2023 Day 2 – Block 2

Bowery Film Festival is proud to screen the following selections:

• Gone Before Your Eyes

  Directed by Cara Yeates
  

  Gone Before Your Eyes‚ follows Angela, an artist with Alzheimer's disease, as she tries to paint. Trapped in a surreal loop, Angela struggles to do what was once natural for her.

• Retreated

  Directed by Julia Kots
  

  William, an ethnically mixed gay professional, sequesters himself in a secluded owl-themed cottage for the weekend in order to write a personal statement due Monday. Yet, various people in his life keep interrupting him by phone, roping him into their dilemmas. William code-switches to talk to his corporate boss, his cousin from the block, and his long-term boyfriend. As the phone calls (and procrastination) intensify, William entertains a different kind of retreat, which causes his code-switching to dissolve into a wild identity unraveling. Sometimes, in order to find ourselves, we need to get more lost.

• Bellybutton

  Directed by Hilary Eden
  

  A Y2K teen girl struggles to connect fantasy and reality when she gets a piercing on her birthday.

• The Taste of Neon

  Directed by Zachary Richard Blair
  

  A kleptomaniac caretaker has to go on the run when her family discovers her thievery.

• Working Class Hero

  Directed by Yoni Lamm, Mookie Thompson
  

  In the withering summer heat, a Long Island road worker quits his job in glorious fashion. Resigned to spend his days aimlessly wallowing around his hometown, his self-esteem reaches an all-time low when a strange man emerges from the underbelly of the internet to offer him money for a series of undisclosed favors. When the two finally meet face-to-face, tensions rise to a breaking point. Based on a true story.

• Catham County

  Directed by Lacey Kathleen Adair
  

  The film follows three different rescues as they continue to educate on their daily schedule of providing the basics to feral cats. Governmental and Community issues that arise in the film reflect on the reality of a caretaker for homeless cats in need. These interactions are the real-life obstacles that volunteers encounter as they fight for more institutional and personal involvement in the nationwide feral cat problem.

• MAD / WOMAN

  Directed by Marc Acito
  

  A woman beaten unconscious by her husband searches her mindscape for a way out. Inspired by the songs of genre-fluid indie rocker Storm Large and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic feminist short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," this musical phantasmagoria continues in the surrealist tradition of Queer Cinema pioneers Jean Cocteau and Derek Jarman. Filmed by an all-female crew.

• Breaking Fast with a Coca Cola

  Directed by Amy Yasmine Omar
  

  After growing up in the secular households of their Turkish immigrant parents in the Midwest, Özlem and Ada are desperate to celebrate a tradition of their own. Together, they embark on a day of fasting and feasting for Ramadan and embrace their cultural differences along the way.