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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Cas, an academic assistant and amateur musician, moves into her aunt’s old home. In the bedroom closet, she finds a cache of mysteriously labeled microcassette tapes, containing cryptic recordings of sounds ranging from everyday objects to abstract soundscapes. Cas’s curiosity to discover the origin of these tapes leads her on a meditative journey through unknown verdant Californian landscapes, encountering experimental music performances, eccentric shop owners, and early music treasures along the way. As her adventure progresses, the mystery unravels in equally enigmatic and enlightening ways, reflecting Cas’s own evolving relation with time and sound.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Am Secretly an Important Man is a portrait of writer and poet Steven J. Bernstein (aka Jesse Bernstein), one of Seattle's most celebrated and troubled voices. His angry, surprisingly fresh and lyrical writings are about sensitive souls, drifters and drug addicts; the people alienated by a society that refuses to understand them. Bernstein peels back the ugliness and the darkness of life on the fringe to expose tender and not so tender human feelings. His unique rhythms, filled with humor and pain, were especially exciting when read in his own gravelly voice. Bernstein was an integral part of the legendary Seattle rock scene of the late 80's and early 90s, and in 1991 was dubbed the "Godfather of Grunge '' by the British magazine The Independent.

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.

Skateboard was the first feature film to depict the height of the 70s skateboard craze. Many refer to it as the Bad News Bears of the sport. It’s star studded cast includes Alan Garfield, 70s teen idol Leif Garrett, skateboarding legend Tony Alva, and iconic female freestyler and member of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame Ellen O’Neal.

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.

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.