Gotham Alumni On Screen: February 2024
by The Gotham Staff on February 1, 2024 in Alumni on Screen
Welcome to Alumni on Screen, February 2024 edition! To champion and signal boost our Gotham-supported projects, at the top of each month we’ll have a rundown of alumni making their way into the world on screens both big and small.
FEBRUARY 1
Celebrate Black History Collection
The Criterion Channel
“The story of Black Americans is, in many ways, the story of America itself. Though the African American experience has long been relegated to the margins of the big screen, a vital cinematic legacy endures thanks to the work of pioneers like Fronza Woods (Fannie’s Film), Kathleen Collins (Losing Ground), Julie Dash (Daughters of the Dust), and Marlon Riggs (Tongues Untied), as well as bracing contemporary voices like Garrett Bradley (America) and Jon-Sesrie Goff (After Sherman). Their stories of revolution, resistance, creativity, community, and everyday endurance offer a multifaceted vision of Black American identity across generations.” — The Criterion Channel
Gotham Alums: screening as part of this series on The Criterion Channel are alumni films such as Kathleen Collins’ Losing Ground (1982 Project Market), Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust (1988 Project Market), Jennie Livingston’s Paris Is Burning (1987 & 1990 Project Market), Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman (1995 Project Market), and Jon-Sesrie Goff’s After Sherman (2020 Project Market).
FEBRUARY 1
Ornette: Made in America
The Criterion Channel
“This freewheeling documentary captures Ornette Coleman’s evolution over three decades. Documentary footage, dramatic scenes, and some of the first music-video-style segments ever made chronicle his boyhood in segregated Texas and his subsequent emergence as an American cultural pioneer and world-class composer and performer. Among those who contribute to the film are William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Buckminster Fuller, Don Cherry, Yoko Ono, Charlie Haden, Robert Palmer, Jayne Cortez, and John Rockwell.” — The Criterion Channel
Directed by Shirley Clarke and produced by Kathelin Hoffman.
Gotham Alum: Ornette: Made in America is an alumnus of the 1984 & 1985 Project Markets.
FEBRUARY 1
Razing Liberty Square
PBS Passport
“Liberty City, Miami, is home to one of the oldest segregated public housing projects in the U.S. Now with rising sea levels, the neighborhood’s higher ground has become something else: real estate gold. Wealthy property owners push inland to higher ground, creating a speculators’ market in the historically Black neighborhood previously ignored by developers and policy-makers alike.” — PBS Independent Lens
Directed by Katja Esson and produced by Ann Bennet, Katja Esson, Corinna Sager, and Ronald Baez.
Gotham Alum: Razing Liberty Square is an alumnus of the 2018 Project Market.
FEBRUARY 2
Not a Pretty Picture
Anthology Film Archives
“Anthology presents a week-long revival run of Martha Coolidge’s emotionally shattering and formally innovative NOT A PRETTY PICTURE (1975). A self-reflexive documentary that was the culmination of the early non-fiction films Coolidge made before turning towards narrative fiction with VALLEY GIRL (1983), NOT A PRETTY PICTURE has been newly restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation.” — Anthology Film Archives
Directed and produced by Martha Coolidge.
Gotham Alums: Not a Pretty Picture is an alumnus of the 1979 Project Market.
FEBRUARY 4
Bad Press
Museum of the Moving Image
“In 2018, the Muscogee Nation, one of the only Native American tribes to have established its own free press, suffered a grievous setback to its civil liberties when members of its own legislative body abruptly repealed the three-year-old law guaranteeing protection of the media, with one representative citing a lack of “positivity” in coverage by the tribe’s chief outlet Mvskoke Media. In this spellbinding real-life tale of journalistic activism, filmmakers Peeler and Landsberry-Baker follow the struggle of reporter Angel Ellis as she organizes the Mvskoke Media and general populace to push through a constitutional amendment.” — Museum of the Moving Image
Directed by Rebecca Landsberry-Baker and Joe Peeler and produced by Garrett F. Baker, Conrad Beilharz, and Tyler Graim.
Gotham Alum: Bad Press is an alumnus of the 2022 Documentary Feature Lab and the 2022 Project Market.
FEBRUARY 12
Obsessed with Light
Film at Lincoln Center
“Obsessed with Light tells the story of Loïe Fuller, a visionary artist and technological trailblazer who overcame numerous hurdles to become one of the most famous dancers of her day. She launched Isadora Duncan’s career, promoted Auguste Rodin’s sculpture in the U.S. and inspired Picasso, Rodin, and Toulouse-Lautrec, among others. Her passion for science and technology led her to extraordinary innovations in lighting and stagecraft. The film is structured around the creation of a new dance by American choreographer Jody Sperling, interweaving stunning hand-tinted vintage footage of Fuller’s dances and interviews with contemporary artists and performers whom she influenced.” — Film at Lincoln Center
Directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum.
Gotham Alum: Obsessed with Light is an alumnus of the 2019 Project Market and was Fiscally Sponsored by The Gotham.
You can find our month-by-month Alumni on Screen blog posts here.
If your project is an alumnus of The Gotham programs and is being released this month, and you do not see it listed here, please contact us at [email protected]