Derek Howard

Cinematographer, Director

 Stray cats abound in New York City, and Steven Hock seeks to save them. The more cats he rescues, the more he feels rescued.




Not wasting my time

Chelsea McMullan takes us inside the National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 production of Swan Lake, directed and staged by the legendary Karen Kain.

Chelsea McMullan’s intimate process documentary takes us inside the National Ballet of Canada’s 2022 production of Swan Lake, choreographed for the first time by the company’s artistic director Karen Kain, who famously debuted in the ballet in 1971.

Swan Song 

A spate of robberies in Southern California schools had an oddly specific target: tubas. In this work of creative nonfiction, d/Deaf first-time feature director Alison O’Daniel presents the impact of these crimes from an unexpected angle. The film unfolds mimicking a game of telephone, where sound’s feeble transmissibility is proven as the story bends and weaves to human interpretation and miscommunication. The result is a stunning contribution to cinematic language. O’Daniel has developed a syntax of deafness that offers a complex, overlaid, surprising new texture, which offers a dimensional experience of deafness and reorients the audience auditorily in an unfamiliar and exhilarating way. 

Blending documentary and fictionalized performances by Nyke, a Deaf woman playing herself, and Geovanny, a drum major of a burglarized, now-tubaless band, the film documents their lives during the years of the robberies. Against a backdrop of Los Angeles never quite seen — or heard, rather — quite like this, the main character is sound and lack thereof. A finely tuned sense of silence and sound — aural and conceptual — are collaged to create this utterly singular sonic and cinematic experience.

Tuba Thieves

There are people out there you wish you had known about (and supported) a long time ago. Francine Coeytaux is one of those people. She has spent decades working in public health and focusing on new reproductive technologies, including the development of emergency contraception. With abortion restrictions and bans going into effect, Coeytaux and her team of providers established Plan C — a grassroots organization dedicated to expanding access to medication abortion. 

Tracy Droz Tragos (co-director of Rich Hill, U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize, 2014 Sundance Film Festival) accompanies the team as they look for ways to distribute abortion pills while following the letter of the law. Unmarked vans serving as mobile clinics distribute medication to those who cannot get help in their own states. Countless calls are coming in daily from women desperate to be “un-pregnant.” The team of Plan C works tirelessly to make sure they are not alone. 

PLAN C feels like essential viewing, not just because it’s timely and diligent. It’s a call to action that has the power to motivate and replace fear with hope.

Plan C

On October 27th, 2018, a gunman opened fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue, killing eleven people as they prayed, in what would become the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting is a deeply personal portrait of the survivors, victims and family members, who share their harrowing first-hand accounts of the impact of the shooting on the community.

The film is rooted in a community in the aftermath of a violent attack, as they work to rebuild and heal. Despite core differences, they come together to determine what justice looks like and how to best move forward while honoring and learning from the past. The film sheds light on the collective trauma suffered by a tight-knit group and brings into sharp focus the hate-based rhetoric that surrounds many of the mass shootings today, threatening the fabric of our society.
 
The story of the attack is told through voices from the community, including Carol Black, Dr. Joseph Charny, Anthony Fienberg, Martin Gaynor, Audrey Glickman, Daniel Leger, Hannibal Lokumbe, Wasi Mohamed, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, Brad Orsini, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman, Michele Rosenthal, Diane Rosenthal, Augie Siriano, Ellen Surloff, Andrea Wedner, Stephen Weiss and Barry Werber.

Derek Howard

Cinematographer, Director

Swan Song

Tuba Thieves

Not wasting my time

Plan C

A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Syna...

Bitterbrush

Aquarela

The Hottest August