"Through the Great Southwest" is a documentary film about the Arizona Trail, an 800-mile path that spans across the state from Mexico to Utah. The trail, which showcases amazingly beautiful and diverse terrain, has an equally significant impact on the lives of many of the people who hike, ride, run, and support it across the state of Arizona. Outdoor Evolution Founder Darwin Rakestraw makes his directorial debut with this Film Project inspired by the History, Geography, Community, Association, and Users of the 800 mile National Scenic Trail.
Darwin Rakestraw

Hacking at Leaves documents artist and hazmat-suit aficionado Johannes Grenzfurthner as he attempts to come to terms with the United States' colonial past, Navajo tribal history, and the hacker movement. The story hones in on a small tinker space in Durango, Colorado, that made significant contributions to worldwide COVID relief efforts. But things go awry when Uncle Sam interferes with the film's production.
2024

2019

Out of State is the unlikely story of native Hawaiians men discovering their native culture as prisoners in the desert of Arizona, 3,000 miles, and across the ocean, from their island home.
2017

I'll Push You is about two lifelong friends, one quadriplegic, who embark on the pilgrimage of the Santiago de Compostela. It's a documentary about friendship and the grittiness of love and sacrifice.
2017

Two filmmakers journey to Arizona's Sonoran Desert to find bufo alvarus, a psychedelic toad. TOAD TO NOWHERE is a documentary about healing, hallucinogens, and looking within to explore the unknown.

Documentary about Alex Maier's experience through-hiking the Hayduke Trail, an 800-mile route across Utah and Arizona.

A resistance writer and pioneer of nature writing with a controversial personality, Edward Abbey wrote more than twenty books on the theme of eternal nature. A gem of counterculture, his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of environmental activists and readers with rebellious souls. Portrait of a rebellious, lyrical, and rude writer.
2025

The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking natural monument. It's one of the planet’s best-known landscapes, yet we often forget that it tells two billion years of the Earth's history. Geologists Karl Karlström and Laurie Crossey are the leading experts on this. Over the course of 8 days, they descend the Colorado river and tackle hundreds of rapids to unveil the mysteries held in the Grand Canyon, and the place that humans occupy within it.
2025

Landscape & Language
2021

A creation myth centered around a canal in Mesa, Arizona.
2020

Watching High Rollers – The Golden Age of Arizona Skateboarding is like finding a lost artifact that helps complete a larger mystery from the past. In this case High Rollers adds a much needed layer of knowledge to the origins of radical vertical, and over-vertical, skateboarding. The skateboard boom of the 1970’s went from “sidewalk surfing” and driveway antics to aerials out of backyard swimming pools in an astonishingly short span of time. This evolutionary leap was for the most part well documented in the pages of Skateboarder Magazine and the 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boyz. However, the field of vision both of these forms of media is narrow (although both are excellent), they both deal almost exclusively with what was happening in California (with occasional nods to Florida). It is understandable as skateboarding was born and given life in California, but what happened next? What was going on elsewhere?
2020

From PBS: Arizona's enforcement-led policy, which grew out of its unique position as a frontline border state, is reshaping the national conversation around immigration reform. With dozens of states considering a similar approach, THE STATE OF ARIZONA holds up a mirror, asking Americans who they are, and who they want to be.
2014

Canyoneering is the sport of descending canyons by means of hiking, climbing, rappelling and swimming. Relatively obscure, the sport was brought to the mainstream in 2003 with the news of Aron Ralston who had severed his own arm while trapped in a canyon. Experiencing an overnight spike in popularity by the late 90s - a result of information appearing on the internet - the sport became inundated with thrill-seekers of all backgrounds and skill levels. Facing a new era of off-the-couch recreationalists, three influential participants, a canyoneering instructor, pioneer, and guidebook author each respond to a growing interest in the incredibly dangerous activity. Gorging employs the story of canyoneering to examine larger questions about the pursuit of thrills and the consequences that follow.
2013
With neither narration nor people, DESERT DREAMS dispels the notion that deserts are uninspiring and "deserted." This cinematic experience will immerse you in an unexpected world filled with life and beauty year-round--in Dry Summer, Wet Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Four years in the making and created by a filmmaker intimately acquainted with the Sonoran Desert, this multi-media production showcases 182 species of plants and animals. The sound track combines natural sounds with a kaleidoscope of flute and percussion vignettes.
2013

On November 4th, 2008, three states - California, Florida and Arizona - voted to amend their constitutions, denying and revoking the rights of same-sex couples to marry. On May 26, 2009, with Canadian allies, gay American families rally at a Vancouver demonstration to protest these amendments that persecute the LGBTQ community. Demonstration organizer Roger Chin relays the California Supreme Court's infamous decision on Prop 8. Subsequent speakers talk about couples living in exile. Weaving elements of public protest and intimate interviews, four families share their stories of how they met, their decision to escape to freedom in Canada, their Canadian experience and their dreams of returning to their home country, family and friends. In the end, the organizer celebrates the freedoms to marry that exists in Canada.
2010

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.
1985
A solo bikepacking adventure across Iceland.
The story of the Yuma Crossing, the place where centuries of travelers crossed the Colorado River as told in a series of reenacted vignettes by colorful characters from the Quechan tribe, the conquistadores, Father Kino, Olive Oatman and others up until the first bridge was built in the 1920's.
1990
This short travelogue, touring Arizona's deserts, was shot in VistaVision.
1955

Three friends are playing cards in a beer garden. One of them orders drinks. The waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and three glasses on a tray. The man serves his friends. They clink glasses and drink. Then the man asks for a newspaper. He reads a funny story in it and the three friends burst out laughing while the waitress merely smiles.
1896