Recent Episodes
Kurdish Film Festival | Frame By Frame
Founded in 2017, the New York Kurdish Film Festival (NYKFF) celebrates the power of Kurdish cinema and storytelling, creating a space for filmmakers to share stories of resilience, identity, memory, and cultural survival. Kurdish filmmakers have used cinema to preserve history, protect cultural memory, and share stories of resilience with the world.
NYKFF provides a platform for Kurdish voices, bringing these stories to audiences and ensuring they continue to be seen, heard, and remembered. Now, you can watch a special selection of films from the festival and meet the filmmakers behind them in this exclusive showcase on CUNY TV.
Catch the full showcase on CUNY TV and right here on YouTube from July 3–Aug 10.
Featured films include — Ezda, The Address, Women’s Village (JinWar), Against Forgetting, and The Hole in the Wall (Biraxane)
Chapters
00:00 Meet the Filmmakers
02:22 A Genocide Survivor's Story: Telling the Truth with Care
07:03 Mediha | Captured by ISIS, Saved by a Camera
11:25 How Do We Preserve Culture? Resistance Under Political Occupation
18:50 NYKFF: Home for Kurdish Cinema
19:57 A Home Away from Home: Bringing Kurds Together Through Film
23:33 What's Next?
Meet the Guests
Xeyal Qertel, founder and president of the New York Kurdish Cultural Center (NYKCC) and director of the annual New York Kurdish Film Festival (NYKFF), also serves as the U.S. representative for the Rojava Film Commune. She leads conversations exploring how cinema reflects resilience, memory, and cultural survival.
Halime Akturk is a Kurdish-Canadian filmmaker and producer from Bakur, North of Kurdistan. Her award-winning work explores immigration, displacement, gender, and human rights, using storytelling to drive cross-cultural dialogue and social change. Halime is the director of the documentary Ezda.
Mediha Alhamad is a Yazidi activist and survivor from Sinjar. She is one of the thousands of Yazidi women kidnapped and enslaved by ISIS during the 2014 Yazidi genocide. Mediha and her remarkable story are also featured in the film Mediha.
Azad Azizyan is a Kurdish-American documentary filmmaker and editor from Rojhelat, East of Kurdistan. In his works, Azad pushes the formal boundaries of the documentary genre and experiments with alternative production methods to make filmmaking more inclusive and collaborative. Azad is the director of Against Forgetting.
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"Frame by Frame: NYC Filmmakers in Focus" brings the city’s filmmakers front and center, celebrating creativity and unique storytelling. Discover remarkable films, engage with the creators, and explore the energy of New York City’s film world.
Watch more Frame by Frame at https://tv.cuny.edu/homepage/show/framebyframe/
Subscribe to the CUNY TV channel: https://bit.ly/2GmGb13
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CUNY Queer Portraits | Frame By Frame
Celebrate Pride Month with CUNY Queer Portraits on Frame by Frame, a vibrant showcase of films by queer filmmakers across CUNY campuses envisioned by Edward Miller at the College of Staten Island, highlighting powerful stories and diverse perspectives from faculty, graduate students, and alumni.
Reflecting the diversity of CUNY itself, these films span a wide range of backgrounds, identities, and creative approaches, mirroring the richness of its campuses. This showcase brings together queer artists and activists whose work reflects the creativity and lived experiences of queer communities.
🎬Catch the full showcase on CUNY TV and right here on YouTube from June 5–July 2.
Featured films include — In & Out, Cutting Room Floor #1, Make a Declaration, Voces Transcendentes, Candy’s Sun, Las Olas, NY Counterpoint, In The Body, I Want to Leave a Legacy, and The Animal in You.
Chapters
00:00 Meet the Filmmakers: Queer Voices Across CUNY
01:40 In the Body | Experimental Documentary, Family Healing & Intergenerational Trauma
07:22 In & Out | Coming Out Stories: Identity, Vulnerability & Queer Experience on Camera
13:44 The Animal in You | Mentorship, Music & Artistic Legacy
18:01 — Capturing Legacy, End-of-Life Documentary & Preserving Personal Histories
22:09 — What is CUNY Queer Portraits?
