Forever Professor

30 minutes

When a filmmaker goes home to interview an old professor, he finds a very different man from the one he remembered. The suave, handsome, chain-smoking teacher whose lectures captivated students is now obsessed with time and order. He has taught psychology at the same college for 48 years, 6 months, and 3 days. His commute to work takes 17 minutes; he has determined the ideal time to leave his house is 8.13 AM. He owns over 1,006 talking clocks, the largest collection in the world, certified by Guinness. He also holds the Guinness record for longest uninterrupted series of figure eights on a personal transporter, in under 2 minutes. Told in interviews, animation, and re-enactments, “Forever Professor” is both a portrait of a brilliant eccentric and a film about time, in all its glory and banality.

Silo Boy

11.5 minutes

In 1961, the U.S. government began construction on its latest series of nuclear missile silos, the Atlas-F. Each base housed a missile topped with a three-megaton warhead, along with an underground command center reinforced with almost 600 tons of steel, where a crew of five stood ready at all times if the order to launch came through. Half a century later, most of these Atlas-F silos now lie abandoned. A few, however, have been bought by private individuals. One of these silo owners is Alexander Michael, an Australian designer who has converted a missile base near Plattsburgh, New York into a stylish summer home and homage to atomic-era design. Silo Boy tells the story of a visit to this strangest of country houses, where your bedroom sits only a few yards away from the massive hole in the ground that used to hold a nuclear missile. The visitor is a New York writer given to lugubrious meditations on global apocalypse, who finds his visit to be unexpectedly invigorating. A mixture of documentary and fantasy, Silo Boy explores the intersection between personal eccentricity and global thermonuclear war.