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Project Highlight: Anwuli Ilegbe– Dance Sword Gyrotonic

Upper Manhattan served as the perfect backdrop for our recent collaboration with Anwuli Ilegbe, Harlem's premier Gyrotonic studio. Working alongside the talented Producer Sarah East Johnson, we shot for the essence of this innovative local business through dance, samurai swordship, and hands-on gyrotonic exercise with its founders, Oza Agu and Efe Alibo along with their clients. Enjoy a sneak peek of our journey with them through these stills and behind-the-scenes snapshots. Stay tuned for the films!

View their studio

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Bay Area Premiere: Carrying Capacity

Our short documentary, Carrying Capacity, will screen at SF Docfest on June 2 at the Roxie Theater in San Francisco. Awarded Best Short Documentary at the Vail Film Festival, the film explores a unique patient-doctor relationship. It follows a journey from psychiatric breakdown to breakthroughs in the lab, exploring potential motivations for developing neuroscience technology to gain deeper insights into autism brain states. Inspired by Karl Deisseroth’s Projections, we crafted a story with characters from his book, reflecting on neurodivergence and mental health in the heart of Silicon Valley today.

Join us for this special screening by purchasing tickets to Shorts Block 2, where we will be showcasing our work alongside other talented local filmmakers, including Director Cassidy Friedman, with whom we previously collaborated on an episode of Unsung. While at the festival, we highly recommend checking out some other must-see films, such as Bay Area Stories 1, Who is Michael Jang, If I Could Stay/Si Pudiera Quedarme, Vincent, and First Class. Don't miss this opportunity to support local filmmakers and enjoy a diverse selection of captivating documentaries at SF Docfest.

Watch the Trailer

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Calming our nervous systems

As we approach the one-year mark of the stress-inducing pandemic, the tools we use to regulate our nervous systems to stay calm in the face of disruption are increasingly valuable.

“Soft Wiring” follows an Oakland-based craniosacral therapist, Andrea Byers, as she transitions her bodywork practice to remotely seeing infants and their caregivers, guiding them through the most critical point in their babies young lives: how to “wire” their nervous systems.

Watch the journey.

A Hover Pictures production

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Transforming urban spaces

Binta Ayofemi is a renowned artist who is radically rethinking urban space to foreground and empower Black folks in Oakland. For COMMONS, she’s been collaborating with Studio BBA to create a joyous new event space: civic park meets cafe, with sustainable building materials and adaptive reuse. From a building hiding in plain sight, Binta and BBA are constructing a portal into another world and into the future of Black freedom.

Watch how Binta creates a beautiful sense of wellness.

A Hover Pictures Production.

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Protecting and restoring the natural world

For the past year, we’ve been working with Ecosystem Investment Partners to capture the epic scale of their work as they restore landscapes across the country. What does it mean to protect and restore the natural infrastructure, while creating jobs and preserving archaeological evidence? Our short- and long-form content with EIP goes after that question, and more of the challenging aspects of large-scale ecosystem work.

Watch the highlights from 2020.

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Getting out the vote with Thao Nguyen

Ballad to the Ballot features indie musician Thao Nguyen of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down as she dazzles onstage, crooning an original, bilingual Get Out the Vote anthem, set to the dreamy rhythms of cha cha cha. The music and the look evoke retro episodes of Paris By Night, an over-the-top variety show beloved by many Vietnamese of the diaspora, who often served a VHS-viewing of the show along with family dinner. 

Thao, who is Vietnamese American, plays both the hostess and performer in traditional ao dai-inspired dresses from the Atelier of Vietnamese American fashion designer Thai Nguyen (from Netflix’s show 'Say I Do'). The video honors Viet nostalgia while claiming a future here by celebrating democracy, civic engagement and the rich cultural contribution of an often-marginalized immigrant community that is now an emerging political force in counties all over the USA.

Watch the 60-second version or the 30-second version.

Directed by Linda Mai Green. Brought to you by PIVOT - The Progressive Vietnamese American American Organization and Downtown For Democracy. 

Shot on location at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco, CA.

A Hover Pictures production.

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Honoring Native tradition with contemporary dance

Bernadette Smith, from the Manchester band of Pomo Indians, weaves the story of her Tan Oak conservation efforts in Northern California into a contemporary Indigenous dance piece created to honor the sacred, traditional food of California Natives. The “Acorn Dance” is performed on Sogorea Te’ Land Trust in Huichin on Ohlone Territory (Albany, CA).

Watch on Vimeo.

Directed by Linda Mai Green. A Hover Pictures production.

Funded in part by California Arts Council.

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Reimagining our regional food ecosystems

In an effort to create a circular economy, a resilient East Bay community is fighting against the odds and relying on their own solutions to combat food apartheid, address healthcare inequality, and reform the criminal justice system.

Deep shifts in systems, like regional food ecosystems, require a coordinated and collective vision, where community innovation and economic vibrancy are re-imagined and supported.

Emerald Cities Collaborative's Anchors in Resilient Communities (ARC) initiative, co-convened with Health Care Without Harm, highlights one dynamic and innovative local program of Alameda County Sheriff's office, Dig Deep Farms. (And in partnership with the Kresge Foundation)

Roots of Resilience is a short, documentary film that follows the story of Dig Deep Farms, a non-profit project of the Alameda county that provides farming internships, healthcare food prescription delivery, and job opportunities to individuals recently released from prison.

Watch the 6-minute film or the 90-second teaser.

Directed by Benjamin Garcia. A Hover Pictures production.

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#healing #trauma #MAPS #DrBronners 

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Unsung

We are excited to announce that Bracken’s Kitchen, a Rotella Unsung project, has finally been released!

This film relates the story of Bill Bracken, a former high-profile executive chef, who has dedicated his life to feeding the less fortunate. “Uncle Bill,” as the kids call him, tackles food insecurity by filling his truck with healthy meals and distributing them to those in need around Orange County, California.

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Lady Bountiful @ SF Indie Fest

A mother, painter and ‘the original of recycling,’ 85 year old artist Joan von Briesen has lived in her victorian house in Cole Valley, San Francisco for almost fifty years.

Through conversations with Joanie, her sister, and passers through her home, we learn about her unusual gifts and attitudes towards life as she faces cancer and death in mysterious, delightful, and civic minded ways.

Lady Bountiful Premieres at SF Indie Fest Feb 12th & 14th

Tickets Available: http://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx…

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Hover Feature Curandera Selected for Annual IFP Labs | Filmmaker Magazine

Still from Curandera, Currently in Production

Hover feature film Curandera has been selected for participation in the 2016 IFP Filmmaker Labs, IFP’s annual yearlong fellowship for first-time feature directors. 10 documentaries are selected each year to participate.

http://filmmakermagazine.com/98450-ifp-announces-documentary-projects-annual-ifp-labs/#.WH6BarYrJ0s

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“My ideas come from the surrounding that I live in, and the people that I come in contact with.” -RAAM, Lead Designer, Of Rags

Ghanian artist RAAM shares the inspiration behind sustainable fashion company ‘Of Rags’  vimeo.com/28322780

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Towers/Movements: A Tribute to 9/11

Hover + Backyard Band/with presents Towers/Movements. Rare archival footage of the construction of the World Trade Center. Live soundtracks by composers Sasha Desree (Silk Rhodes) of Backyard Band/with and Jeremy Thal (Neutral Milk Hotel) and Devin Greenwood, both of Found Sound Nation.

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Zarida, parent of 6-year-old daughter Aliza, takes us through her experience with the pioneering yoga and mindfulness program at Girls Prep Bronx Elementary in NYC. 

https://vimeo.com/119439978