In August 2001 filmmaker Jane Williams was asked to shoot an international windsurfing competition on the Magdalen Islands, when athletes and journalists arrived from around the globe. The documentary follows the 14-day event, captured at a crucial moment in history: the two weeks before the world changed on 9/11. “14 Days” takes us on that journey, some 25 years after that fateful day.

“14 Days” is an intimate story of a sport and its adherents – professional and amateur. With pulse-pounding footage, it is an immersive film, dramatizing windsurfing’s raw edge it brings viewers closer to the story. Here are the lifestyle and the athletes dedicated to their extreme sport: the beats of competition – race meetings, constant assessment of conditions, the interviews, the entertainments, soirées. Until the final moment of that year’s video.

“14 Days” is a time capsule that tears a page from history. The boat exiting the harbor leaves pre-9/11 innocence and windsurfing becomes a prism through which we see the changes that bring us to today. From a bucolic, serene, pure competitive environment we witness the pivotal moment. When the Islands’ majestic ferry faces south into the Gulf of St. Lawrence to return the last of the sailors to handfuls of countries, after 14 days, on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the world changes forever.

In Threads: Kosal’s Reel, the moving life story of Kosal Nhean, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge genocide, is interwoven with that of her volunteer English teacher (Shanee), a Jewish American woman from the Boston area, who first met Kosal when the latter was a newly arrived refugee in San Francisco in 1986. Kosal later relocated to southern California, where she raised her four children as a single parent while working two jobs — one at a donut-shop counter, the other as a seamstress. Using vivid footage shot in Cambodia and California over the course of two and a half decades, and supported by a riveting historical backdrop of archival footage, the relationship of these two women, which began as pupil and teacher when both were in their early 20s, grows into a remarkable lifelong friendship. Resonances between Kosal’s experience and that of Shanee’s grandmother, Gittel, who fled pogroms in Ukraine during the early 1920s to find refuge in Hartford, Connecticut, make it clear that across differences of culture and context, it is possible to build a bridge and be moved by each other’s stories.

In a de facto challenge to implicit stereotypes about a woman who earns a low wage and speaks English with a Cambodian accent, the many layers of Kosal’s experience are gradually revealed: the ordeals she endured in the four-year genocide; her having saved several others’ lives through ingenuity and daring; her narrow escape, on foot, to a refugee camp, while carrying her newborn daughter in her arms; the hardships she and her family faced during their six years in a Thai refugee camp; and, in 1985, at long last, their arrival in the United States. Through shots of Kosal’s day-to-day life in California, viewers come to appreciate the enormous challenges she has overcome in providing an education and solid values for her 4 children in a low-income urban neighborhood in which pressures to join gangs, drop out of high school, and abuse drugs are ubiquitous. There are shots of and interviews with various members of Kosal’s family. These include her ex-husband, whom the Khmer Rouge had forced Kosal to marry on pain of death and who abandoned her and their 4 children shortly after their arrival in the US, and their eldest son, who served in the US army during the war in Iraq.

When Kosal’s father, a widely revered Buddhist monk, age 95, is on his deathbed, Kosal finally overcomes her fears of returning to Cambodia, and, after more than a 20-year absence, travels back to the Buddhist temple he heads, taking along her 17-year-old daughter, Saroeutrh Kayla, a vibrant, sensitive young woman who was born in the refugee camp and is now thoroughly Americanized, yet intensely eager to learn about her heritage. At the temple, Kosal reunites with her beloved, long-lost sister Kim Sat (a Buddhist nun and an extraordinary woman in her own right), and finally learns the fate of their four brothers.

Although in some ways specific to the Cambodian American experience, this film touches upon wider, archetypal themes that are relevant not only for refugees and immigrants, but for all human beings who seek wholeness, and who strive to preserve meaningful ties with family and friends, and to repair those connections that have been severed by historical and political events. The film’s title – along with the imagery and motif of sewing – evokes the effort to gather together the threads of one’s life, and to pick up the pieces one has lost along the way. The title also alludes to the continuing bonds between the dead and the living, and our ancestors and descendants.

