Documentary Shorts

2019. Spring flooding in Mississippi hits record highs. In Louisiana, the residents of Pierre-Part are preparing for the worst. Barring an unexpected turn of events, local authorities will soon be forced to open the floodgates of the Morganza Spillway, in order to save the cities of New Orleans and Baton Rouge from further uncontrolled flooding. Faith and resilience are the two best weapons they still have in the face of uncertainty.

Jason Graven, an Army Veteran, looks into the generational trauma from his missing father and surrendered daughter. This eventually leads to him finding a new family of fellow veterans who cope together through physical fitness.

A Letter From Home Teaser from LoudKid Films on Vimeo.

A Canadian director visits her grandmother in Russia after 25 years of separation. Travelling through family memories and those of a country, this roller coaster of emotions invites us into an intimate space for reconciliation.

We are citizens of the Penobscot Nation. For this film, we bring our families to Boston to read our ancestors’ death warrant. This abhorrent proclamation, made in 1755 by the colonial government, paid settlers handsomely to murder Penobscot people. It declared our people enemies and offered different prices for the scalps of children, women, and men. Bounty proclamations like this, some even paid in stolen land, persisted for more than two centuries across what is now the United States.

The memory of being hunted is in our blood. We know this to be true, and the science now affirms that trauma can be passed down from generation to generation. In BOUNTY we take control of this process by inviting our children into the colonizer’s hall of injustice, to read their hateful words and tell the truth about what was done to our ancestors. We exercise our power by sharing the horrors of this hard history as an act of resistance, remembrance, and a step toward justice.

BOUNTY Official Trailer from Upstander Project on Vimeo.

What happens when your passion conflicts with your heritage? This is the question that Josh Greene, our director and narrator, asks himself in Waves Apart. After moving from a Chicago Jewish community to a small California surf town, Josh faced bullying and anti-semitism as a middle schooler, prompting him to find an escape in surfing. Years later, as a college film student and avid surfer, Josh investigates the anti-Semitic history of surfing that includes swastikas carved into the first commercially produced surfboards, the German-American bund and Hollywood’s first surf film. He then speaks with Jewish surfing legends Shaun Tomson and Izzy Paskowitz about their own experiences in the water and how they’ve used their spirituality to overcome the hate. Josh personally confronts the hidden underbelly of surfing as well as discovers new signs of light and community that can help combat the darkness of the sport.

George Manias has operated a shoe shine shop for 76 years, ever since escaping the Nazi occupation of Crete at 14 years old. Today, at 91, the loss of his sister Angela haunts him as he struggles to decide whether to retire, and whether to visit Crete again without Angela by his side.