A Message from the DocYard Team

Hello DocYard Community!

We hope this newsletter finds you in good health and practicing social distancing while also staying connected. We know these are strange and difficult times. To continue directing audiences to groundbreaking documentary work, the DocYard team is sending out a list of previous DocYard films that you might have missed and which are currently available to stream online ( some free, some not). Hopefully these films will provide a welcome distraction. 

Stay healthy and we hope to see you all again soon!

The DocYard Team
Lyda, Gen, Abby, & Hannah
A Special Announcement from Abby Sun, The DocYard Spring 2020 Guest Curator on NO DATA PLAN virtual screening

Streaming Dates :   Monday, March 30 until Sunday, April 5

Virtual Q&A : At 8PM Eastern on Tuesday, March 31 , audience members are invited to join a virtual Q&A with NO DATA PLAN Director Miko Revereza, moderated by Spring 2020 Guest Curator Abby Sun. Click here for more information.

I’m eternally grateful to all of you for supporting and coming to DocYard screenings these past few months. Our country is now in a time of crisis, but it’s one that is exposing all the cracks that previously existed. After discussing what we should do as a team, we’ve decided to move forward rescheduling what we can of the remaining season, and where we’re not able to arrange this, direct audiences where they can access the film.
Our first rescheduled virtual screening will be on Monday, 30 March, with Miko Revereza’s NO DATA PLAN . A link will be sent to our DocYard email list early on Monday, 30 March. Then on Tuesday, March 31 at 8:00pm , hopefully after you’ve had a chance to watch the film, we will host a virtual conversation with director Miko Revereza via Zoom, which everyone is welcome to participate in. This unconventional and furious essay film about a trip across the US as an undocumented filmmaker brilliantly merges the political and the personal in troubling as well as generous ways. We look forward to connecting with all of you over this film! 
All of the revenue from ticket sales will go to the Brattle, our partner in the DocYard, to support this landmark local arthouse theater in an unprecedented period of uncertainty for independent venues. 
For those of you who can’t make it next Tuesday, No Data Plan will still be available to stream for the entire week of Monday 30 March through Sunday, 5 April, with a recording of the virtual conversation with Miko Revereza from 8:00pm on Tuesday, March 31 also made available for viewing. 
In the interest of public health, almost every country is strictly enforcing border policies—but limited mobility, which Revereza explores in No Data Plan, we should remember, shouldn’t limit us in our desire and our actions to connect to each other. 
We hope to see you on Tuesday!
Abby

Films Available Online

  • Our Nixon, NUTS!, and Pain of Others: Director Penny Lane's films are all available for free on Vimeo.com. (DocYard Winter 2013, Fall 2016, and Fall 2017). Our Nixon is an archival documentary portraying an intimate and complex portrait of the Nixon administration. NUTS! follows eccentric genius, Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, who built an empire in Depression-era America with a goat testicle impotence cure and a million watt radio station. Pain of Others is a YouTube compilation film about Morgellons, a mysterious illness whose sufferers say they have parasites under the skin and a host of other bizarre symptoms. Her short films, including Normal Appearances (DocYard Fall 2018) are also available on her vimeo.

  • Town Hall: A feature film that casts an unflinching eye at Katy and John, two Tea Party activists from the battleground state of Pennsylvania who believe America's salvation lies in a return to true conservative values. (DocYard Winter 2014)

  • Crocodile Gennadiy: A feature documentary about Gennadiy Mokhnenko, a pastor from Mariupol, Ukraine, who in the early 2000s began to fight the city's child homelessness issue by forcibly abducting street kids and bringing them to his Pilgrim Republic rehabilitation center. His ongoing efforts and unabashedly tough love approach to his city's problems has made him a folk hero for some, and a lawless vigilante to others. (DocYard Fall 2015)

  • Field of Vision: Launched in the fall of 2015, Field of Vision is a filmmaker-driven visual journalism film unit that pairs filmmakers with developing and ongoing stories around the world. All their films are available to stream online for free. (DocYard Spring 2016)

  • High On Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell: Filmed over a year and a half, this harrowing chronicle of addiction follows Brenda, Dicky, and Boo-Boo in and out of crackhouses, rehab, and jail as they seek an escape from the despair of their surroundings. (DocYard Spring 2016)

  • NYT Op Docs: Over the years, we've screened many New York Times Op-Docs, including "The Happiest Guy in the World," from Lance Oppenheim, director of Some Kind of Heaven, which was our last DocYard screening on March 2.

  • Balloonfest: A short film following the city of Cleveland as it attempts to overcome its nickname, 'The Mistake by the Lake' by launching a bunch of balloons. (DocYard Fall 2017)

  • Black 14: This short film is an archival social study examining white pathology and cognitive dissonance via media coverage of a 1969 racial protest at the University of Wyoming. (DocYard Spring 2018)

  • The Grand Bizarre: This feature film transcribes an experience of pattern, labor, and alien-nations. A pattern parade in pop music, pairs figure, and landscape to trip through the topologies of codification. Available for streaming beginning April 9 on Mubi for one month only. (DocYard Spring 2019 Season)

Thank you to everyone who came to our screenings of MY FIRST FILM and SOME KIND OF HEAVEN with your openness and thoughtful questions! We hope you enjoy these photographic memories of the energy in the packed theater. While this season is proceeding in unexpected ways, we thank you all so much for letting us bring creative non-fiction films to the Boston community for the past ten years.