An evocative portrait of youthful possibility, The Family Jams follows Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Vetiver as they tour the USA in 2004 playing their unique music for a newly growing audience. The film is an intimate portrait of life on the road for these young musicians early in their careers, playing tiny, obscure clubs and art galleries, but on the verge of larger success before their small, intimate vans are replaced by large, impersonal tour busses. Also featuring appearances and performances by Antony and the Johnsons, Espers, Meg Baird, The Pleased and Linda Perhacs.

Until The Light Takes Us tells the story of black metal. Part music scene and part cultural uprising, black metal rose to worldwide notoriety in the mid-nineties when a rash of suicides, murders, and church burnings accompanied the explosive artistic growth and output of a music scene that would forever redefine what heavy metal is and what it stands for to other musicians, artists and music fans world-wide. Until The Light Takes Us goes behind the highly sensationalized media reports of "Satanists running amok in Europe" to examine the complex and largely misunderstood principles and beliefs that led to this rebellion against both Christianity and modern culture. To capture this on film, directors Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell moved to Norway and lived with the musicians for several years, building relationships that allowed them to create a surprisingly intimate portrait of this violent, but ultimately misunderstood, movement. The result is a poignant, moving story that's as much about the idea that reality is composed of whatever the most people believe, regardless of what's actually true, as it is about a music scene that blazed a path of murder and arson across the northern sky.

Vacation! is an existential beach party movie about life, death, sex and drugs. When four college friends reunite for a girls’ week at the beach, it’s all bikinis, piña coladas and dance parties at first. But the fun soon fades away… After procuring a psychotropic drug from a sketchy surfer dude, the girls take a very strange trip into the abyss.

"Compelling. Furiously combative." - Variety Married couple Jim and Lucy run a commune in the early 90's for sober living out of their suburban New Jersey home. The motley members eat, bathe and work together selling homemade "health tea" out of their van. Although there's constant bickering and plenty of fires to be put out, Jim and Lucy have managed to establish a haven for these outcasts. But the harmony is interrupted when Ann (Hannah Gross), a recovering addict and the ex-lover of one housemate, arrives. Director Nathan Silver shot this feature on a Ikegami HL-79E, a TV broadcast staple from the 1980s.

Videofilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) begins with a teenage misfit spending her first days out of school slacking, experimenting with drugs and cyberspace. She meets Junior online. He’s an aspiring amateur porn dealer, who's into conspiracy theories and is convinced that the Mayan Apocalypse is happening. Once they meet in the 'real world,' a series of bizarre events unfold in this contemporary non-love story portraying postmodern Lima as a glitchy computer virus full of corruption, psychedelia and ancient ruins.

For many, Peter Anton's house embodies an end-of-life nightmare: the utility companies long ago shut off the heat and electricity, the floorboards are rotting, and the detritus of a chaotic life is precariously stacked to the ceiling. But for the filmmakers Dan Rybicky and Aaron Wickenden, Anton's home is a treasure trove, a startling collection of unseen and fascinating paintings, drawings, and notebooks, not to mention Anton himself, a character worthy of his own reality TV show.

Hellaware gently satirizes the world of high-brow art through the eyes of a wannabe photographer who becomes consumed by the bright lights of mainstream success. Jaded by the “incestuous, New York, socialite shit” that sells at prominent art galleries, Nate (Keith Poulson) embarks on a quest for a more authentic brand of contemporary art. When a coked-up YouTube search leads to a music video from Delawarean Goth rappers Young Torture Killers, an Insane Clown Posse knock-off, Nate knows he’s found his subjects. He soon drags his friend-with-benefits Bernadette (Sophia Takal) to rural Delaware to shoot the group playing in their parents’ basement. To “immerse himself” in the group’s culture and add an extra layer of realism to his work, Nate befriends the rappers and makes return trips to get to know them. But as his relationship with the group develops, he becomes increasingly aware that, while you can take the boy out of the art world, you can’t take the art world out of the boy.

An up-close cinematic walkabout through the life of Gary Young, the original (and highly unlikely) drummer of indie rock royalty Pavement. His booze and drugs-fueled antics (on-stage handstands, gifting vegetables to fans) and haphazard production methods (accidentally helping launch the lo-fi aesthetic) were both a driving force of the band's early rise and the cause of his eventual crash landing. Leaving a wake of joy and/or destruction at every turn, Gary teeters the thin line between free-form self-expression and chaotic self-destruction. Thirty years on with scoliosis, blood clots, and a shriveled liver, Gary continued drumming with no regrets.

The Reverend is a raucous concert film as well as an intimate portrait of Reverend Vince Anderson's spiritual and musical journey. After coming to New York in the 90's to enter seminary, Vince dropped out to follow his second calling - music. With his band The Love Choir, he has played a now-legendary weekly show for over twenty years. Reconnecting with his faith and using his intense soulful music, he began to preach a type of spirituality that meets people where they are, is open to all, and moves everyone that sees him play. Filmed over four years in a largely observational style and features Questlove and members of TV On The Radio.

