2001 Official Sidewalk Selections

Samuel Curtis, an interplanetary trader, sets forth through a rustic and remote solar system, unaware that his old friend Professor Hess is trying to kill him.

Free spirit Lee Ann plans to sell her baby to pay her rent, much to the dismay of her roommate.

When Manny, a young aspiring writer meets Eve, the girl of his dreams and a virgin to boot, he adamantly believes that getting into a serious relationship will derail him from his dream.

An L.A. artist suddenly finds his life upside down when his art show is canceled and his model girlfriend leaves him.

The story follows one of many homeless crack addicts living and trying to survive in MacArthur Park. Unbeknownst to perhaps even himself, a man rediscovers why and how he ended up so broken and alone, all while trying to reconnect with his estranged son in a 24-hour period.

Details the trials and tribulations of four student photographers who collaborate on one final project before graduation. Caught sharing photos in their portfolios, David, Karma, Danny, and Kevin are given a chance to save their final grade before graduation. Danny returns home that night to find his fiancé Stephanie in bed with another man. Unnoticed and enraged, he photographs them in the act, and shares the picture with the others. Inspired by the raw nature of the photograph, the four friends agree to use it as the thesis for their new portfolio... capturing subjects at their most vulnerable. Soon, their exploitative behavior begins to tear apart their lives and relationships, and they must come to terms with the harsh truths of their lives through the lens of a camera.

Virgil Bliss is a man obsessed with living a normal life, finding a good job, marrying a decent woman, and building a family of his own. But as a recently paroled career thief with a hair-trigger temper and the social skills of a child, he faces distinct challenges. At the halfway house where he gets his first taste of freedom in over a decade, Virgil meets Manny Alvarez, a fiery miscreant who takes the emotionally naive Virgil under his wing and initiates him in the ways of the world. It's Manny who introduces Virgil to Ruby, an opportunistic junkie with whom Virgil falls instantly in love. As Virgil and Ruby learn to trust each other, they share their concerns: Ruby plans to win back custody of her four-year-old son and Virgil confesses the horrible and senseless crime that landed him in prison. After his release from the halfway house, Virgil finds work as a janitor and moves in with Ruby. But their attempts to adjust as a family come undone with the arrival of the psychotic Manny.

Seven unrelated Czech fairy tales from 1853 by Karel Jaromír Erben, united by folklore, atmosphere, and visuals, form this anthology film exploring themes through a series of poetic vignettes without a cohesive narrative.

An intelligent, romantic and sexually charged drama of two black American males through their self-imposed exile and search for self in the Netherlands. Manny Kirkpatrick is a struggling actor and drama teacher married to a Dutch woman, Elia. Dexter Payne, a boastful New York writer.

"The Burning Sensation" will scorch your senses as it takes you into the heart of the Burning Man experience. In 2001 some 20,000+ souls made a pilgrimage to the Black Rock Desert to practice radical self-expression and self-reliance in a temporary, commerce-free community. At the end a 50-foot high, neon-lit, wooden effigy is burned, igniting a wild, tribal, all-night celebration. The world's largest venue for public art, Burning Man has elements of a Vegas acid trip, a nudist colony, a pyrotechnic convention, the Rose Bowl parade, a rave, the Museum of Modern Art, and a Mad Max movie dispersed over the 107 degree desert. The film captures intense footage of several art events as well as interviews with Burning Man organizers Larry Harvey (also co-founder), Crimson Rose and Will Roger who explain how, what started in 1986 as an impromptu Summer Solstice celebration, put on by a few friends at a beach in San Francisco, has turned into a full-blown exercise in city planning and management with a hefty price-tag. This temporary city is the 6th largest in Nevada. Some of the featured art events include "Burial In Space" by Woodpussy (a group of musicians and pyro-technicians who blast their deceased founder into space in a rocket of their own creation); "Nebulous Entity" and "Futura Deluxe" (two large, roving installation pieces engineered using mathematics derived from fields of neural networks, ecological systems and fractals); and a performance artist Dea Million who stages her "wedding" to America.

Corrections is a story of justice turned to profit, where the war on crime has found new investors: Venture Capital and For-Profit Prisons, the story of the Private Prison. At a time when the US has achieved the highest rate of imprisonment in the world at a cost of $40 billion a year recent legislation like Proposition 36 in California (to give non-violent drug offenders treatment instead of prison) and films like Steve Sodeburg's TRAFFIC indicate a growing dissatisfaction with our war-on-drugs and tough-on-crime strategies. And at a time when our citizens are exposing big tobacco corporations and breaking up Microsoft, there is growing suspicion over corporate corruption as well. Corrections brings these growing concerns together with an innovative documentary in the tradition of filmmakers Emile Di Antonio and Erroll Morris, and such films as Roger and Me. CORRECTIONS weaves together portraits of the leading corporations, interviews with the world's leading experts and the stories of ordinary people, taking audiences behind the walls of one prison where they might not want you to leave.

This is a documentary about the musical artists who performed the songs in the Coen Brothers' film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

NYC is the one place where a freak can be a freak! Performance art, drag-queens, punk-rockers, to name but a few. This film is a tour through one of Manhattan's most interesting subcultures.

THE LAST STAND unfolds the tragic ramifications of a fifteen-year battle between environmentalists and the timber industry over the fate of ancient coastal redwoods in Northern California.

An intimate documentary portrait of the legendary artist and groupie Cynthia Plaster Caster, famous for plaster casting the erect penises of rock stars.

A look at the reaction and aftermath of the murder of a documentary filmmaker in rural Kentucky in 1967.

University of Texas student Duane Graves chronicles his charismatic childhood chum Rene Moreno, a San Antonio native with Down Syndrome, in this playful, stirring, remarkably unique portrait documentary.