The film is currently in post-production, and funding is urgently needed to cover the costs of bringing the final version to fruition. A pre-release screening is scheduled to take place on Thursday afternoon, November 13, 2025, at Yale University.

The Crew: 

Shanee Stepakoff: Director, Producer. Shanee holds a BA in English, summa cum laude, from the University of Maine, an MFA in creative writing from The New School, and is nearing completion of a PhD in English at the University of Rhode Island. She is the author of Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone (Bucknell University Press, 2021) and of over two dozen scholarly essays, articles, and chapters on literary and artistic responses to collective trauma. She has won awards for her writing in the genres of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Shanee also spent two years as a psychologist/trainer with CVT (Center for Victims of Torture), first in Guinea and later in Jordan. From 2005 to 2007 she was the psychologist for witnesses at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone. Additionally, she provided training for Cambodian NGOs responsible for the provision of psychosocial support for witnesses in the Khmer Rouge tribunal. Shanee’s vision for Threads: Kosal’s Reel began crystallizing in early 1986, shortly after she graduated from college in Worcester, Massachusetts and moved to San Francisco, where she volunteered as an English-as-a-second language teacher for Cambodian refugee women and first encountered the film’s subject, Kosal Nhean. 

Tiffany Cunningham: Co-Producer, Editor. BA, Yale University, 1989. Dr. Cunningham (a.k.a. Tiff) worked as an editorial assistant, historical researcher, production assistant and audio-lineup assistant for the award-winning feature-length documentary, A Double Life. For Threads: Kosal’s Reel, Tiff has been a key decision-maker re. which visual, audio, interview, and archival material to include, and has drawn on her extensive experience as a genealogical researcher to integrate themes of ancestry and family history (both Kosal’s and Shanee’s) into the story.

Alrick Brown: Associate Director, Associate Producer, Lead Cinematographer, Artistic Advisor. BA and M.Ed., Rutgers; MFA in Filmmaking, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Mr. Brown is a tenured Associate Professor of Undergraduate Film and Television at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is a writer and director whose films have screened in over thirty film festivals and at Lincoln Center, and have won major honors and prizes, including the Sundance World Cinema Audience Award for his first feature film, Kinyarwanda. His cinematic reach also includes credits on the small screen as director, producer and writer on a wide variety of award-winning projects.

Catherine Masud: Consulting Producer, Editorial Consultant. BA, Brown University, MFA in Film, Vermont College of Fine Arts. Catherine is an award-winning filmmaker and educator, with over 30 years of production experience in documentary and fiction films. As a producer/director/writer/editor, her work has won major awards in Cannes and other international festivals and competed in the Oscars. Her most recent feature-length documentary (A Double Life, 2023) won the Audience Favorite Award at the Mill Valley Film Festival. 

Sophy Theam: Lead Khmer-English Translator, BA, Boston College. Ms. Theam arrived in the United States in 1984 as a child refugee from Cambodia, and grew up in Connecticut. She has worked for the Cambodian Mutual Assistance Association of Greater Lowell; the Khmer Youth and Family Center of Lynn, Massachusetts; Southeast Asian Bilingual Advocates; and several other agencies serving the Cambodian American community as a Khmer-English translator and in other capacities. Ms. Theam has been the lead translator for Threads: Kosal’s Reel for the past twenty years, and has checked and refined the work of the other four translators.

Lawrence ‘Apu’ Rosario: Cinematographer for Cambodia 2001 shoot. Bachelor of Arts, Notre Dame College, Dhaka, MFA in Motion Picture Photography, Film and Television Institute of India, Pune. Mr. Rosario is a Bangladeshi cinematographer with extensive credits across more than three decades. He received the BACHSAS Award and the National Film Award for Best Cinematographer in 2011 (both for Amar Bondhu Rashed) and the FFTG Award for Best Cinematographer in 2020 (We).

