World Premiere at 2024 Tribeca Film Festival

Run time: 76 minutes

Sales inquiries: annie@rocofilms.com

In a universe that erases its tracks, humans are hellbent on leaving a trace.

World Premiere at 2023 SXSW Film Festival.

93min

Executive Producers:

Greg Boustead

Jess Harrop

Robyn Metcalfe

Werner Herzog

[ coming in 2020 ]

A lyrical and artful portrait of seafolk and seafood producers along the coast of Maine.

Credits

Directed & produced by Ian Cheney

Executive Producer Robyn Metcalfe 

Official Selection, 2020 Tribeca Film Festival

PICTURE A SCIENTIST chronicles the groundswell of researchers who are writing a new chapter for women scientists. Biologist Nancy Hopkins, chemist Raychelle Burks, and geologist Jane Willenbring lead viewers on a journey deep into their own experiences in the sciences, ranging from brutal harassment to years of subtle slights. Along the way, from cramped laboratories to spectacular field stations, we encounter scientific luminaries - including social scientists, neuroscientists, and psychologists - who provide new perspectives on how to make science itself more diverse, equitable, and open to all.

www.pictureascientist.com

Credits

An Uprising LLC Production

Directed by Ian Cheney & Sharon Shattuck

Produced by Manette Pottle, Ian Cheney, Sharon Shattuck

Edited by Natasha Bedu

Executive Producer Amy Brand

What happens when you encounter a piece of land you have never seen before; what do you see, think, and feel? This film explores the human relationship to the natural world through an experimental structure: one-by-one, a series of scientists, hunters, paragliders, artists, and naturalists are brought to a small patch of field and forest in midcoast Maine, and left to wander freely. Filmed in all four seasons and featuring naturalist Bernd Heinrich, glaciologist Kirsty Tinto, tracker Dorcas Miller and others, this film is a celebration of place, an exploration of seeing, and a new approach to depicting science on screen.

68min, color, 2.39, Stereo

Premiered at the 2019 DC Environmental Film Festival

Credits

Directed, produced, edited & filmed by Ian Cheney

How to See the Film

Coming soon!

Formerly titled “Picture Character,” this film explores the complex, conflict-prone, and often hilarious world of the designers, lovers, and arbiters of emoji, our world’s newest pictorial language.

86min, color, 16:9, 5.1

Premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival

Credits

Directed by Martha Shane & Ian Cheney

Produced by Ian Cheney, Jenny 8. Lee, Martha Shane

An Emojigeddon LLC Production

How to See the Film

Currently in film festivals.

Visit www.picturecharacter.com for more info.

Past Screenings

Tribeca Film Festival, World Premiere (2019)

Hot Docs International Film Festival, International Premiere (2019)

AFI Docs Film Festival

The Most Unknown is an epic documentary film that sends nine scientists to extraordinary parts of the world to uncover unexpected answers to some of humanity’s biggest questions. What emerges is a deeply human trip to the foundations of discovery and a powerful reminder that the unanswered questions are the most crucial ones to pose.

90min, color, 2.39, 5.1

Premiered at CPH:DOX in 2018

Credits

Directed & Produced by Ian Cheney

Executive Producers Thobey Campion, Derek Mead, Greg Boustead

Supervising Producer Elliot Kirschner

Advisor Werner Herzog

Directors of Photography Emily Topper & Michael James Murray

Edited by Ian Cheney & Daniel Quintanilla

Animation by MK12

Original Music by Simon Beins & Ben Fries

A VICE Media Production

How to See the Film

Watch worldwide on Netflix

Visit The Most Unknown for more

In a yearlong series of short films for Undark (https://undark.org), Ian Cheney turned his lens on climate change and the scale of the challenge facing humanity — from the scientific and technical to the emotional, psychological, and political. Cheney doesn't pretend to offer answers or specific solutions; he only seeks to shine a light into the fog, to look for shapes and patterns, and ultimately to explore the many reasons why the problem of climate change is so difficult for humanity to even fathom, much less come together to solve.

How to See the Film

https://undark.org/

A short film that explores the myth of the ocean “garbage patches” and chronicles the fog of microplastics collecting in marine gyres.

