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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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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, ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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?
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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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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 ...
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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: ...
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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 ...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
