Doctoberfest
DOCtoberfest is a spirited celebration of documentary cinema, pairing compelling films with the conversations shaping our world today. Each screening features beer tastings from a local brewery, bringing audiences together to watch, sip, and connect. Through powerful storytelling and thoughtful discussion, DOCtoberfest invites our community to explore complex topics, exchange perspectives, and deepen our understanding of one another.
Barbara Forever
October 3 | 3:00 PM
Pioneering queer avant-garde filmmaker Barbara Hammer (1939–2019) broke barriers by centering frank lesbian sexuality and pleasure in an expansive body of beautiful, poetic, personal work. In BARBARA FOREVER—constructed largely from Hammer’s own archive spanning five decades, alongside audio diaries and present-day conversations with her longtime partner, Florrie Burke—director Brydie O’Connor crafts a loving portrait of a force of nature while accompanying her through her final years and creative processes.
The History of Concrete
October 3 | 6:30 PM
Following the finale of his acclaimed HBO series “How To with John Wilson”, NYC documentarian John Wilson looks to the bedrock of his beloved New York City for inspiration and structure. Concrete, the world's most widely used building material, appears as an ever-present life force, and John sets out to make the definitive documentary on the matter. After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, he decides to use the industry-approved Hallmark formula to tell this seemingly drab story and increase his movie’s appeal. But his foundation soon begins to crumble—literally and figuratively—as he struggles to balance artistic freedom with the realities of the modern film industry.
Ghost In The Machine
October 4 | 2:30 PM
GHOST IN THE MACHINE is a gripping and urgently relevant investigative documentary that exposes the buried history of artificial intelligence, not as a neutral system of algorithms, but as a technology shaped by racism, misogyny, eugenics, and entrenched structures of power long before it entered everyday life. Rejecting the notion of AI as inevitable or objective, the film traces how myths of progress and efficiency have obscured deeper political and cultural agendas, revealing the ideological foundations beneath the systems now reshaping modern society. Structured as an eight-chapter inquiry, the film blends historical excavation with contemporary analysis to confront essential questions: who built these systems, whose values they encode, and who they benefit. Directed by Valerie Veatch, whose Sundance-premiering films ME @ THE ZOO (HBO) and LOVE CHILD (HBO) examined how emerging technologies transform identity, power, and culture, GHOST IN THE MACHINE employs a bold yet accessible cinematic approach that is as unsettling as it is illuminating, offering a visceral understanding of a technology that now touches nearly every aspect of modern life. This is not a film about machines. It is a film about power. GHOST IN THE MACHINE interrogates who builds AI, who benefits from it, and who bears the cost.
The Last Picture Shows
October 4 | 6:00 PM
Filmmaker Rustin Thompson journeys into the American West on a search for traces of what was once a center of small-town life: the movie theater. On the trip, he finds long abandoned and forgotten cinemas; movie houses that have fallen into disrepair; theaters recently closed, theaters struggling to hold on, and theaters that—thanks to their thoughtful caretakers—are not only surviving but thriving.