Social & External
Tober
Shot in long, contemplative takes, Madrona Marsh lingers on the last remaining vernal freshwater wetland in Los Angeles’s South Bay. Amid Torrance’s dense urban sprawl, the film observes the marsh as an unlikely oasis—home to birds, fish, insects, reptiles, and moments of quiet human presence. Influenced by the rhythms of slow cinema’s great masters, Devereaux shapes stillness and habitat into a meditative portrait of fragile ecology and the persistence of life within an urban environment.
Lyrical biography of the classical composer, depicted as a romantic hero, an accursed artist.
Starting his new job as an instructor at a New England school for the deaf, James Leeds meets Sarah Norman, a young deaf woman who works at the school as a member of the custodial staff. In spite of Sarah's withdrawn emotional state, a romance slowly develops between the pair.
As a young woman walks home alone one night, a chance encounter with a missing dog incites the reclamation of her body and self — as she learns to bite as tough as her bark.
Beyond Silence is about a family and a young girl’s coming of age story. This German film looks into the lives of the deaf and at a story about the love for music. A girl who has always had to translate speech into sign language for her deaf parents yet when her love for playing music grows strong she must decide to continue doing something she cannot share with her parents.
In the heart of the Caribbean, a mother and daughter confront a malevolent curse erasing identities of all the island's women, propelling them on a daring quest to reclaim their rich cultural heritage and triumph over the encroaching darkness.
Filmmaker and new media artist Tong Xie’s debut short probes the unease, confusion, and obsession experienced by the body as it crosses the urban physiognomy. Set amidst the shadowy loneliness of Paris at night, Absolutely No Sexual Favors je pense à toi 吾想汝顯 depicts the psychological and corporeal marginality of queer identity and desire through perpetually displaced figures.
A fictionalised exploration of Beethoven's life in his final days working on his Ninth Symphony. It is 1824. Beethoven is racing to finish his new symphony. However, it has been years since his last success and he is plagued by deafness, loneliness and personal trauma. A copyist is urgently needed to help the composer. A fictional character is introduced in the form of a young conservatory student and aspiring composer named Anna Holtz. The mercurial Beethoven is skeptical that a woman might become involved in his masterpiece but slowly comes to trust in Anna's assistance and in the end becomes quite fond of her. By the time the piece is performed, her presence in his life is an absolute necessity. Her deep understanding of his work is such that she even corrects mistakes he has made, while her passionate personality opens a door into his private world.
Jenny is young. Her life is over. She killed someone. And she would do it again. When an 80-year-old piano teacher discovers the girl’s secret, her brutality and her dreams, she decides to transform her pupil into the musical wunderkind she once was.
Christine Vachon’s story of a man haunted by the grotesque memory of having stepped on a dead animal's carcass is an artistic tour de force starring Michael Sean Edwards (the voice of Richard Carpenter in Todd Haynes’ Superstar) and a young Steve Buscemi.
A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.
Shot in a series of long-takes over several days, the film follows a flower shop attendant (played by Devereaux, then actually employed at a small flower shop by the beach) in fragmented detail. The order of scenes resists chronology: moments recur, shift, or vanish, creating not the passage of a single day but the jumble of many, refracted into a meditation on routine and its quiet abstractions.
A conversation between reality and consciousness.
A chronicle of the lives of a couple and the gradual dissolution of their relationship.
During Childbirth, a mother is told the child is stillborn, and she struggles to finish the birth in order to survive.
A tormented man struggling with his inner demons, seeks desperately a way to be at peace with himself.
A deaf garbage collector happens upon a broken and discarded surfboard. The discovery plants in him dreams of becoming a surf champion. Encouraged by his also deaf girlfriend, he persists against all odds.
Frantisek is a deaf man who has spent years in prison for the apparent murder of a man he believed was threatening his then girlfriend, Liza. Once released, Frantisek begins to search for Liza, but the task proves harder than he hoped.
A small-town doctor helps a deaf-mute farm girl learn to communicate.
A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.
Years after her son's suicide, a woman longs to confront both the past and a friend of his who took his business idea.
Up-and-coming sports reporter rescues a homeless man ("Champ") only to discover that he is, in fact, a boxing legend believed to have passed away. What begins as an opportunity to resurrect Champ's story and escape the shadow of his father's success becomes a personal journey as the ambitious reporter reexamines his own life and his relationship with his family.
A street smart runner develops an intense rivalry with an equally ambitious wealthy young athlete.
The relationship of a couple who meet by chance in New York City is put to the test when they encounter a life or death circumstance.
After the lewd and frenetic Dance of the Seven Veils, and with the solemn pledge from the very lips of Herod himself that she could have whatever her heart desires up to half his kingdom, wanton and proud young Salomé comes before her king with an unreasonable demand. Beguiled by John the Baptist, and then scorned for the sake of his god, lascivious Salomé—encouraged by her mother, the vindictive, Herodias—commands that John be executed and his head delivered on a silver platter.
Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...
Dr. Alan Stone breaks new ground for treatment of the mentally ill through an experiment on three paranoid schizophrenic patients who believe they are Jesus Christ.
A teenager faces an uphill battle when she fights to give women the opportunity to play competitive soccer.
A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
When a young man learns that his overbearing father is having an affair, he tries to stop it, only to be seduced by the older woman as well.
After her stay-at-home husband leaves her, a workaholic lawyer finds that she is not completely up to the tasks of caring for her young son, ailing father and household all by herself.
Thomas Montgomery, a married father of two young daughters, gets seduced by the world of online gambling and chat rooms where a virtual romance and sexual obsession ultimately leads to the murder of an innocent man.
A hard-living salesman becomes a quadriplegic after an accident.
While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
A nightmarish evening unfolds for neighbors David and Robert when they accidentally hit a woman on her bike and flee the scene. While David is increasingly plagued by feelings of guilt, Robert shows no remorse and becomes overbearing and possessive.
An aging, out-of-work actress accepts one last job, though the consequences of her decision affect her in ways she didn't consider.
A troubled young woman becomes obsessed with her mysterious new neighbor, who bears a striking resemblance to the girl's dead mother.