Feature
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Every generation of immigrants to America arrives with two burdens: becoming American and honoring their own culture. These two concepts don't easily mesh, and their resolution makes up the daily drama of their lives. In the first Iranian-American independent feature film, director Babak Sarrafan shows the conflict within a young Iranian immigrant who wants to pursue a screenwriting career against the wishes of his traditional family and his own doubts about the rightness of his decision and the risks of a creative career.
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Many people want to help those who are less fortunate, but how many would take a person off the streets and into their own home? Jonathan (Kevin Corrigan) is a lonely Manhattan yuppie with a deep-seated liberal guilt about being a child of privilege. When one day he spots a prostitute who he believes to be the daughter of a maid his father had mistreated, he decides to take her in and teach her the skills necessary to join the work force. However, Roberta is no Julia Roberts hooker with a heart of gold, but a woman with a deep cynicism and an unfeeling spirit.
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When Bobby Lang arrives in L.A., luck seems to be on his side. He lands a gig at the local blues club, starts a relationship with the pretty bartender, and finds a day job as a landscaper with his new music buddies, The Funk Brothers. Now all he needs is a place to stay. Well, luck can't always be on his side. When Bobby rents a room from Faye and Albert, his new life in California starts to fall apart. Poor Albert never leaves his room, partly because he's paralyzed and partly because his wife, Faye, won't let him.
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New Year's Eve 1999. When a group of "friends" get together. When Jack invites a few close friends to a millennium party in the desert, he can't really anticipate what the chemistry and old history between them will produce. All of the guests are struggling (mostly unsuccessfully) L.A. actors who are slowly coming to terms with their situations. Ambition, failure, and lost loves have forced them to assess their lives and futures. As the eve of the new millennium progresses, old feuds and brutally frank words threaten to disrupt the party.
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John Shed works the salt ponds and lives an isolated life with his girlfriend and his classic jazz, avoiding the demons of his past. It is not until his Amerasian daughter, Minh, comes to America, looking for her father and a new life away from the refugee camp, that his life takes an unexpected downward spiral. Minh wants only to learn about her unknown past and moves in with Shed and his girlfriend. Soon, Shed's world begins to crumble as he falls victim to the ghosts he has tried for years to forget.
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It is Earth in the year of our Lord 2007. Yogi and Boo-Boo, a father and daughter who are telepathically connected, work from different parts of a devastated landscape in order to stop a scheme by the corporate-governmental New Magnetic Order to bulk erase the brain content of every human being. To do this, they must travel back in time and trace the television broadcasts of a 1950's show entitled Science in Action. Therein lies the secret to prevent the fall of electronic telecommunications technology into the hands of the military-industrial complex. Science fiction...or science fact??
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Filmmakers, Iana Porter and Sasha Waters, bring the world of bondage and discipline out of the dungeon and into the light in this revealing and intimate portrait of three women involved in the business of providing pain for pay. Ava, Carrie, and Sonja are three completely different women who hold the same job title: dominatrix. Their clients pay them for acting out various role-playing fantasies involving physical and emotional pain, humiliation, and bondage. Whipped explores their world--from the business to the personal, from their clients to their lovers.
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Thomas Kromer has writing in his blood. His father was once a promising writer...until he went mad and could no longer tell reality from his nightmares. Now, just when his career may be taking off, Thomas is haunted by a series of murders...apparently being carried out by a wolf. His immersion in the mythology of lycanthropy deepens his fear that the animal bite he received one dark night...under a full moon...may have infected his blood and turned him into a completely different sort of creature--a werewolf.
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Cinequest is proud to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey's most famous production of the early 70's, Trash, the sordid comedic tale of an impotent junkie, played by Warhol superstar, Joe Dallesandro, who wanders around New York while various women try to arouse him. A female impersonator, Holly Woodlawn, plays his ersatz wife. Her intense performance amidst the prevailing deadpan tone is entertainingly incongruous. Her goal in life is to get on welfare, and, to accomplish this, she pretends to be pregnant.
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Diego sells cars, sleeps on a mattress on the floor, and still wears his wedding ring, although his wife left him three years ago. He has pressed "pause" on life. Simon works with their father making shoes. He lives for the night, always for the moment, never slowing down. Gabriel vanished into thin air when he left for a trip and never returned. Every time the phone rings, his mother thinks it's he. Three brothers...every which way but here...until tonight...when somewhere in the night, on route 5, there might be a light, or at least the possibility of a new day.