Micah Schaffer: Co-Cinematographer, Sound Recordist. BA Stanford University, MFA, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Micah’s first feature documentary, Death of Two Sons, was awarded the HBO “Life Through Your Lens” Emerging Documentary Filmmaker Award. Micah was the cinematographer on “Shadows of a Leader: Qaddafi’s Female Bodyguards”, an official selection at the Montreal World Film Festival. He was the co-producer for “Iron Ladies of Liberia”, a PBS/BBC documentary about Africa’s first female president. 

Baby Bird follows Helen, an American-born Chinese nanny working for a Chinese family, who has recently suffered the loss of her mother. Her life revolves around her young ward, Xiao Shao, a lonely boy and the only bright spot in her life, whose habit of running away from school she enables behind his mother’s back.

One day, Helen finds a collection of old Chinese workbooks in her late mother’s things, showing how Helen had drawn away from learning Mandarin as a child. Helen realizes that the only memento of her that her mother had chosen to keep was the evidence of her failing to be fluent in her mother tongue, leading her to become consumed by the idea that her mother had secretly resented her.

Hurt and confused, Helen begins to lose sight of the person her mother truly was and, in her memories, starts to see her as a colder, crueller—and, eventually, more violent—version of herself. At the same time, her position within the household and in the eyes of Xiao Shao’s mother grows tenuous, putting her relationship with Xiao Shao at risk.

Baby Bird’s central ethos is to explore second-generation immigrant experiences through horror and to break from the expectation that stories about Asian diaspora identity cannot also be genre pieces. It is a film that balks against rationalization and puts us face-to-face with the moments where we spiral and lose control of how we see the people around us. When understood, language creates community and connection; when it’s not, it’s a form of brutal, painful alienation. And what better way to show brutality than through blood and gore?

This documentary is a profoundly moving and relatable exploration of the life journey of Major General Dr. Lakhvinder Singh Vohra (retired), a globally renowned oncologist. Throughout his career, he saved countless lives, yet he was unable to save those dearest to him. His world shatters when his wife is diagnosed with cancer, leading to a personal breakdown. However, he ultimately finds the strength to rebuild his life and embarks on a new path as a singer.

Dr. Vohra’s life story vividly illustrates the unwavering resilience of the human spirit, showcasing its capacity to heal and flourish, even in the most formidable trials. It serves as an inspiration for anyone facing their own challenges, reaffirming the idea that by remaining true to their beliefs, they can discover a path to happiness and fulfillment. “Harmony of Healing” delves deeply into the spirit of “chardi kala.”

Your support can make a world of difference.

Let’s make “Harmony of Healing” a shared endeavor. Together, we can uplift spirits, encourage resilience, and inspire change. Join us on this journey today, and let’s create a brighter, more harmonious world, one full of healing and happiness.

STORY

Major Event: The film opens with a major event, a music contest specially organized for doctors from around the world. Among the talented participants is Dr. Vohra, who reveals that he is one of the finalists selected from a pool of 7,000 doctors.

Dr. Vohra’s Backstory: Through a series of flashbacks, we delve into Dr. Vohra’s backstory, understanding how he became an Army doctor and chose to specialize in oncology after his mother’s tragic battle with cancer. Despite his efforts, he couldn’t save his father-in-law and his brother from the same illness, further driving his dedication to his profession.

Years of Dedication: The narrative explores the subsequent years where Dr. Vohra devotes himself wholeheartedly to his mission of saving lives, working tirelessly in the medical field. Following his retirement from the army, he joins a Guru Nanak Dev Hospital at Tarn Taran Sahib that provides free cancer treatment to patients and later becomes a professor of surgery, imparting his knowledge to aspiring doctors.

Personal tragedy: Dr. Vohra’s wife falls ill during her visit to their son. A routine checkup reveals an advanced stage of cancer, leaving no hope for treatment. This devastating diagnosis shakes Dr. Vohra to his core, leading him to return to Jalandhar to care for his ailing wife.

