Elliott Erwitt has spent his entire adult life taking photographs, of presidents, popes and movie stars, as well as regular people and their pets. The acclaimed photographer seemed to be everywhere in his heyday – at meetings with John F Kennedy, to public speeches by Che Guevara and in the studio with Marilyn Monroe, this documentary shows his simple, almost comical approach to taking pictures. His work is iconic in world culture while his life is largely unknown. Director Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu creates an intimate portrait of Elliott and a life oddly devoted to both companionship and craft. When they met, Elliott was heartbroken over a dog. Adriana was looking to start a career in photography and he needed a camera assistant for an assignment in Tokyo. The chance meeting led to five years traveling together around the world. When Elliott’s health began to decline, Adriana transitioned to his studio in New York and helped him manage his enormous catalogue. Then, in 2015, when the U.S. embargo against Cuba was lifted they decided to go on one last road trip and caught the first flight out of New York to Havana to see the country he last documented in 1964. The work in Cuba would inspire a new book project and lead to an unlikely companion for Elliott, a puppy named Canelo on a tobacco farm in the Cuban countryside. Elliott Erwitt – Silence Sounds Good is an intimate portrait of one of the greatest photographers of our time, and his commitment to craft.

ONE THOUSAND STORIES: THE MAKING OF A MURAL Follow artist JR in the creation of his first video mural project, The Chronicles of San Francisco.

A locked-room mystery with a twist: A slickly successful businessman wakes up next to his dead lover and becomes the chief suspect. His defense lawyer’s never lost a case, but can even she help him? “When I woke up, the nightmare began.” So begins the account of Adriano Doria (Riccardo Scamarcio), a wealthy Italian entrepreneur, describing the murky events of the worst night of his life, when he discovers himself in a resort hotel room with a nasty cut on his forehead and the lifeless body of his young mistress, Laura (Miriam Leone), lying on the floor amidst a pile of scattered banknotes. Though he protests his innocence, Adriano is the obvious prime suspect. With just hours to go before his arrest, he arranges a meeting with Virginia Ferrara (Maria Paiato), a notoriously tough attorney who has never lost a case, to plan his defense strategy and find evidence to exonerate him.

Largely told in flashback, this noirish thriller from director Stefano Mordini recreates the days of intrigue that lead up to that terrible night as guilt-ridden Adriano, still in love with his wife, tries to break off the affair with Laura while on a clandestine trip to the mountainous Trentino region—until fate intervenes and forever alters their lives. As more facts are coaxed out by Virginia, the characters’ motivations begin to blur until no one is quite who they first seemed, leading to a pulse-pounding conclusion that will leave audiences guessing until the final shot. (SIFF 2019)

Q&A on Sunday, June 28, at 7pm ET/4pm PT, featuring producer Reggie Nadelson and renowned author and music critic Will Friedwald. The Q&A is FREE to all. Register here

Ella Fitzgerald was a 15 year-old street kid when she won a talent contest in 1934 at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Within months she was a star. “Ella: Just One of Those Things” follows her extraordinary journey over six decades as her sublime voice transforms the tragedies of her own life and the troubles of her times into joy.

The film uses never-before-seen images and unheard interviews to bring Ella Fitzgerald to life and to tell the story of her music. - a black woman who makes her career in the face of horrifying racism.

Here is an Ella the world never knew – tough, thoughtful, funny, a dazzling musical innovator. The film also uncovers Ella’s commitment to the battle for Civil Rights; and it explores the conflicts that always haunted this intensely private woman: the struggle to reconcile her hunger for adoring audiences with her longing for a domestic life with her husband and son. At a time when she was the biggest singing star in the world, her pianist and friend Oscar Peterson said Ella was “the loneliest woman in the world”. But as Jamie Cullum says “her music is one of the reasons it’s worth being on this planet”.

Quarantine Cat Film Festival is a compilation reel that brings together the cutest, funniest, bravest, and most loving cat videos from more than 1,200 submissions filmed during the COVID-19 Quarantines. Created by Row House Cinema in Pittsburgh, it is available through Virtual Cinema starting June 19th.

Your ticket purchase will help support independent cinemas across the country, so you can watch some cute cats and feel good about helping to keep indie cinemas alive!

URSULA VON RYDINGSVARD: INTO HER OWN is an artistic biography of one of the few women in the world working in monumental sculpture. Von Rydingsvard’s work has been featured in the Venice Biennale and is held in the collections of some of the world’s great museums, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. But she may be best-known for work in public spaces – imposing pieces painstakingly crafted with complex surfaces.

In this documentary, we go behind the scenes with von Rydingsvard, as she and her collaborators – cutters, metalsmiths, and others – produce new work, including challenging commissions in copper and bronze. But the film also delves into the artist’s personal life, and how it has shaped her work. Born in Poland during the Second World War, she was partly raised in a displaced persons camp and came to the US as a refugee with her nine-person family. Her younger brother shares memories of being raised by their violent, domineering father – a man whose influence von Rydingsvard continues to feel. Brought up in a blue-collar environment, she became a teacher and then, as a single mother, moved to New York in the 1970s to take up her artistic practice full-time.

In conversations with curators, patrons, family, and fellow artists, we come to know von Rydingsvard as a driven but compassionate sculptor with a deep commitment to her art and the world around her.