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.
-
Becoming Johanna (The Youth and Gender Media Project)
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2016 • 27 minutes
When Johanna, a 16-year-old transgender Latina, begins her transition and gets kicked out of her home and school, she finds a foster family who loves her and a supportive school principal who helps her graduate and thrive.
-
I'm Just Anneke (The Youth and Gender Media Project)
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2010 • 11 minutes
Anneke is 12. She loves ice hockey and is a hardcore tomboy. Everybody who meets her assumes she's a boy, but she's not sure if she wants to be a girl, a boy, or something in-between when she grows up.
-
Spit It Out
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2005 • 57 minutes
Spit It Out is a funny and poignant portrait of Jeff Shames' successful efforts to come to terms with his stutter and his family's legacy of denial.
-
The Family Journey: Raising Gender Nonconforming Children
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik • Documentary • 2010 • 14 minutes
Everybody wants to be loved unconditionally. But what do you do when your child tells you they're questioning their gender? The Family Journey: Raising Gender Nonconforming Children follows the journey of moms, dads and siblings of k...
-
A Day's Work, A Day's Pay
Directed by Jonathan Skurnik, Kathy Leichter • Documentary • 2001 • 58 minutes
A Day's Work, A Day's Pay follows three welfare recipients in New York City from 1997 to 2000 as they participate in the largest welfare-to-work program in the nation.
-
The Marion Lake Story: Defeating the Mighty Phragmite
Directed by Greta Schiller • Documentary • 2014 • 28 minutes
Shot over a seven year period, The Marion Lake Story tells the compelling story of how a community on the east end of Long Island, N.Y. came together to clear their lake of the highly invasive phragmite reed. They educated themselves, ...
-
Land of Opportunity
Directed by Luisa Dantas • Documentary • 2011 • 97 minutes
Through the eyes of urban planners, community organizers, displaced youth, immigrant workers, and public housing residents, this verité-style documentary reveals how the story of New Orleans is the story of urban America: how democratic ...
-
Third Ward TX
Directed by Andrew Garrison, Nancy Bless and Noland Walker • Documentary • 2007 • 55 minutes
THIRD WARD TX is the story of how Project Row Houses uses the tools of design, art and architecture to transform two blocks of “shotgun” houses familiar across the South into exhibition space, classrooms...
-
The Collector of Bedford Street
Directed by Alice Elliott • Documentary • With Larry Selman • 2001 • 34 minutes
The Collector of Bedford Street is an Academy Award® nominated 34 minute documentary about Alice’s neighbor, Larry Selman. In the film Larry collects thousands of dollars for charities while living at the poverty lin...
-
The Caretaker
Directed by Theo Rigby • Documentary • 2014 • 7 minutes
The Caretaker is a short film about the relationship between an immigrant caretaker and an elderly woman in the last months of her life. Joesy, a Fijian immigrant, works long hours providing live-in care for 95-year-old Haru Tsurumoto. Thro...
-
When the Light's Red
Directed by Keith Wilson • Documentary • 2008 • 11 minutes
What do you do when you're stopped at an intersection and someone with a sign asks you for money? Do you give them some or do you stare straight ahead pretending they're not there? How do you sum up a person in the span of a red light?
-
Trust Me
Directed by Joe Phelps, Rosemary Smith and Roko Belic • Documentary • With Steven Pinker • 2020 • 90 minutes
Trust Me explores why humankind is attracted to stories about violence, how media outlets capitalize on that, and how we gather and share information and misinformation in the digital age...
-
The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today
Directed by Jay Rosenstein • Documentary • With Vashti McCollum • 2010 • 57 minutes
"The Lord Is Not On Trial Here Today" is a Peabody Award-winning documentary that tells the compelling personal story of the late Vashti McCollum, and how her efforts to protect her ten year-old son led to one of...
-
No Dinosaurs In Heaven
Directed by Greta Schiller • Documentary • With Dr. Eugene Scott • 2010 • 53 minutes
No Dinosaurs in Heaven is a film essay that examines the hijacking of science education by religious fundamentalists, threatening the separation of church and state and dangerously undermining scientific literacy.
-
Eating Alaska
Directed by Ellen Frankenstein • Documentary • 2009 • 57 minutes
What happens to a vegetarian who moves to the Alaskan Frontier?
Eating Alaska is a film about connecting to where you live and eating locally. Made by a former city dweller now living on an island in Alaska and married to fisherma...
-
The Shrimp
Directed by Keith Wilson • Documentary • 2010 • 15 minutes
The Shrimp follows the life cycle of a shrimp along the marshes of Savannah, Georgia. Lush, painterly images and a (un)canny audio soundtrack create a rich observational work about Southern culture, human folly and the interplay of natur...
-
My Brooklyn
Directed by Kelly Anderson • Documentary • With Jamel Shabazz, Craig Steven Wilder, Kelly Anderson • 2012 • 76 minutes
My Brooklyn follows director Kelly Anderson's journey, as a Brooklyn gentrifier, to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood. The film documents the redevelopment of Ful...
-
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...
-
A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden
Directed by Michal Goldman • Documentary • 1987 • 75 minutes
The first film to document the revival of klezmer music, now a worldwide movement, Jumpin’ Night tracks two foundational groups of brilliant young musicians, Kapelye and the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and includes rare footage of the e...
-
Finding Kukan
Directed by Robin Lung • Documentary • 2017 • 75 minutes
Kukan, a landmark color film that documented Chinese resistance to the Japanese invasion of China in the early days of World War II, was the first ever American feature documentary to receive an Academy Award® in 1942. When Robin Lung disc...
-
Chris and Bernie
Directed by Bonnie Friedman, Deborah Shaffer • Documentary • With Chris Fallow, Bernie Billingsley • 1974 • 24 minutes
Chris and Bernie explores what happens when the "all American girl" grows up and takes responsiblity for herself and her child.The two single mothers share family life rotating ...
-
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: ...
-
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...