Butch Willis is a Washington, D.C. rock legend. Born and raised in 1960s suburban Maryland, Byron Henry "Butch" Willis came of age in the late '70s post-hippie subculture. After sharing an apartment with infamous local music icon Root Boy Slim, Butch was inspired to become a rock'n'roll star himself. The unique and unusual brand of "outsider music" that Butch Willis & The Rocks created captivated the local music scene beginning with their appearance at the seminal Primitive Night in 1984. Amatuer on Plastic chronicles Butch's life and career from the beginning all the way through to present day. It features a host of Butch-appointed band managers Joe Lee (Joe’s Record Paradise), Jeff Mentges (No Trend), Jeff Krulik (Heavy Metal Parking Lot), and director Mark Robinson (Unrest/Teen-Beat). Also co-starring is Al Breon, the Rocks' innovative "throat guitarist." The film combines archival footage, interviews with Butch, and performances of his hit songs "Drugs," “The Garden’s Outside,” "TV's From Outer Space," and “The Girl's on My Mind." Amateur on Plastic also parallels the 1990’s era of seminal indie record label Teen-Beat. Behind-the-scenes glimpses of the label’s concerts and private parties provide much of the background and feature members of the bands Unrest, Versus, Tuscadero and more.

Following his acclaimed debut Ham on Rye, Tyler Taormina’s hypnotic follow-up is a midnight mosaic that reveals a suburban town steeped in alienation. It’s the middle of the night, but things are far from quiet; as the camera peers into the late-night happenings of various residents, we witness a number of them quietly escape into the dark... on rollerblades. Drawing on 1960’s European art cinema and 1990’s kid’s TV in equal measure, Happer's Comet presents striking individual vignettes that unfurl like a collective dream. Mesmerizing and meditative, the film solidifies Taormina’s gift for transforming everyday banality into uncanny cinema.

Stephin Merritt's distinctive singing voice and witty lyrics about life and love make his band, the Magnetic Fields, a cultishly adored indie rock group. His decades-long friendship with Claudia Gonson, his bandmate and manager, provides fuel for his music, while his eccentric working habits contribute to his image as a singularly talented musician and writer. Interviews with fans like fantasy author Neil Gaiman and pop icon Peter Gabriel provide insight into Merritt's influential career.

The Upsetter tells the wild, weed-fueled story of Lee “Scratch” Perry — a visionary Jamaican musician, artist and all around madman — who burst upon the Kingston scene in the ‘50s with a brand new sound, inventing a genre of music that would come to be called Reggae. He went on to discover a young Bob Marley and gained international recognition as a solo artist and record producer, working with pioneering artists like the Heptones and the Congos. Soon he was being called upon by artists as diverse as The Clash and Paul McCartney to provide his unique sound. Narrated by Benicio Del Toro, the film captures the essence of a complex, enigmatic figure who was at once a mad genius and a mystic.

Sex and Broadcasting is a human, and humorous, look at New Jersey’s WFMU, a radio station that refuses any programming boundaries. Most of its disc jockeys are unpaid volunteers, working for their love of surprising, spontaneous radio. They play everything from flat-out uncategorizable strangeness to every form of rock and roll, experimental music, jazz, psychedelia, hip-hop, hand-cranked wax cylinders, gospel, Inuit marching bands, R&B, C&W, radio improvisations, spoken-word collages, and throat singers of the Lower East Side. Their captain is station manager Ken Freedman, who has spent the past three decades keeping WFMU alive, independent, and one of a kind. The film weaves personal stories of WFMU’s eccentric DJs with an exploration of the 21st-century media landscape that has made the station such a rarity.

Broke and desperate filmmaker Adolpho Rollo (Steve Buscemi) is a Manhattan wannabe in love with the mysterious woman next door, Angelica Peña (Jennifer Beals). He puts out an ad offering to sell his 'fabulous' movie script for $500, and gets a response from Joe (Seymour Cassel), who gives him a thousand and says he'll raise the 250,000 to make the picture. The problem is, Joe is a semi-connected wiseguy with a hemophiliac brother Skippy (Will Patton) and a habit of committing oddball crimes.

October, 2008. Young nun Colleen (Addison Timlin) is avoiding all contact from her family, until an email from her mother (Ally Sheedy) announces, Your brother is home. On returning to her childhood home in Asheville, NC, she finds her old room exactly how she left it: painted black and covered in goth/metal posters. Her parents are happy enough to see her, but unease and awkwardness abounds. Her brother is living as a recluse in the guesthouse since returning home from the Iraq war. During Colleen's visit, tensions rise and fall with a little help from Halloween, pot cupcakes, and GWAR. Little Sister is a sad comedy about family, a schmaltz-free, pathos-drenched, feel-good movie for the little goth girl inside us all.

A bare-boned independent drama with brief but meaningful touches of gentle comedy, Actual People is a poignant triumph, a simple but effective voyage into the mind of a young woman trying to find herself in a world that has somehow become hostile to those who refuse to find a place within its preconceived standards. As a debut, and a film in general, Zauhar’s work here represents an auspicious start to a very promising career for someone who is likely to become an essential voice in contemporary cinema, if this film is anything to go by.

Hollywood 90028 shows the dark side of the L.A. dream in the bleak and downbeat story of an aspiring movie cameraman turned serial murderer. Written and directed by esteemed experimental filmmaker Christina Hornisher, and beautifully captured through the lens of camera operator Jean-Pierre Geuens, Hollywood 90028 offers a vivid time capsule of Los Angeles in the early 1970s.

Tessa and Ben are staying in Philly for the weekend to attend Ben's high school reunion. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the couple has to rent a room in a stranger's apartment. That stranger is Adam, whose loneliness is immediately obvious to his new guests. Adam quickly becomes an unwilling voyeur to the most private parts of the couple's life. While Ben seeks validation from old classmates, Tessa is left to find her own affection within the confines of the apartment. When Tessa betrays Adam's trust, Adam goes to great lengths to assert his dominance over his home.