Friday, September 25, 7 p.m. (reception at 6 p.m.)
Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records / Jeff Alulis

By the time Los Angeles punk rock began to crest in the early 1980s, 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 was transformed into a battle cry. It was at this time that the Better Youth Organization was founded by Shawn and Mark Stern of the L.A. punk band Youth Brigade. The film includes interviews with Ian MacKaye, Fat Mike, Matt Skiba, Gary Tovar, Brendan Mullen, and many others involved in the So Cal Punk Scene.

Jeff Alulis graduated from USC’s prestigious Graduate Screenwriting Program in 2002. He co-directed and co-produced the award-winning 2003 documentary Do You Remember? 15 Years of The Bouncing Souls and has since worked on other music-related film projects. Let Them Know: The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records is his second feature-length film.



Friday, October 30, 7 p.m. (reception at 6 p.m.)
The Way We Get By / Gita Pullapilly & Aron Gaudet

A deeply moving film about life and how to live it, The Way We Get By begins as a seemingly idiosyncratic story about airport troop greeters. The film quickly turns into a moving, unsettling, and compassionate story about aging, loneliness, war, and mortality. Film festivals throughout North America have bestowed numerous awards on The Way We Get By, including a Special Jury Award from SXSW and the Audience Award at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, among many other festival honors.

Aron Gaudet is the director and Gita Pullapilly is the producer of The Way We Get By. Chosen as a 2007-08 WGBH Filmmaker in Residence, Gaudet was the director of India: A New Life, which won three Telly Awards. Pullapilly is an award-winning television journalist and film producer. Her stories have aired on CBS, CNN, and ABC. She also was the producer and interviewer on India: A New Life.



Friday, November 20, 7 p.m. (reception at 6 p.m.)
Flying on One Engine / Joshua Weinstein

Wheelchair bound, without a larynx, and diagnosed with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm, Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet now lives only so he can travel to India to perform free operations in marathon-like surgery sessions in which up to 700 children receive treatment for their cleft lips and other deformities. Although Dicksheet survives on 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.

Joshua Z. Weinstein, producer/director, loves people and filmmaking. He is currently directing two-dozen short films about Wyoming Outfitters for The Wyoming Channel. Weinstein’s camerawork has appeared on BBC, VH1, Food Network, TLC, and other TV stations. He was born in New York City and currently resides in Brooklyn. His main joys in life are bicycling, family, and good cooking.



SPRING 2010

Friday, February 19, 7 p.m. (reception at 6 p.m.)
TRIMPIN: The Sound of Invention / Peter Esmonde

Recipient of a MacArthur 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 a day, he has no use for galleries and agents, and has neither website nor cell phone – in fact, he agreed to be the subject of this documentary only reluctantly. The film 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.

Trained at Yale University and the American Film Institute Conservatory, filmmaker Peter Esmonde spent more than a decade working in New York and Los Angeles at various tasks in the film industry: writer, researcher, story analyst, assistant editor, sound editor, associate producer, etc. After toiling as a producer at the Discovery Channel in the mid-1990s, Esmonde was targeted by executive headhunters and spent some years foraging in the corporate jungles of North America. He finally emerged in 2005 as a producer and director of documentary films. Esmonde has also taught film, media, and information design at various American universities. Trimpin: The Sound of Invention is his first documentary feature.



Friday, March 26, 7 p.m. (reception at 6 p.m.)
God’s Architects / Zack Godshall

God's Architects tells the stories of five visionary builders (in Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee) and their enigmatic creations. With neither funding nor blueprints, these builders dedicate their entire lives to creating architectural worlds and realms that for most of us exist only in the wilds of the imagination. Beyond the builders and their work, the film indirectly functions as a personal essay that explores the nature of inspiration and dedication to a creative project, no matter how absurd or mysterious the circumstances may seem.

After earning an MFA in film from UCLA, Zachary Godshall premiered his first feature, Low and Behold, at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. A fictional film that includes documentary footage to tell a story set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Low and Behold garnered numerous awards at festivals across the U.S. Godshall lives in his native south Louisiana, where he teaches film and screenwriting at Louisiana State University. He is presently writing a screenplay adaptation of a soon-to-be-published novel by the award-winning writer David Madden.



Friday, April 16, 7 p.m. (reception at 6 p.m.)
Between Floors / Jen White

Between Floors examines the human condition through a uniquely claustrophobic lens: 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. The film 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.

After graduating from Columbia College Chicago with a B.A. in film production in 1999, Jen White moved back to her home town of Austin, Texas, where she works primarily as a cinematographer. She has lensed multiple feature films, documentaries, and award-winning shorts and music videos. Her work has aired on A&E, TLC, Discovery, MTV Europe, and PBS, as well as festivals around the world. She is currently preparing her next feature film, a collaborative project with her mentor, to be shot in downtown Chicago in 2010. Between Floors is her feature film debut.


The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is a program of the Southern Arts Federation, a not-for-profit regional arts organization making a positive difference in the arts throughout the South since 1975.  Southern Arts Federation is supported by funding and programming partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts and the state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Special support for Southern Circuit is provided by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For more information on the Southern Arts Federation and its programs visit www.southarts.org.

Photograph by Christopher Sims.






Center for Documentary Studies
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telephone: (919) 660-3663
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email: docstudies@duke.edu

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