Sparrow Songs

Started in October 2009 Sparrow Songs was a project in which filmmaker Alex Jablonski and cinematographer Michael Totten in which they made and released one short documentary per month, every month for one year.

All of the films were available for free and slowly drew a wide audience from around the world. Completed in November 2010, the films screened at the IDFA in Amsterdam as part of DocLab and Alex will speak at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival about the motivation and execution behind Sparrow Songs.

Blue Boy

Based on the short story by Kevin Canty, Blue Boy tells the story of Kenny, a country-club lifeguard who spends his work hours stoned, fantasizing about the women around him. After an act of heroism he finds himself alone with one of the objects of his attention. The film premiered at the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival and continues to play at film festivals nationwide.

Official site » Screenings »

What Do We Want, When Do We Want It

In 1962 Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote a letter to Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz detailing his deep ambivalence about his involvement with the anti-war movement of the time.



Filmmaker Alex Jablonski uses the text of this letter as a jumping off point to explore the inner-lives of those attending a 2007 anti-war march. Jablonski and his crew erected an enormous white backdrop in the middle of the march and used two cameras to capture the marchers both in the middle of the throng of protesters but also isolated and removed from their context, standing alone in an all white frame.

The result is a film that is both hypnotic and troubling and questions the true motivations of those holding signs and chanting slogans.

May I Please Speak to Vartan

It’s a story about debt, fear and a phone that wouldn’t stop ringing. When filmmaker Alex Jablonski got a new home phone number he immediately began receiving 30 phone calls a day. None of them were for him. All of them were for a man named Vartan. After months of trying to ignore the phone calls Jablonski made a list of every person that had called for Vartan, and began calling them back.

Sharp, funny and honest, the film chronicles Jablonski’s attempt to understand and find the man he had become linked to, Vartan.