New Day Films

New Day Films

Long before influencers and the “creator-economy” existed, four feminist filmmakers frustrated with mainstream distribution channels founded New Day Films. Operating as a filmmaker-run collective since 1971, New Day now has 140 filmmaker members and a collection of over 300 titles.

New Day’s catalogue includes many groundbreaking social issue films, winners of Academy Awards and other prestigious honors, and new films from an upcoming generation of independent filmmakers. New Day’s tradition of personal and collective empowerment—controlling their own distribution—is constantly evolving.

To wit, while historically focused on educational audiences, New Day has not been blind to the changes in the media landscape over the past 50+ years. And so, wanting to see its films reach as wide an audience as possible, we are proud that New Day is partnering with OVID to bring its films to individual “at-home” viewers on OVID.

New Day will be a dedicated destination and collection on the OVID platform, and many of its filmmakers will be highlighted as well. A large project encompassing hundreds of films from many filmmakers, it will be rolled out on OVID over the upcoming months.

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New Day Films
  • Conversations with Willard Van Dyke

    Directed by Amalie R. Rothschild • Documentary • With Willard Van Dyke, Ralph Steiner, Joris Ivens • 1980 • 58 minutes

    In 1935 photographer Willard Van Dyke moved to New York with the belief that films “could change the world” and began a new career as a filmmaker. His name soon became synonymou...

  • Nana, Mom and Me

    Directed by Amalie R. Rothschild • Documentary • 48 minutes

    Using home movies, family photographs and direct interviews, the filmmaker looks at the mother-daughter ties in 3 generations of her own family and in the process explores the classic female problem faced by her namesake artist mother: ...

  • Woo Who? May Wilson

    Directed by Amalie R. Rothschild • Documentary • With May Wilson, Meredith Monk • 1969 • 34 minutes

    When her husband informs her, after 40 years of marriage, that his future plans no longer include her, May Wilson, age 60, former "wife-mother-housekeeper-cook" and a grandmother, moves to New Yor...

  • Power Struggle

    Directed by Robbie Leppzer • Documentary • 2019 • 86 minutes

    Democracy prevails when a nuclear engineer turned whistle-blower, a 93-year old grandmother, and a scrappy new governor join forces with a dedicated array of citizen activists to accomplish a rare grassroots environmental victory in cl...

  • The Campaign

    Directed by Christie Herring • Documentary • 2013 • 56 minutes

    What inspires everyday people to opt in for something larger than themselves? THE CAMPAIGN follows California's historic No-on-8 campaign to defend same-sex marriage through behind the scenes footage, interwoven with the national his...

  • Drunk on Too Much Life

    Directed by Michelle Melles • Documentary • 2021 • 77 minutes

    Drunk on Too Much Life is an intimate and powerful documentary following the filmmaker's 21-year-old daughter’s mind-opening journey from locked-down psych wards and diagnostic labels towards expansive worlds of creativity, connection...

  • The Mayor

    Directed by Theo Rigby • Documentary • 2013 • 11 minutes

    The Mayor is an intimate portrait of a small-town Southern Republican Mayor and his profound and unexpected connection to a mixed-status family of Mexican immigrants. Paul Bridges, the conservative Republican Mayor of Uvalda, Georgia, spea...

  • Hunting in Wartime

    Directed by Samantha Farinella • Documentary • 2016 • 66 minutes

    Hunting in Wartime profiles the stories of Tlingit Native Americans from the village of Hoonah, Alaska who served in the Vietnam War. Their stories confront the complexity of serving a country that systematically oppressed them; a ...

  • Safe Haven

    Directed by Lisa Molomot • Documentary • With Robin Long, Joseph Bovard, Leah Main • 2020 • 80 minutes

    Safe Haven weaves together powerful stories of U.S. war resisters who sought safe haven in Canada during wars in Vietnam and Iraq. The film shows how Vietnam era resisters participated in a mov...

  • Long Haulers

    Directed by Amy Reid • Documentary • 2020 • 74 minutes

    Long Haulers is an experimental documentary about three female truck drivers, Sandi, Lori, and Tracy. The film weaves together the stories of their lives to understand why they started trucking and what keeps them trucking. Riding along with...

  • Momentum

    Directed by Michelle Aguilar Ficara • Documentary • 2024 • 53 minutes

    Chris ‘Coco’ Cocores was born into a broken home riddled with childhood traumas–street fighting was a way to cope. By age 25, Chris was an amateur mixed martial arts fighting champion and a month away from the biggest fight of...

