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
  • Side by Side: Out of a South Korean Orphanage and Into the World

    Directed by Glenn Morey and Julie Morey, co-directors • Documentary • 2018 • 38 minutes

    What happens when the lives of children are reset by adoption, sent to grow up in new countries and families of a different race, language, and culture? To find out, the Side by Side project spent 10 years fi...

  • Deaf Jam

    Directed by judy lieff • Documentary • With Aneta Besecker, Tahani Salah • 2012 • 70 minutes

    Deaf Jam is the story of deaf teen Aneta's bold journey into the spoken word slam scene. In a wondrous twist, Aneta, an Israeli immigrant living in the Queens section of New York City, eventually meets T...

  • Duties of My Heart

    Directed by judy lieff • Documentary • With Terrylene Sacchetti • 1997 • 10 minutes

    Duties of My Heart is a poetic fusion of American Sign Language, contemporary dance, and spoken word that explores the emotional depth of communication across silence and sound. Drawing inspiration from the exper...

  • Las Abogadas: Attorneys on the Front Lines of the Migrant Crisis

    Directed by Victoria Bruce • Documentary • 2022 • 92 minutes

    The first Trump administration tried to shut down immigration to the United States, and even with no changes to the actual law, they nearly succeeded. Things didn't get much better when Biden came into office. But activist lawyers, mos...

  • CodeSwitching: Race & Identity in the Suburban Schoolhouse

    Directed by Mike Mascoll • Documentary • 2020 • 54 minutes

    An educated citizenry is said to be the backbone of democracy and a crucial bulwark in an increasingly interconnected and hyper-competitive world. Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act helped weave equal education for all ...

  • An Act of Conscience

    Directed by Robbie Leppzer • Documentary • With Martin Sheen, Randy Kehler, Pete Seeger • 1997 • 90 minutes

    How far are you willing to go to stand up for your deepest beliefs? For Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner of Colrain, Massachusetts, their life-long commitment to pacifism led them to risk los...

  • See Memory

    Directed by Viviane Silvera • Documentary • With Dr.Daniela Schiller. Dr.Eric Kandel, Dr.Paul Browde • 2022 • 14 minutes

    Painter Viviane Silvera uses art to explore memory and PTSD, animating 30,000 images to provide a visualization of the brain’s process of forming, altering and storing memorie...

  • Soledad

    Directed by Lisa Molomot • Documentary • 2020 • 24 minutes

    Soledad tells the story of a young woman from Central America who was imprisoned in the Eloy Detention Facility when she sought asylum in the United States. Soledad set out on a perilous journey from her homeland after enduring horrific ...

  • Yurumein (Homeland)

    Directed by Andrea E Leland • Documentary • With Cadrin Gill, Edgar Adams • 2014 • 50 minutes

    YURUMEIN (your-o-main) is an important untold story of Carib/Garifuna resistance against slavery that deserves its place in the annals of the African Diaspora. The film recounts the painful past of the ...

  • With a Stroke of the Chaveta

    Directed by Pam Sporn • Documentary • With Zoe Nocedo Primo, Gricel Lombillo • 2007 • 28 minutes

    With a Stroke of the Chaveta takes viewers into the legendary cigar factories of Cuba to witness the survival of the collective reading of literature while tabaqueros roll cigars. We learn how throug...

  • Vida Diferida (Life, Deferred)

    Directed by Brenda Ávila-Hanna • Documentary • 2017 • 23 minutes

    After the announcement of the policy known as "Deferred Action", Vanessa, an undocumented teenager, contemplates the possibility of a future she was ready to give up on. How will this life-changing opportunity impact her life and t...

  • American Santa

    Directed by Avi Zev Weider • Documentary • 2023 • 24 minutes

    Black Santas are local heroes, spreading joy and love to children and families at a bustling mall during the Christmas season. But even during this special time, the ugly shadow of bigotry falls on the season’s true spirit.