A New Chapter: After his wife’s passing, Dr. Vohra honors his commitment to the college but vows to never practice surgery again, avoiding the operating theater and intensive care units. Seeking solace and a fresh start, he discovers his talent and passion for music.

Onstage Transformation: The film culminates in a pivotal moment where Dr. Vohra takes the stage in front of a large audience, participating in the music contest. Though he may not win the competition, his heartfelt performance resonates deeply with the audience, winning their hearts.

Spreading Happiness: Dr. Vohra embraces a new purpose in life, dedicating himself to singing and traveling. While occasionally offering advice to friends and family over the phone, he focuses on spreading the message of happiness through his music, finding fulfillment in touching the lives of others.

Timeline

Research: Completed 

First phase of shooting: Completed 

Second phase of shooting: Completed

Third phase of shooting: Completed

Round 1 Editing: Completed

Post Production: Oct – March 2025

Release: May 2025

The Curious Incident of Everett Wilder is the story of a lonely boy who encounters a jackalope at his birthday party in 1952. Following this curious incident, Everett becomes obsessed with catching the uncatchable horned rabbit. With the help of the enigmatic Lucy Hayworth, the secret of the jackalope will be revealed.

We’ve already shot the film, but need your support and teamwork to finish the project by financing post production [specifically the creation of the jackalope]. Animation is a complex and time consuming process, and in order for the visual effects to be the best that they can be, we will need your help. Animation for the jackalope will cost $20,000. The primary goal of this effort is to fund the jackalope animation. We have an animatable jackalope model and a company selected to bring these shots to life. We also have a sound mix that is complete (apart from the jackalope sounds), and a colorist who is ready to go once the film is complete. 

Budget Breakdown:

Animation: $20,000

Color: $1,500

This film shines a light on the trailblazing role of women war artists, on front lines round the world, championing the female perspective on conflict through art, asking:  when it’s life or death, what do women see that men don’t?  
 
Women war artists break the taboo, punching through to create their unique record alongside the daily newsfeed. But in countries where journalism is banned, it’s art that shows us the truth. Where violence against women and rape are used as weapons of war, women are silenced and bear the brunt of displacement, civilians and families pay the price. Multi-award-winning film director Margy Kinmonth shows how war is a catalyst to bring out artists’ most creative work. In the face of destruction they inspire, provoke, imagine, memorialise and heal, seek to disarm – tell the truth to power.  Traditionally a male domain, war art by women has been largely invisible. Until now…
 
Today wars continue to rage globally. In this film, Kinmonth champions contemporary female artists – witnesses and survivors of international conflict, who create art and tell their unique stories.  Womens’ war art is also uncovered from attics and archives, revealing an artistic legacy previously hidden from view.  An entirely female cast and contributors makes this film a unique undertaking – telling vital truths in traumatic times. 
 
Filmed in the USA, United Kingdom, Ukraine, Sudan, Austria, Belgium and Italy, contributing artists include Shirin Neshat, Dame Rachel Whiteread, Maya Lin, Nina Berman, Marcelle Hanselaar, Cornelia Parker and Lee Miller.
 

CURA is a work of ritual cinema that redefines climate storytelling through an immersive, sensory experience co-created with Indigenous guardians of the Amazon. This isn’t a film you watch—it’s a ceremony you enter. Audiences recline in a shared, floating hammock beneath a suspended screen, wrapped in a 12-channel rainforest soundscape. Spatial audio and felt vibration pulse through the body—until the forest’s heartbeat feels like your own.

Born from deep collaboration with the Nomanawa Clan of the Noke Koi (Brazil) and the Cofán of Putumayo (Colombia), CURA bypasses language and data to speak to the nervous system—awakening embodied memory and ecological kinship. Through vibration, imagery, sound, and ceremony, it reconnects body and forest as one living system.
 
At a time when climate discourse can paralyze with despair, CURA offers something vital: a felt experience rooted in Indigenous wisdom—a re-membering that shows healing ourselves and healing Earth are not separate journeys, but one sacred path.
 
