New Day Films (Firm)

HOW I LIVE follows the journeys of four children with cancer in Guatemala, El Salvador, Myanmar, Egypt and Ghana. Following them from diagnosis through treatment, the complex issues facing patients, families and healthcare providers emerge. The film documents the difficulties of accessing cancer treatment in low resource settings while providing examples of how global collaboration can lead to increased survival rates and closing global health inequities....

Reid Davenport's breakout film that explores the lack of accessibility in Europe. It is an award-winning documentary that has been shown coast-to-coast and internationally. The film has been featured in the Washington Post, NPR and USA Today.. When Reid Davenport was discouraged from studying abroad during his junior year of college based on his disability, he was more than a bit surprised. Davenport decided to travel with a cameraperson throughout...

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 closing an aging nuclear reactor in Vermont. This documentary chronicles the heated political battle to close the aging Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, located on the banks of the Connecticut River in southern Vermont....

An intimate portrait of teenagers trying to understand their world and their possibilities. The film weaves together video shot by teens and by the filmmaker, as they work together to make a film and create expressive outlets for youth in the community. They organize dances and community events and paint a mural. At the same time, with humor and pathos, these young people raise issues around violence, feeling misunderstood by adults and lacking respect...

Twenty-five history students from St. Mary’s University take a 2,000 mile bus trip from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas to Springfield, Illinois to build a Day of the Dead altar honoring Abraham Lincoln’s support of Mexico, and then to ask the Illinois State Military Museum to return General Antonio López de Santa Anna’s prosthetic leg to Mexico. With humor, humility, and a few animated history lessons, these students, mostly Mexican American,...

Forever, Chinatown is a documentary of unknown, self-taught 81-year-old artist Frank Wong who has spent the past four decades recreating his fading memories by building romantic, extraordinarily detailed miniature models of the San Francisco Chinatown rooms of his youth. This film takes the journey of one individual and maps it to a rapidly changing urban neighborhood from 1940s to present day. A meditation on memory, community, and preserving one's...

The Fight for Healthy Air is a 30-minute film that weaves historical milestones of one the nation’s most critical health laws, the Clean Air Act, with current day stories of environmental injustice and community action. Nearly half of all Americans still live in areas with unhealthy levels of air pollution, particularly those in poorer communities. Asthma is the number one health issue for children in the U.S today. Recent research links air pollution...

This powerful documentary chronicles the story of Isak Sass — a brave man who survived rape in prison. Isak spent 10 years in prison and was raped multiple times by multiple perpetrators, and contracted HIV. This is a story of that ordeal and his journey towards healing. TAKING OFF THE MASK interrogates the injustice that exists in a criminal legal system that neglects its responsibility to keep persons in its custody, safe. It seeks to put into...

This documentary film tells the story of Vanessa, a teenager born in Mexico who has lived in the United States with her family since she was six years old. Once an excelling middle-school student with big dreams of becoming a doctor, Vanessa begins to be haunted by her undocumented status as she reaches high school.. Reconsidering her aspirations, Vanessa begins to give up on academics. Then, in the summer of 2012, President Obama approves the "Deferred...

Documentary Director Pamela Yates met master cinematographer Haskell Wexler in Nicaragua in 1984 on the set of Wexler's film Latino, about U.S. intervention aimed at crushing the Sandinista revolution. He became Pamela's mentor and life-long friend and together they've explored what it means to be a committed documentary filmmaker. When Haskell asked Pamela to represent him this year at the Cinéma du Réel festival in Paris, which held a week-long...