  • Stop Time

    Directed by Kate Way • Documentary • 2022 • 50 minutes

    Stop Time tells the story of Lucio Pérez—a father, husband and worker who took sanctuary in a Massachusetts church for over three years in defiance of a deportation order. Lucio’s moving narrative provides a window into the forces that broug...

  • Higher Power

    Directed by Dewey Ortiz Jr. • Documentary • 2023 • 73 minutes

    Recreational cannabis use is legal in Washington, D.C. Recreational cannabis sales are not. Higher Power uses the stories of Black Washingtonians navigating this gray space while fighting to enter the legal cannabis industry to reveal...

  • Jamesie, King of Scratch

    Directed by Andrea E. Leland • Documentary • With James Brewster • 2006 • 71 minutes

    Scratch band music, or Quelbe, is the grass-roots folk music from the U.S. Virgin Islands. The lyrics are a form of oral history relaying the day-to-day trials and tribulations of living on a small Caribbean isl...

  • The Garifuna Journey

    Directed by Andrea E. Leland & Kathy Berger • Documentary • 1998 • 46 minutes

    A first voice testimony celebrating the resiliency of the Garifuna people and their traditions. Shot entirely in Belize, the filmmakers worked closely with Garifuna tradition bearers, anthropologists and cultural activ...

  • Leona's Sister Gerri

    Directed by Jane Gillooly • Documentary • With Leona Gordon, Gerri Santoro, Joyce Carboni • 1995 • 57 minutes

    For Geraldine Santoro and so many women like her, the barriers to obtaining a safe, legal abortion were insurmountable and in 1964 the legal and the social system did not protect her. Th...

  • Time Passages

    Directed by Kyle Henry • Documentary • With Kyle Henry, Elaine Henry, Richard Henry • 2024 • 86 minutes

    In the final months of his mother Elaine’s late-stage dementia, as a pandemic rages across the globe, filmmaker Kyle Henry time travels via his family archive and his own memories to heal past...

  • Elephant Path / Njaia Njoku

    Directed by Todd McGrain • Documentary • With Andrea Tukalo, Sassely Bernard • 2018 • 52 minutes

    With unprecedented footage, Elephant Path / Njaia Njoku captures the beauty and behavior of the rare and elusive Forest Elephants. Our guides - Sessely Bernard, a tracker and elder of the Bayaka peop...

  • English Hustle

    Directed by Charles Ableman • Documentary • 2023 • 32 minutes

    In 2020, there were over 100,000 Americans and at least 20,000 Filipinos teaching English to millions of Chinese students online. With billions of dollars in investment, the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) industry was the largest...

  • Expanding Sanctuary

    Directed by Kristal Sotomayor • Documentary • With Linda Hernandez • 2023 • 21 minutes

    An immigrant mother becomes an unexpected community leader during a groundbreaking campaign to end the Philadelphia police’s data-sharing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Expanding Sanctuary tel...

  • Rollout

    Directed by Danny Abel • Documentary • With Laureen Wanguba, Evelyn Nyaaga, Florence Kabuga • 2024 • 16 minutes

    Rollout is a journey alongside residents of a tight-knit Kenyan community, as they face mounting pressure from a government they don’t trust, to get a Covid-19 vaccine they fear may ca...

  • Sin País (Without Country)

    Directed by Theo Rigby • Documentary • 2011 • 20 minutes

    Sin País (Without Country) attempts to get beyond the partisan politics and mainstream media’s ‘talking point’ approach to immigration issues by exploring one family’s complex and emotional journey involving deportation.

  • Tracing Roots: A Weaver's Journey

    Directed by Ellen Frankenstein • Documentary • With Delores Churchill, Evelyn Vanderhoop • 2014 • 34 minutes

    TRACING ROOTS is a portrait of an artist and a mystery. The film follows master weaver and Haida elder Delores Churchill on a journey to understand the origins of a spruce root hat found ...