Thank you for making a tax-deductible donation to support this work.
 
For more information, please visit our website

The New Tibet is a Chilean documentary about the movement of the Earth’s energy center from the Himalayas to the Chilean desert.

When reviewing the sacred knowledge of ancient civilizations, we find that, in almost all of them, there is talk of marked periods that divide time into eras of approximately 13,000 thousand years. Each of these eras concludes with the alignment of the equinoxes: which, as we know today, are nothing more than the movements of the axis of our planet.

The beginning of a new era began precisely in 2012, in which it is thought that Kundalini energy, which was previously found in Tibet, has moved from the Himalayas to the Andes Mountains, settling mainly in the Chilean desert.

This is a cultural project, which offers a scientific view based on seismic movements in the Pacific Ring of Fire; but it also presents images and testimonies of communities surrounding the Chilean desert; who recognize that they have experienced a process of energy transformation.

Our project takes a route of the history of Tibet as a spiritual center of humanity and the hypothesis of the displacement of its energy to the Chilean desert.

“The New Tibet” is a documentary that invites us to reflect on our beliefs, the concept we have of spirituality and how it impacts our worldview and consciousness.

For more information, please visit www.thenewtibet.com

THE HARVEST, an NYU Tisch thesis short film written and directed by Macdaleine St.Remy, stars Anissa Felix (SURVIVAL OF THE THICKEST, DETROIT) and Jahmone Duhaney (BLACK CAKE).

The film follows Vea and Lloyd, a Jamaican couple in their late thirties working as migrant laborers at an apple orchard, who confront a surprising fertility diagnosis that tests their relationship and their hopes for a future family.

With this film, I explore the emotional and financial strain that infertility can have on a couple desperate to have a child that is biologically their own.

The project is a recipient of the Cary Fukunaga Production Fund and was filmed in September 2024 in New York. Macdaleine St. Remy who was most recently a Princess Grace Foundation Honorarium recipient in Film and a Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellow. The film is currently in post-production with expected completion by April 2025. 

The Ask & What’s Next

We successfully completed filming this fall, and we are now looking to our communities to help us finish the film. We’re looking to raise $10,000 through tax-deductible donations.

A “Special Thanks” credit is available for donations of $500+, a logo in the credits for $2,000+, and Associate Producer credit for donations of $5,000+.

Contributions will help fund:

In short, your tax-deductible donation will help remove paywalls that prevent the film from being completed.

Help bring the finished project to screens!

The Team

Macdaleine St.Remy I Writer, Director

Writer and director Macdaleine St. Remy is a first-generation Haitian-American writer and director whose work captures the nuanced, extraordinary experiences of ordinary Black life. Her characters often seek freedom from the systems and structures that confine them. In 2023, Macdaleine was a Princess Grace Foundation Film Honorarium and a Gotham Marcie Bloom Fellow. She was also a 2024 finalist for the NYU Sloan Feature Award. Currently completing her MFA in Film at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Macdaleine holds a Bachelor of Science from MIT and a Master of Science in Energy and Processes from ÉNSPM in France. Before transitioning to filmmaking, she worked as a program manager in hardware engineering at Apple and Square from 2013 to 2020. Her technical background informs the scientific themes that intersect her characters’ lives.

Kai Torres I Producer

Producer Kai Torres is a Puerto Rican-American filmmaker whose work focuses on amplifying underrepresented voices and celebrating resilience. An MFA graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts and recipient of the Willard T.C. Johnson Fellowship, Torres holds a Bachelor’s in Media Studies from the University of Virginia. After her MFA, she worked as an associate producer on the documentary Who’s Next, directed by Emmy Award-winner Nancy Charney, which further fueled her commitment to storytelling as a platform for overlooked narratives. With films like Pancakes (2019), Torres highlights the struggles and determination of those facing challenging circumstances, crafting stories that celebrate persistence and resilience.

