David Schickele

1968: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Bobby Hutton are among the recent dead. In Nigeria, the Civil War is entering its second year with no end in sight. In San Francisco, the adventures of Gabriel, a young Nigerian reflects tribal, personal, and racial frictions during the tumultuous sixties. Truth is stranger than fiction in Bushman, a rare sort of film portrait, part document, part imagined - poetic in its approach to real events.

Marty and Speed are middle-aged San Francisco cabbies who hack to support their fading dream of making it as professional actors. Perpetually down on their luck, the friends find escape and camaraderie among their fellow drivers, playing cards and telling stories of backseat conquests, until one night when a dreaded "Signal 7" (driver's call for help) comes over the wire.

A vigilante killer becomes a celebrity by gunning down Chicago mobsters, but nobody except a police detective and a local journalist seems eager to catch him.

Larry McAfee is paralyzed from the neck down following a motorcycle accident. He gradually loses the will to live, in the meantime befriending a talk radio DJ over the phone. The two meet each other and become friends, though Larry still wishes to end his life. The DJ reluctantly has a switch installed on Larry's life support that Larry can activate at any time (via his mouth) to end his life.

Frank Shelby is a motorcycle racer for whom age, personal tragedy and a love for the bottle have supplanted hopes of the big time. But when he meets Katherine, a widow whose young son, Danny, has leukemia, Frank forms an unexpected bond with them. And Danny's determination in the face of his illness gives Frank a newfound drive to win.

Nigeria became an independent country in 1960. In 1967 it was torn apart by civil war. Between these two events Nigeria enjoyed a kind of golden age, full of cultural ferment and cross-tribal fertilization. Every kid out of the village was writing the great Nigerian novel. A spirit of great hope prevailed through the land. Give Me A Riddle is about this golden age, seen through the eyes of ex-Peace Corps volunteer returning to his host country a couple of years after his Peace Corps service as a teacher at the University of Nigeria. The film follows Roger as he looks up his old student friends, travels with them to their homes, talks with them about their lives and the life of their country. Shot in 1966, the film is a time capsule of a Nigeria and the Peace Corps both in the rambunctious bloom of youth.

An improvisational comedian, working with The Committee improv group in San Francisco, struggles to be taken seriously.

1968: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Bobby Hutton are among the recent dead. In Nigeria, the Civil War is entering its second year with no end in sight. In San Francisco, the adventures of Gabriel, a young Nigerian reflects tribal, personal, and racial frictions during the tumultuous sixties. Truth is stranger than fiction in Bushman, a rare sort of film portrait, part document, part imagined - poetic in its approach to real events.

Dennis and Julie Parks left the eastern seaboard in the early 1960's, settling in the former mining boomtown of Tuscarora, Nevada, population twelve. They spent the next twenty-five years operating and expanding their pottery school, raising a family and running a studio. A mining company, motivated by high gold prices, began a large open pit gold mining operation just outside of town in 1989. Nevada, encouraging mining, writes its laws to favor that industry's interests over all others. The pit grew ever larger, and the town found its very existence threatened. Spurning buyout offers from the mining company, the Parkses and the other residents decided to stay and fight the near-certain destruction of Tuscarora. As the video chronicles the ongoing saga, we learn much about the Parkses, their school, Dennis' clay work and life in the wide open west.

1968: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Bobby Hutton are among the recent dead. In Nigeria, the Civil War is entering its second year with no end in sight. In San Francisco, the adventures of Gabriel, a young Nigerian reflects tribal, personal, and racial frictions during the tumultuous sixties. Truth is stranger than fiction in Bushman, a rare sort of film portrait, part document, part imagined - poetic in its approach to real events.

1968: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and Bobby Hutton are among the recent dead. In Nigeria, the Civil War is entering its second year with no end in sight. In San Francisco, the adventures of Gabriel, a young Nigerian reflects tribal, personal, and racial frictions during the tumultuous sixties. Truth is stranger than fiction in Bushman, a rare sort of film portrait, part document, part imagined - poetic in its approach to real events.