Chinatown Fair opened as a penny arcade in Manhattan’s Chinatown in 1944. Over the decades, it became an institution, surviving turf wars, changing tastes and the growth of home gaming. As the neighborhood gentrified this haven for a diverse, unlikely community faced its strongest challenge yet. The critically acclaimed documentary about the last hold out of old school arcade culture in New York City, The Lost Arcade, is an intimate portrait of the passionate and exceptionally diverse community at the beloved Chinatown Fair. The Lost Arcade chronicles the evolution of arcades, while celebrating the camaraderie and history of a pop culture phenomenon.

There is a place. A place where the skies are wide and the forests are thick—and strange. You can lose your­self for­ever in these woods. You’ll meet truck­ers with prob­lems and old women with strange pow­ers. You may even make a furry friend. Just be sure to stay quiet. Spend some time with a woman from Ore­gon who is lost on the road and run­ning away from her past. Now she has a chance to expe­ri­ence every­thing the grotesque North­west has to offer, whether she likes it or not.

Out of Time: The Material Issue Story examines the tragic story of a rock band on the cusp of superstardom cut short by front man Jim Ellison’s suicide. The film tells the story of Material Issue, a power pop trio from Chicago that was literally out of time, sandwiched between the post-punk era of the 80's and the alternative rock movement of the 90's searching for its identity in the gritty world of rock and roll. The film features original band members Mike Zelenko and Ted Ansani with the first interviews of the family of Jim Ellison since his passing along with others that helped shape the world of the band including Jeff Murphy, Joe Shanahan, Jay O'Rourke, Jeff Kwatinetz, Matt Pinfield, Steve Albini and more.

This strikingly shot concert documentary follows enigmatic Drag City singer-songwriter Bill Callahan on a two-week tour from California to New York. For the past 25 years, under both the Smog moniker and under his own name, Callahan has cultivated a legacy as both a pioneer in the lo-fi movement and one of the country’s finest troubadours. The film is built on impressionistic scenes of Callahan’s life on the road combined with his cryptic musings ("I started playing music when I was 20, and time stopped for me then in a good way”), creating a voyeuristic glimpse into his meticulously constructed universe of disaffection and disorder. It is an austere and beautiful portrait of both the musician and the multifarious American landscape.

Other Music was an influential and uncompromising New York City record store that was vital to the city’s early 2000s indie music scene. But when the store is forced to close its doors due to rent increases, the homogenization of urban culture, and the shift from CDs to downloadable and streaming music, a cultural landmark is lost. Through vibrant storytelling, the documentary captures the record store’s vital role in the musical and cultural life of the city, and highlights the artists whose careers it helped launch including Vampire Weekend, Animal Collective, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, William Basinski, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sharon Van Etten, Yo La Tengo and TV On The Radio.

Empty Metal follows five groups of characters, each emblematic of a different extreme political ideology, as they attempt insurrection against the status quo: a queer noise band is coerced into a dangerous assassination plot by a family of militant Native Americans who are aided by a Rastafarian computer hacker who is old friends with a Buddhist hermit whose son is a local militia leader. This tangled web of marginalized voices is as diverse and contradictory as the nation that spun it, but there is a common thread: all the characters teeter on the dull knife blade that is contemporary American politics, but they refuse to fall right or left. Instead, they lash out from the soul, and under the radar, in an attempt to achieve what their mainstream predecessors have yet to accomplish.

Inspector Ike, New York City’s greatest police detective, finds himself in a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse after the conniving understudy of an avant-garde theater group knocks off the star actor. A “lost TV movie” from the 1970’s, INSPECTOR IKE mixes visual gags, slapstick, gross food, and heartfelt emotion. Think COLUMBO meets THE NAKED GUN, featuring a rogue's gallery of NYC's best comedians.

Frank Sidebottom was a performer who happened to wear a huge paper mâché head. Or he was a real person. It rather depended whom you asked. Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story tells the twisted tale of a split personality, exploring the extraordinary secret life of a songwriter, artist, comedian and wayward genius. Sievey’s life was a fantastical, subversive piece of performance art. His greatest creation, the mysterious Frank Sidebottom, became a star – a manic, insane, mercurial star who obscured his own creator. Chris, who grew to resent Sidebottom, descended into alcoholism and bankruptcy, but his genius could not survive without ‘Being Frank’. "

Marnie is 23, and drifts through "Funny Ha Ha," Andrew Bujalski's critically acclaimed debut feature, in search of romance and employment. The film's conversations sound improvised and the narrative rhythms appear loose and ambling as it paints a deft group portrait of recent college graduates-Marnie’s friends, co-workers and would-be lovers. But this scruffiness is a bit deceptive, as the film has both a subtle, delicate shape and a point. By the end of the film, Bujalski proves to be one of America’s most acute and intelligent young dramatists, utilizing 16mm film to probe and reveal the curious facts and stubborn puzzles of contemporary life.

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.