Ashland Independent Film Festival: Features Lineup

From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a President, 500 YEARS tells a sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala's recent history through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.

Una pequeña institución financiera llamada Abacus se convierte en la única compañía con cargos penales tras la crisis hipotecaria de 2008 en Estados Unidos.

Crashed planes, lost nuclear bombs, and an Air Force cover-up: a filmmaker unpacks the secret history of how his grandfather nearly blew-up the eastern seaboard.

This film follows the first class of students at a remarkable leadership center in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a region often referred to as "the worst place in the world to be a woman." These women have been through unspeakable violence spurred on by a 20 year war driven by colonialism and greed. In the film, they band together with the three founders of this center: Dr. Denis Mukwege (2016 Nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize), radical playwright and activist Eve Ensler ("The Vagina Monolgoues") and human rights activist, Christine Schuler-Deschryver, to find a way to create meaning in their lives even when all that was meaningful to them has long been stripped away. In this ultimately uplifting film, we witness the tremendous resilience as these women transform their devastation into powerful forms of leadership for their beloved country.

Los Rolling Stones en su gira norteamericana de 1972 y su primer regreso a los Estados Unidos desde la tragedia de Altamont.

In the 1950's, a working-class wife and mother of eleven children helps to establish a farmer's union, which later develops into a platform for feminism and gender equality.

A new experimental documentary feature utilizing the life of Emma Goldman to explore the resurgence of protest in the 21st century. The work is hybrid and prismatic, including contemporary footage, archive and re-enactment to expose the continuing conflicts between labor and property, revolutionary purity and personal freedom.

Diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder, Dyslexia, and short-term memory problems, Tori finds her greatest teacher in nature, spending a "gap year" living semi-primitively with four other young women in the Oregon Cascade Mountains.

Over the last four decades, the concept of same-sex couples marrying went from a 'preposterous notion' to the national law. The Freedom to Marry movement is now known as one of the most successful civil rights campaigns in the modern history, but change did not arrive by happenstance. This victory was carefully planned and orchestrated over decades. THE FREEDOM TO MARRY, a new documentary film, offers the untold, inside story of this historic movement. This is a riveting ride alongside Evan Wolfson and Mary Bonauto, the architect and the main litigator of the movement, and their key colleagues from earliest days of their journey to their final frenetic dash to the US Supreme Court.

Master Scottish musician Alasdair Fraser follows his fiddle into unexpected territory and finds himself helping people around the world engage with their own musical traditions, cultures and, ultimately, themselves.

East Meets West in this live stand-up comedy, sketch, and rock n' roll/spoken word concert film focused on Asian American themes - immigration, bowl cuts, personal identity, math nerds, stereotypes, empowerment, the model minority myth, post-colonial commodification of orientalism. And Hello Kitty hats.

Harold and Lillian eloped to Hollywood in 1947, where they became the film industry's secret weapons. Nobody talked about them, but everybody wanted them. Theirs is the greatest story never told-until now.

Eating garbage, dodging police, and hitching rides with strangers, award-winning Chinese filmmaker Nanfu Wang shares the streets with a young drifter named Dylan who left a comfortable home and loving family for a life of intentional homelessness. Fascinated by his choice and rejection of society's rules, Nanfu follows Dylan with her camera on a journey that takes her across America and explores the meaning of freedom - and its limits.

The courtroom and publicity battles between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media explode in a sensational trial all about the limits of the First Amendment and the new no holds barred nature of celebrity life in an internet dominated society.

Un matrimonio vive en un barrio empobrecido del norte de Filadelfia mientras crían a su hija y regentan un estudio de grabación en su sótano.

A cinematic essay in defense of remembering, The Royal Road offers up a primer on the Spanish colonization of California and the Mexican American War alongside intimate reflections on nostalgia, butch identity, the pursuit of unavailable women and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo - all against a contemplative backdrop of 16mm urban California landscapes, and featuring a voiceover cameo by Tony Kushner. Deceptively simple California urban landscapes serve as the framework for the film's lyrically written voiceover which combines rigorous historical research with a stream-of-consciousness personal monologue and relates these seemingly disparate stories from an intimate, colloquial perspective to tell a one-of-a-kind California tale. Shot on 16mm film and contemplatively crafted of long takes, The Royal Road is a film about landscapes and desire, memory and history - and the stories we tell.

Møre than 40 filmmakers traveled the globe to witness religious celebrations and interview people from all sorts of backgrounds.

Jacques Perrin y Jacques Cluzaud regresan a los frondosos bosques verdes, cuando el hielo se retira y se establecie el ciclo de las estaciones. Sigue la impresionante historia que une a la humanidad y la naturaleza.

A look at the cinematic art of the film musical score, and the artists who create them.

Once upon a time there was a tiny hill town in Tuscany that found a remarkable way to confront their issues - they turned their lives into a play. "Spettacolo" is a portrait of this 50-year-old tradition, where their piazza becomes their stage and every villager from 6 to 90 plays a part - the role of themselves.

Are there limits to your love for your family? One family's acceptance is tested when a champion diver, destined for the Olympics, announces they're transitioning from male to female and invites their YouTube followers along for every moment. It's a story about unconditional love and finding the courage to be yourself.

When Harvard Ph.D. student Jennifer Brea is struck down by a fever that leaves her bedridden, she sets out on a virtual journey to document her story as she fights a disease that medicine forgot.

Following one of the world's most beloved storyteller's evolution from a conservative son of the Old South into a gay rights pioneer whose novels inspired millions to re-claim their lives.

In this scandalous political thriller, an investigation into a chemical spill spirals into an indictment of the entire system meant to protect drinking water, revealing cover-ups at the highest levels of government.

A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with firsthand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu.