NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) April Film Festival InFocus: Disabilites

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) hosts its April Monthly Film Festival, which features its annual InFocus: Disabilities program, along with April Shorts and a double block of mid-length documentary features, Rachel Epstein’s The Anarchist Lunch and Hidde de Vries’ Hunting Jack. 

Day begins with April Shorts, a collection of comedy, drama and documentary short films that explore connection, fitting in, memory, grief, addiction, fetish performance, dangerous racial disparities and self-definition in complicated cultural contexts. 

The day continues with InFocus: Disabilities, a program that spotlights disability both in front of and behind the camera. It features a blend of storytelling through the lens of visible and invisible disability, centering work made by disabled filmmakers and stories of disability told in close collaboration with their subjects or protagonists. From family dramas to romantic comedies to experimental narratives, this program showcases a range of work from emerging talent.

The night concludes with a double bill of feature documentaries that offer intimate looks at lifelong activism. The world premiere of  Rachel Epstein’s The Anarchist Lunch offers the viewer a seat at the table at a weekly lunch meeting of activists and academics, including Epstein’s own 99-year-old father, that have been gathering for 35 years. It is a celebration of friendship, commitment and advocacy. Hunting Jack by Hidde de Vries, in its Los Angeles premiere, in turn takes us inside the process of 91-year-old Dutch Nazi hunter Jack Kooistra, who has been rigorously cataloging the fates of both Nazis and their victims since his childhood and whose work has helped in the capture of fugitive war criminals.