  • Badger Creek

    Directed by Jonathan Skurnik, Randy Vasquez • Documentary • 2017 • 27 minutes

    Badger Creek is a portrait of a Blackfeet (Pikuni) family, the Mombergs, who live on the lower Blackfeet Reservation in Montana near the banks of Badger Creek. In addition to running a prosperous ranching business, the...

  • The Thick Dark Fog

    Directed by Jonathan Skurnik, Randy Vasquez • Documentary • 2013 • 57 minutes

    Walter Littlemoon attended a federal Indian boarding school in South Dakota sixty years ago. The mission of many of these schools in 1950, was still to “kill the Indian and save the man.” The children were not allowed ...

  • Ellavut Cimirtuq (Our World Is Changing)

    Directed by Jacqueline Cleveland, Mischa Hedges, Sonia Luokkala • Documentary • 2023 • 30 minutes

    Many coastal villages in Alaska are under imminent threat from thawing permafrost, sea-level rise and erosion. The accelerated retreat of Arctic sea ice has left shorelines unfrozen and exposed. As ...

  • Whose Water

    Directed by Kate Levy • Documentary • 2023 • 65 minutes

    Across the United States, millions of people lack access to safe, affordable water and sanitation. Whose Water travels to five drastically different regions of the country that are facing the impacts of this troubling trend. Through the sto...

  • Three Ocean Advocates

    Directed by Andrea E. Leland, Cynthia Abbott • Documentary • With Tess Felix, Barbara Crites, Dick Ogg • 2021 • 0 minutes

    Three Oceans Advocates focuses on: Tess Felix, an artist living in California; Dick Ogg, a fisherman from Bodega Bay, CA; and Barbara Crites, an underwater photographer from ...

  • The Year We Thought About Love

    Directed by Ellen Brodsky • Documentary • 2015 • 68 minutes

    The Year We Thought About Love goes behind the scenes of the oldest queer youth theater in America. In a twist on the common image of LGBTQ youth as victims, the film reveals the troupe members as artists and activists, celebrating the ...

  • Tangled Roots

    Directed by Heidi Schmidt Emberling • Documentary • 2001 • 66 minutes

    Through intimate interviews with both her Jewish relatives in America and her German Lutheran relatives abroad, the director discovers a rich family tapestry spanning three continents, shaped by war, courage, prejudice, and fe...

  • Someone You Should Meet

    Directed by Salome Chasnoff, Debra Chasnoff • Documentary • 2024 • 30 minutes

    Someone You Should Meet focuses on an extended family gathering organized by two filmmakers who only recently learned they were related through their great-grandparents. As the family explores their shared history and ...

  • Detroit 48202: Conversations Along a Postal Route

    Directed by Pam Sporn • Documentary • 2018 • 82 minutes

    In Detroit 48202 we take a journey with Wendell along his route, which winds through the center of what was, once upon a time, a vital and thriving city. We listen in on his conversations with his customers – the resilient Detroiters who sh...

  • A Sentence Apart

    Directed by Theo Rigby, Jason Sussberg • Documentary • 2012 • 11 minutes

    The United States imprisons more people, per capita, than any country in the world. Behind 2.4 million prisoners lies an infinite ripple effect of incarceration on the family and community. A Sentence Apart follows three st...

  • Crossing Lines

    Directed by Leena Jayaswal, Indira Somani • Documentary • With Indira Somani, Shipra Somani • 2009 • 32 minutes

    Being born and brought up in the U.S., Indira Somani led an American life, but at home, her world was Indian because of her father's immense love for the country. Crossing Lines you on...

  • Life on the Ganges

    Directed by Indira S. Somani • Documentary • With Gauri Shankar • 2017 • 10 minutes

    In Varanasi, India the boat rides on the Ganges River are part of the spiritual experience and the film introduces the audience to the river, an auspicious event called “Dev Diwali,” and one particular boatman, w...

  • I Was Born in Mexico, But...

    Directed by Corey Ohama • Documentary • 2013 • 12 minutes

    I Was Born in Mexico, But… is a creative portrait of a young woman who thought she was American but finds out as a teen that she is undocumented. Because she doesn’t want to appear on camera, found footage from American culture illuminate...