22:54 — What’s Next
👥 Meet the Guests
We’re thrilled to have this conversation on queer storytelling led by Alexandra Juhasz, a filmmaker, scholar, Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, and video activist whose work has helped shape queer media studies and independent filmmaking. Best known for her work on The Watermelon Woman, a landmark of Black queer cinema and the first feature film written and directed by a Black lesbian, Juhasz joins us today to lead a conversation on queer storytelling and share a deeply personal film of her own. I Want to Leave a Legacy, created with her late friend Juanita Mohammed Szczepanski, is a moving testament to friendship, AIDS-era activism, and the power of community memory.
Samantha Alvarez is an award-winning filmmaker and painter, a two-time graduate of City College of New York, and now a two-time Frame by Frame filmmaker. An alum of the Bronx Documentary Center Films Fellowship, NBCU Academy Fellowship, and Third World Newsreel Workshop, her experimental documentary In The Body earned six awards, including the 2022 Outstanding Female Content Creator Award from New York Women in Film & Television. We're excited to welcome Samantha back to Frame by Frame and learn more about her creative journey and approach to filmmaking.
Eden Martinez is a Nuyorican queer filmmaker whose work centers women, LGBTQ+ and POC folx through a jubilant and visually harmonious lens. Exploring themes of identity and intersectionality, Eden creates films that celebrate the richness and complexity of underrepresented experiences. Eden is the director of In & Out.
Mariano Wainsztein is a filmmaker, composer, and educator whose work operates at the intersection of documentary film, music education, and social practice. He teaches Film and Media Studies at Hunter College and LaGuardia Community College. Mariano is the director of The Animal in You.
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"Frame by Frame: NYC Filmmakers in Focus" brings the city’s filmmakers front and center, celebrating creativity and unique storytelling. Discover remarkable films, engage with the creators, and explore the energy of New York City’s film world.
Watch more Frame by Frame at https://tv.cuny.edu/homepage/show/framebyframe/
Subscribe to the CUNY TV channel: https://bit.ly/2GmGb13
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College of Staten Island | CUNY TV Presents
Filmmakers John Rizzo, Zaenob Aremu-Bashir, and Stacey Petrov join Mitchell Lovell, director of the College of Staten Island Film Festival, in the CUNY TV studio to share insights about their films and the creative journeys behind them. These filmmakers represent just a few of the talented alumni connected through the College of Staten Island Film Festival, which celebrates student work, emerging media, and experimental filmmaking while fostering collaboration across the tight-knit CSI filmmaking community.
Join us after the conversation for a unique collection of films, including film noir, emotionally driven stories, tales of grief, and documentaries that capture the voice of Staten Island.
Featured Films include: It's Such a Good Day For A Festival, WSIA: 40 Years, Solicitors!, The Class of 2020, Ramyun & Tangerines, The Box, and Waiting Room.
Check out the full schedule on our website, or follow us on Instagram @cunytvpresents for the latest updates.
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“CUNY TV Presents” … is our new film forum that focuses on New York City filmmakers and their exceptional cinematic work throughout the five boroughs. In partnership with local film festivals and CUNY schools, we will present short and feature-length films and documentaries, highlighting the filmmakers’ diverse experiences.
Watch more CUNY TV Presents at https://tv.cuny.edu/show/cunytvpresents/
Subscribe to the CUNY TV channel: https://bit.ly/2GmGb13
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About This Show
“Frame by Frame: NYC Filmmakers in Focus” brings the city’s filmmakers front and center, celebrating creativity and unique storytelling. Discover remarkable films, engage with the creators, and explore the energy of New York City’s film world.
Regular Air Times
Friday, Saturday & Sunday 2pm
Organizational support for Frame by Frame is provided, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts.


