Documentary

An obscure painter battles depression, modern art, and the constant risk of failure as he searches the spiritual realm for undiscovered images.  Emmy-nominated editor Jen Fineran follows the artist Mark Weiss as he strives to create a new method of automatic painting that resists formulaic closure and rewards persistence, revealing as it creates – and perhaps hurting and healing the artist in the process.

Shored Up is the vivid and timely tale of coastal development in New Jersey and North Carolina where a gamble on development and engineering collide with the force of nature.  Set in Long Beach Island, NJ and the Outer Banks of NC, Shored Up is a prescient look at what happens when we ignore the realities of geology in our drive to inhabit and profit from the land along our coast.  Filmed over three years and culminating with the impact of Hurricane Sandy, Shored Up foresees the consequences of our very human desire to live on the edge in the shadow of beauty.  As the film explores the political conflicts and personal stakes of communities along the shore in the years leading up to Sandy it becomes an eerie foretelling of the storm’s devastation and a witness to its dramatic aftermath.