someone you should MEET
This short documentary (30 minutes) explores one family’s changing sense of Jewish identity over five generations. The film centers around a gathering of the extended families of the filmmakers, who only recently discovered their familial link through their great-grandparents, early 20th-century immigrants Judith and Machman Chasanoff. Created with Debra Chasnoff. (2023)
Code of the Freaks
This movie about movies is a darkly humorous critique of Hollywood representations of disability, told from the perspectives of disabled artists, writers, and cultural critics. Created with Susan Nussbaum, Carrie Sandahl, Aly Patsavas and Jerzy Rose. (2020)
Distributed in North America by Kino Lorber and internationally by Reservoir Docs
present absence
Present Absence is a five-channel video installation that makes visible the lives of people killed by Chicago Police. Generated from intimate long-form interviews with family members of those killed, it shows the impacts of these murders on families and communities. Created with Meredith Zielke. (2018)
Digital Installation: https://presentabsence.github.io
the other guantanamo: A MUSICAL PORTRAIT
This short video brings viewers to the bi-annual Changüí Festival in Guantánamo, Cuba to explore the music and culture of changüí, an Afro-Cuban “roots” music particular to the region that originated in the early 19th-century sugar cane refineries and rural mountain slave communities. The scene shown here gives a glimpse of Festival Day. As revelers make their way to the cemetery to honor the Changüiseros who have passed on, they stop at each corner where a band is playing, and they dance. (2023)