25min, color, 16:9, Stereo

Premiered at the 2016 Camden International Film Festival

Credits

Directed by Ian Cheney

Original Music by Jack Johnson & Simon Beins

A Brushfire Films Production

Watch online

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bluespace

$2.99 Rent / $9.99 Buy

Synopsis

A feature documentary about the terraforming of Mars and the waterways of New York City.

73min, color, 16:9, 5.1

Premiered at the 2015 DOC NYC Film Festival

Credits

Directed by Ian Cheney

Original Music by Simon Beins and Ben Fries

From Wicked Delicate Films and Jennifer 8 Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, comes a feature-length documentary about America's most popular Chinese-American food: General Tso's chicken.

THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO launches viewers on a quest - from small town takeout restaurants to the hometown of Chinese military mastermind Zuo Zongtang - to understand the origins of this ubiquitous, spicy red chicken dish, and to explore the history of Chinese-American food from its 19th century roots through the modern day.

71min, color, 16:9, 5.1

Premiered at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival

Credits

Directed by Ian Cheney

Produced by Jennifer 8. Lee & Amanda Murray

An IFC Sundance Selects Release

Featuring an experiment in which Apollo astronauts left mirror arrays on the moon to study its relation to the earth, this animated short science film offers a cosmic look at the myth of Narcissus.

Credits

Created by Sharon Shattuck and Ian Cheney

How to See the Film

Onassis USA https://onassisusa.org/multimedia/narcissus-space-a-short-film-moon-mirrors

Watch online:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/themelungeons

$1.99 Rent / $5.99 Buy

Watch online:

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/worldfair

$1.99 Rent / $5.99 Buy

In 1939, on the heels of the Great Depression, millions of people traveled to Queens, New York, to catch a fleeting glimpse of a better future. WORLD FAIR is a short, impressionistic documentary that weaves together the memories of former fairgoers with color Kodachrome footage, transporting viewers to the futuristic and hopeful realm of the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

Credits

Directed by Amanda Murray

Filmed by Ian Cheney

Edited by Frederick Shanahan

How to See the Film

Stream for free at Aeon

Watch online

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thecitydark

$2.99 rent / $9.99 buy

Synopsis

THE CITY DARK chronicles the disappearance of darkness. When filmmaker Ian Cheney moves to New York City and discovers skies almost completely devoid of stars, a simple question – what do we lose, when we lose the night? – spawns a journey to America’s brightest and darkest corners. Astronomers, cancer researchers, ecologists and philosophers provide glimpses of what is lost in the glare of city lights. Blending a humorous, searching tone with poetic footage of the night sky, what unravels is an introduction to the science of the dark, and an exploration of the human relationship to the stars.

Credits

Directed & Produced by Ian Cheney

Co-Produced by Tamara Rosenberg, Julia Marchesi, & Colin Cheney

Music by Simon Beins & Ben Fries

Past Screenings

Premiered at the 2011 South by Southwest Film Festival

Released by PBS’ POV in 2012 & Argot Films and Bullfrog Films in 2011

TRUCK FARM is a whimsical, musically-narrated, documentary film about urban agriculture. Filmmaker Ian Cheney planted a 1/1000th-acre farm in the back of his 1986 Dodge pick-up-truck in the spring of 2009, after coming to New York City and lacking any other place to grow food. Using green-roof materials, heirloom seeds, and a healthy dose of optimism, Ian created a mobile community farm that produced a wide range of vegetables and led to the discovery and exploration of other creative, community-based agriculture efforts all over the city.

What happens when you’re asked to build the city of tomorrow… today? Set on the storied streets of South Boston, The Greening of Southie is a feature documentary about Boston’s first residential green building, and the men and women who set out to construct it. From wheatboard cabinetry to recycled steel, bamboo flooring to dual-flush toilets, the Macallen Building is a leader in environmentally friendly design. But turning blue-collar jobs green has its challenges, and when things on the construction site start to go wrong, the young developer has to keep his project from unraveling.

Directed by Curt Ellis

Produced by Aaron Woolf & Mosaic Films

Co-produced by Wicked Delicate Films

90min, color, 16:9, 5.1

Credits

a Mosaic Films Inc. Production

a film by Aaron Woolf, Curt Ellis & Ian Cheney

directed by Aaron Woolf

co-produced by Ian Cheney & Curt Ellis