Facet embraces creative non-fiction filmmaking by visionary artists, works that push the cinematic form and explore universal and timeless themes, and a robust US-based independent non-fiction ecosystem.

A Machine To Live In is a hybrid documentary linking the cosmic power structures of the state to the mystical architecture of cults and utopian cities in the distant hinterlands of Brazil. This “sci-fi” documentary provides a complex portrait of life, poetry, and myth set against the backdrop of the space-age city of Brasília and a flourishing landscape of UFO cults and transcendental spaces.

Oscar-nominated filmmakers Sam Green and Joe Bini team up with Grammy-winning Kronos Quartet for a wildly creative multimedia performance piece that blends live music and narration with archival footage and filmed interviews with such prominent artists as Philip Glass, Tanya Tagaq, Steve Reich, Wu Man and Terry Riley. As Green tells the multi-decade and continent-spanning story of the groundbreaking string quartet, Kronos revisits its extensive body of work, performing music by George Crumb, Aleksandra Vrebalov and many others. Together on stage, Green and Kronos interact with the stirring cinematic imagery on screen to craft an important record and exploration of late 20th– and early 21st–century music. Transcending the typical live music and film event, this collaboration is a meditation on music itself – the act of listening to it closely, the experience of feeling it deeply, and the power that it has to change the world.

Aleph is a travelogue, a feature length creative documentary by award-winning filmmaker Iva Radivojević, a journey through a labyrinth. It explores the lives of ten people in ten countries over five continents. The collected stories and experiences serve as pieces of a puzzle that connect both unified and disparate events, ideas, dreams and realities over time and place. The puzzle ultimately leads to – what Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges described as the center of the unimaginable universe where all of human experience resides: the Aleph.

After a lifetime a from the country her mother left behind, a provocative family memory spurs a young filmmaker to delve into her mother and grandmother’s complicated past and her own fractured Iranian identity. Intimate, honest, and visually poetic, Joonam captures one artist’s quest to understand how her family’s love, adversarial global politics, and the censorship enacted by both have placed her in an inescapable state of diaspora.

To beg for leniency, defense attorneys are producing tear-jerking documentaries for an audience of one: the judge.

Amidst an onslaught of attacks from a sitting President and the deadly threat of a global pandemic, local election administrators work around the clock to secure the vote for their community. Rhode Island’s election teams take center stage in this unprecedented voting adventure.

After a very famous airplane arrives at Palm Beach International Airport, an otherwise ordinary stretch of Florida highway attracts an avid cluster of excited onlookers and selfie-takers. In the ensuing spectacle, these curious Americans reveal the qualities they may share with the plane’s huuuuge-ly notable passenger.

Inspired in part by Charlie Chaplin, Dziga Vertov and the innovative wit of early cinema, pioneering South African artist William Kentridge offers a cinematic experience of the creative process during the first year of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Nine distinct yet subtly interconnected episodes introduce us to William and his collaborators in action, inviting us to step inside the intimacy of the studio as shared discoveries about culture, history and politics, and profound truths about the ways we live and think today are uncovered through the making of works of art.

Intimate glimpses of one very special day in the lives of high-school seniors from an industrial corner of the Florida Everglades: prom’s over, the future is uncertain, and the irresistible pull of the beach makes the long-time friends drive 60 miles to chill, pose and revel in the waves.

Half a century into their marriage, Chicago artists Jackie and Don Seiden approach the fragility of their elderly lives in their own distinct ways. Jackie, notorious for her unbounded energy, is constantly on the move, inspired to create works of art while also maintaining the couple’s multistory, brightly-painted Victorian house. Don steadily sketches in his notebook while facing alarming interruptions to his health. Director Daniel Hymanson filmed the Seidens, on-and-off for five years, capturing the hardships of aging as well as a view into enduring companionship, in this charming character study.

This experimental documentary marks the culmination of a call for work from filmmakers, artists, and writers across the United States.  Weaving together cinematic tableaux and intimate audio interviews, Testament is a visual tone poem, verging on science fiction, that probes our nation’s pandemic-induced identity crisis.  We watch ourselves as if from a panopticon: fearful, alone, constantly commodified, and yet ever striving for change.

THE OLDEST PERSON IN THE WORLD continuously documents each individual who becomes the oldest living person. As characters inevitably pass away and the title moves from one person to the next, our project becomes a poignant meditation on time, love, loss, and the profound human experience of being alive.

The Production of the World is an all-archival documentary about the radical art critic John Berger, the CIA’s infiltration of the arts during “cultural Cold War,” and the ways images and culture operate as battlegrounds for politics. At once a spy thriller and a fascinating deep dive into a period of political and cultural realignment, the film offers a timely investigation into culture, power and the value of art.

On the weekends during harvest season, seventeen-year-old Chris and his family hunt rabbits in the sugarcane fields of the Florida Everglades.

Emboldened by a giant block party on the evening of their high school prom, a group of students enter the night with the hope of transcending their rural town and the industrial landscape that surrounds them.

Seconds of exposure, generations of debate, the history of nations, and epochs of geologic change – all overlap in the landscapes that define the American nuclear legacy and the quest to isolate 77,000 tons of nuclear waste for 10,000 years. TO USE A MOUNTAIN presents vignettes of ruin and salvation in six candidate communities for the nation’s nuclear dumping ground.

Truth or Consequences is a speculative documentary about time and how we weave the past into the present and our possible future.

Set in the small desert town of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the film takes place in the shadow of the world’s first commercial Spaceport. Subtly set in a near future when space travel has begun, the film follows five residents in the town.

Anchored in observational documentary footage, the film weaves together archival, virtual reality worlds, an improvised score by Bill Frisell, and a speculative premise based on the very real spaceport located just outside of town. These intertwine to create a lyrical meditation on progress, history, and how we navigate a sense of loss within ourselves and a changing world.