Elise Wien

A Birthright Data Analysis Intern gives an end-of-quarter presentation. What begins as a Powerpoint on declining enrollment and political doubt grows stranger and stranger as it turns into a tale of the Intern’s relationship. Ever since the Intern’s partner learned about Birobidzhan - the USSR's Jewish Autonomous Oblast and the world’s first (semi)autonomous Jewish state – she’s become obsessed. She digs through books and online archives, and eventually travels to the remote province for a research project. But when she returns, the Intern notices some changes. She emits a constant hum, interferes with the WiFi, and is intent on convincing the Intern to send future Birthright participants to the Oblast. In this TED Talk gone awry, the Intern tests how propaganda, nation, and memory unravel when we set Israel and Birobidzhan side-by-side.

It’s 2015, and 15-year-old best friends Ceci and Michelle are taking the fanfiction website Archive of
Our Own by storm. Michelle, a Junior Statesman of America, wants to author The Best Obama
Fanfiction ever written. Can she read up on drone strikes, deportations, and Operation Neptune Spear
and still find time to kiss Barack in front of the Jellyfish tank at the Chicago Aquarium?

OTP is a story of political malaise, misplaced nostalgia, and what we do when we are incapable of reimagining our futures.

On his deathbed, Osher found spirit in autoplay—as he was hooked up to oxygen and lost the ability to speak, he watched hours and hours of Kabbalah YouTube. The Kabbalah of anger, forgiveness, of loss. He stopped acknowledging the presence of his daughter, Leye, and his husband, Sender. And then he died. Now, months after his passing, Leye visits the local Kabbalah Center, fueled by a desire to understand this change in her father. We travel through time (and web servers) to witness whether Leye and Sender can grapple with the loss of a loved one turned stranger.

When Sam learns that her new bathroom has been the site of Tub Warz, Tampa's most famous Youtube programming, she must negotiate with Terri Topdrain to fulfill her wettest and wildezt dezirez.

Years ago, Mom left Dad when she fell in love with the vase he made, the one that mangled his arm in a freak pottery wheel accident.
This year, on Yom Kippur, Ko introduces Dad to their new partner - a mirror. This year, too, Mom's vase has died.
Will Dad forgive Mom and comfort her at the shiva? Will Mom grieve her partner? Will we find absolution???

About unlikely love that springs up in isolation, and the rituals of togetherness we share over/and over/and over.

A camp for people who have survived shootings. It has all the regular camp stuff, like tie-dye and fireside sing alongs, and some of the nonregular stuff, like the terror of a guiltful existence.

RidgeRock Tech seems like the perfect place to work: beer on tap, a flexible vacation policy, and at least 16 different employees named Matt. But when the new customer support rep Greb joins the office, they sense something dire is coming. Corinne and Kayuri are slacking off with rigor, Diane is slipping into panic, and Greb’s mentor Julie is nowhere to be found. Something is lurking in the Meditation Room.

Meet the film team responsible for staging the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Or at least, partially responsible—until their lead actor Neil was whisked away at the last minute when NASA decided to go in a different direction. Now, director Sylvia and her crew are being held prisoner in a classified warehouse somewhere under Kansas, with nothing to do but make a documentary about their thwarted attempt at creating the footage that would inspire the world. Craters is an exercise in fact-finding, (re)enactment, and the power of simulation.