Based on true events, Radium Girls follows teen sisters, Bessie and Jo Cavallo, who dream of Hollywood and Egyptian pyramids as they paint luminous watch dials at the American Radium factory in New Jersey. When Jo loses a tooth, Bessie’s world is turned upside down as a mystery slowly unravels.  She discovers a corporate cover-up and, in a radical coming of age story, Bessie and the Radium Girls decide to take on American Radium. Based on historical events, the national sensation following the notorious case of the Radium Girls in 1928 ultimately led to significant and lasting impact in the area of workplace health and safety and the study of radioactivity. 

“With the words "teen" and "activist" becoming increasingly synonymous, this historical drama is incredibly relevant and feels made to appeal to and encourage today's passionate youths."

Directed by: Lydia Dean Pilcher & Ginny Mohler, 2018, 102 minutes, In English

Getting Naked: A Burlesque Story

Uncovering New York City’s neo-burlesque subculture, Getting Naked offers a lingering look at several sexy denizens of the nightlife scene, including Gal Friday, Hazel Honeysuckle and the Schlep Sisters Minnie Tonka and Darlinda Just Darlinda whose acts range from the classic glamorous striptease to more overtly comedic schtick. Followed on- and offstage, these gifted performers reveal the liberation and empowerment they’ve gained from burlesque, even as they contend with the physical and financial demands of their competitive art form.

Director: James Lester
Producers: James Lester, Frank Hall Green. Chandra C. Silver. Susan Wrubel
Year: 2017
Duration: 85 min
Language: English

GOD KNOWS WHERE I AM

The body of a homeless woman is found in an abandoned New Hampshire farmhouse. Beside her lies a diary that documents a journey of starvation and the loss of sanity, but told with poignancy, beauty, humor, and spirituality. For nearly four months, Linda Bishop, a prisoner of her own mind, survived on apples and rain water, waiting for God to save her, during one of the coldest winters on record. As her story unfolds from different perspectives, including her own, we learn about our systemic failure to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Directed by Todd & Jedd Wider.  Runtime: 97 minutes, 2016

HOUSEWIFE OF THE YEAR tells the story of Ireland's treatment of women through the prism of a unique, surreal, live televised competition, that has to be seen to be believed, where a generation of Irish women competed in front of a live audience for the title of 'Housewife of the Year'. The former contestants share their direct experiences of marriage bars, lack of contraception, Magdalene Laundries, financial vulnerability, boredom and shame and of course, of being contestants in the competition. It is a poignant, often hilarious, uplifting story of a resilient generation of women and how they changed a country. The film had its Irish Premier at the Galway Film Fleadh 2024 and took home the prize of Best Irish Feature Documentary.

Directed by Ciaran Cassidy, 81 minutes, 2024, In English

IN THE WHALE

In the shark-filled waters off Cape Cod, Michael Packard has long tempted fate. For several months a year, Packard and his longtime mate, Josiah Mayo, cast off nearly every morning around dawn and navigate through the half-light to their diving grounds off Provincetown, the idiosyncratic, isolated community where they grew up at the tip of the Cape. Packard buckles on his scuba tank and plunges into the cold waters to hunt on the seafloor. As the region's last-remaining commercial lobster diver, the aging father has had his share of harrowing experiences, which include close encounters with great whites, nearly drowning, and having to pull up the body of a fellow diver. He even survived a plane crash in the jungles of Costa Rica, where he ran a charter fishing business. But what happened to him on a routine dive during a clear June morning was something he never imagined possible, and many around the world refused to believe. In an experience of biblical proportions, Packard was engulfed by a humpback whale, caught in the watery cavity of its massive mouth. After some 30 seconds of a pitch-black captivity, in which he expected to die, he was spit out, fins first, to the surface, where Mayo and another fisherman rescued him. The publicity was similarly dizzying for the reclusive fisherman, whose survival story spread around the world in news dispatches. But what came after the limelight dimmed was even more significant for Packard.

Directed by David Abel, 81 minutes, 2023

SUMMERLIGHT... AND THEN COMES THE NIGHT

The Village is brimming with stories and if you listen carefully it might tell you some: of the Manager who dreams in Latin and leaves his career for Astronomy and old books, of a translucent boy who carves moorland birds, of an open-air affair and a rock that is chiselled to dust. Based on the eponymous book by celebrated Icelandic author Jon Kalman Stefansson.

Directed by Elfar Adalsteins, 111 minutes, 2022

FAIRYTALE

Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Churchill, along with Jesus find themselves in Purgatory. Resurrected from the dead via animated archival footage, Sokurov uses his signature cinematic style to create a phantasmagoria, in which four of the most notorious leaders in twentieth century European history, along with Christ and a cameo by Napoleon, amble about muttering in their mother tongues, often talking past each other about not much except themselves and their personal regrets. Stripped of their bombast and context, Sokurov seems to imply that these figures were dependent upon their audiences’ adoration to wield their colossal power that resulted in millions of deaths. Their mundane preoccupations in purgatory seem to speak to the banality of evil. 

Banned by the censors from theatrical release in Russia and funded in Belgium, the director is well known for his critically acclaimed debut Russian Ark (2002) and the Golden Lion winner Faust (2011). 

After its premier at Locarno in 2022, critics called it "eerily beautiful" and "mordantly fanciful," and "...an experience more pleasurable than purgatorial."

Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov; 78 minutes; Georgian, English, French, German, Italian and Aramaic with English subtitles.