 

Yoko Kohmoto I Producer

Yoko Kohmoto (she/her) is a producer-writer from Okayama, Japan currently based in NYC. Her producing work has been showcased at Tribeca Film Festival, Vimeo Staff Pick, Frameline, American Black Film Festival, and CAAMFest, among others. Her priorities in her work are to build community, ensure safety, and uplift marginalized voices.She holds an MFA from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s from Northwestern University and currently works as an educational consultant for The Gotham Film & Media Institute.

Eat Surf Love is a narrative short film that celebrates the beautiful awkwardness of human encounters. It’s a story about the resiliency we discover after we failed to catch the wave, didn’t get the job, or had zero return on a romantic investment. The film starts and ends with an audio podcast, and we view, in almost documentary fashion, two disparate people stumbling through a first conversation, and how, in revealing their vulnerabilities and aspirations, they change themselves and each other. Set in San Francisco, it’s also a love-hate letter to this paradoxical place, nudged between a bay and an ocean, where hearts have been left, lost, and also found.

WHAT WE NEED

Eat Surf Love is a low budget independent labor of love. We shot our film on our phones!  The film is now in post production. We are seeking finishing and marketing funds, to achieve the project’s potential.

FILMMAKERS AND PRODUCTION TEAM

Filmmaker Nada Djordjevich is an award-winning writer and social impact consultant, originally from the Bay Area, with degrees from Harvard and Berkeley. Her first short, California Pie (2022), has screened throughout the US and received multiple awards including two for “best animated film.”

Producer and First Assistant Camera, Mayra Padilla is a creative entrepreneur and communications professional, with proven results in brand management, social marketing, and event planning. A multilingual writer and storyteller, the documentary “To Sandy, from Sri Lanka “ was her first film.

CAST

Laura Yumi Snell  is a Japanese-American actress, pianist, singer, and co-founder of SoHo Shakespeare Company. Her works include Murakami Music (Symphony Space and US tour), Avenue Q (international tour), Richard III (SoHo Shakes), and the films “Carsick,” “Quarantine Horror Story”, and “Keiko’s Hands.”

Tyler Ritter was born in Los Angeles and after spending seven years abroad decided to move back to the (sometimes) sunny state. His most notable TV credits include The McCarthy’s, “Arrow,” “NCIS,” “Merry Happy Whatever,” “Homecoming,” and “Painkiller.”

Molly Wood is a longtime journalist and podcaster. She is the founder of Molly Wood Media, where she writes and podcasts about solutions to the climate crisis, advises companies on their climate messaging, and invests in climate tech companies. Eat Surf Love is her first film.

WHY SUPPORT US

HOW YOUR SUPPORT HELPS
Funding will enable high quality audio, music, sound and color-correction, along with closed-captions and subtitles to increase accessibility to diverse audiences. Funds will support festival entries and marketing materials (a trailer, poster, social media and other graphics) to create and sustain engagement. Your support for the emerging talent associated with this film helps create a foundation for new voices and films. The majority of our cast and crew are from groups underrepresented in films, and, for 30% of our team, this was their very first film.

Eat Surf Love is a micro-budget production, with a SAG-AFTRA agreement generated in November 2022. “Micros” are not subject to the strike, and if this policy changes, we will make any necessary adjustments or agreements. We are an 100% independently financed, independently produced short film with no connection to the AMPTP. Supporting our film indicates your support for the growth of independent film production and studios.

FOR MORE INFORMATION 

For full listing of our cast and crew, see our website: eatsurfloveproductions.com

If you’d like merchandise, such as our Eat Surf Love fleece jacket, or mugs, send us an email.

To contact us directly – send an email to eatsurflovefilm@gmail.com

 

We are grateful for the generous support of our sponsors:

National Endowments for the Arts
Massachusetts Cultural Council
Lowel Cultural Council
Cabot Family Charitable Trust
Liberty Mutual Foundation
City of Boston Arts and Culture
Melrose Cultural Council
Watertown Community Foundation
Lynn Cultural Council