficult character overcomes his own ailments by helping others.

About the Film
This documentary explores the outrageous work and agile mind of a wildly creative artist/inventor/composer/engineer. Recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award and many other accolades, Trimpin (who uses only his last name) combines music-making machines and kinetic sculpture with homegrown computer technology. Working six days a week, 12 hours per day, he has no use for galleries and agents, and has neither web site nor cell phone; in fact, Trimpin agreed to be the subject of this feature only reluctantly. Filmmaker Peter Esmonde set out to document the processes of a highly creative person working in many fields, with a motley assortment of media and collaborators, across a variety of situations. His film deliberately highlights Trimpin’s moments of discovery, relentless problem-solving, and eccentric decision-making. What results is an amusing, kinetic exploration of a creative genius in perpetual motion.

About the Film
God’s Architects tells the stories of five visionary builders and their enigmatic creations. With neither funding nor blueprints, these builders, unbeknownst to one another, dedicate their entire lives to creating architectural worlds and realms that for most of us exist only in the wilds of the imagination. In the fall of 2005, filmmaker Zack Godshall set out with a camera, tripod and microphone to interview and document the work of Floyd Banks, Jr., a divinely inspired castle-builder living in the east Tennessee hill country. Three and a half years later, Godshall completed a feature-length film that both examines and celebrates the work of Banks along with four other solitary builders who have constructed similar monuments. Beyond the builders and their work, the film indirectly functions as a personal essay that explores the nature of inspiration and one’s dedication to a creative project, no matter how absurd or mysterious the circumstances may seem. God’s Architects features builders from Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.

About the Film
Between Floors examines the human condition through a uniquely claustrophobic lens, intercutting between five stuck elevators and the people trapped inside them. Each elevator becomes an existential purgatory, forcing its occupants to not only confront their isolation, but themselves and each other in varied and unexpected ways. Taking place entirely in five elevators, Between Floors is as unusual as it is arresting, blurring lines of genre, tone and form while its characters are stripped bare—trapped, alone, waiting—and we get to watch what happens. Awkwardly funny, numbingly tragic, anxiously crushing, and ultimately liberating, the film features a colorful variety of characters stripped of control, slowed to a halt, and forced to reflect... until the doors open.