Dir: Michael Johnson

Hamlet can be redone. Whether it can be improved upon remains to be seen. This document of the collaboration between a writer-and-actor team of brothers and a porn website producer to update Hamlet won't make you care what happens to the play, as long as you get to watch them continue in making the changes as they see fit. Michael Johnson of North Easton, MA brings this not-so-bright trio to the screen—for the last time?

Dir: Ellie Lee

One of ten films commissioned by the 2002 Seattle One Reel Film Festival to create short videos about one theme: Who is Uncle Sam?, Ellie Lee has created a widely moving and deceptively simple short piece by dramatically altering and filtering visuals from news broadcasts. Ellie's animated documentary, Repetition Compulsion, premiered in the 1998 Berlin Film Festival and was nominated for a 1998 national Emmy Award. Her fictional short, Dog Days, won the Grand Jury Award at the 2000 Hamptons Film Festival; both can currently be seen on the IFC.

Dir: Jeff Stern

Many questions are raised as we follow 22 characters, including George W. Bush and Jesus, who happen to have stopped on the same stretch of Kansas highway on the same summer afternoon. Jeff Stern's thoughtful film explores the unique potential for people to meet, interact, eat chicken, or play music together in America's public spaces. We have Jeff's failure to place on the high school basketball team to thank for his interest and dedication to filmmaking.

Dir: Douglas Martin

A humdrum afternoon at the laundromat has the mood flip-flopped for our hero by the swagger of a co-cleaner doing her laundry in a hurry. Co-washing becomes co-folding, and it appears that our story may end that simply. Alas, a pesky garment gives an opportunity for another chance and a selfless act makes for another needed trip to the laundromat. Priceless life lessons from a pesky garment . . . the fourth short film from Emerson alumnus Doug Martin.

Dir: Luke Jaeger

The second in a series of "antique music videos," featuring a combination of live action, stop motion, and a 15-foot high plywood puppet suspended from a highway overpass. Through the balance of place and sound, Old Joe draws a thoughtful parallel between neglected industrial spaces and the musical treasures which the ever-changing machineries of cultural production have left in obscurity. Luke Jaeger teaches animation at the Massachusetts College of Art and resides in Western Mass.

Dir: Robert Todd

Abstract imagery creates this fantasy which takes its cue from reliquary objects left to rot along the Brooklyn Promenade, overlooking the site of the former World Trade Center towers. The film proposes visual similes between the impersonal architecture and the language of mass production that define America's most pervasive global export: a living aesthetic culture of utility. A strong personally observed piece by Robert Todd, who has been exhibiting paintings and films while teaching and editing in the Boston area since 1985.

Dir: Robert Todd

Man's best friend turns out to be a neighborly nightmare. Sparky the WonderHound: he's the All-American woofer spreading his brand of fur-friendly cheer throughout the land. Views of isolation in the American neighborhood, brought to you by Robert Todd.