TICKETS $15

Doors 6:30 p.m.; Film 7 p.m. Q&A directly after the film. 

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THE EXPERIENCE

In signature Penny Lane style, this film is funny, moving, and intelligently crafted. As a profound protagonist, director Penny Lane fearlessly captures every facet of emotion in one of the most intimate experiences one can go through, illuminating the ragged but beautiful humanity around what it is to be the “Good Samaritan” when one is not a saint. We can be messy in our desire to be good.

ON SCREEN: Confessions of a Good Samaritan

2023. Directed by Penny Lane. Runtime: 105 minutes. Not Rated.
Director Penny Lane’s decision to become a “good Samaritan” by giving one of her kidneys to a stranger turns into a funny and moving personal quest to understand the nature of altruism. Confessions of a Good Samaritan is a provocative inquiry into the science, history, and ethics of organ transplantation, asking an ancient question in a whole new way: Who is your neighbor, and what do you owe them?

“By exploring the rewarding and self-affirming nature of altruism Penny Lane (one of the best documentary filmmakers working) may have created one of the best examinations of a modern society that wants to do good but also pat themselves hard on the back.” — Movie Madness Podcast

ON STAGE: Penny Lane

Penny Lane, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, has been making innovative nonfiction films for over a decade.  In 2018 she was honored with a Chicken & Egg Breakthrough Award, received the Vanguard Award at SF DocFest, and was admitted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.  She has been honored to receive mid-career retrospectives at the Museum of the Moving Image, Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, San Francisco DocFest, Open City Documentary Festival and Cinema Moderne.

Penny has made six feature-length documentaries, most recently Confessions Of A Good Samaritan (Special Recognition Jury Prize, SXSW 2023). Previously, she directed Listening To Kenny G (Toronto 2021) for HBO, Hail Satan? (Sundance 2019) for Magnolia Pictures, The Pain Of Others (Rotterdam 2018), Nuts! (Sundance 2016) And Our Nixon (Rotterdam 2013).For this and other work she has been awarded grants and fellowships from Sundance Institute, Creative Capital, Cinereach, TFI Documentary Fund, Wexner Center for the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Catapult Film Fund, MacDowell, Yaddo and many other organizations.  She’s won many awards (including a Sundance Jury Prize for Editing) but is probably most proud of being “Most Badass!” at the Iowa City Documentary Film Festival in 2009, or perhaps being named “Queen of Documentary Cinema” by the Winchester Alamo Film Club in 2023.

Penny’s short films are distributed by VTAPE and include titles such as The Voyagers (2010), Just Add Water (2016) and We Are The Littletons: A True Story (2004). Her 2005 half-hour documentary The Abortion Diaries has screened in at least 42 states & worldwide at over 350 different community venues, ranging from bars to art centers to clinics to colleges, and on Yes! Television and Free Speech TV.  In 2006, Penny was given a Choice USA “Generation Award” for her work on this film.

Penny received her MFA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and her BA from Vassar College. She was a college professor for over a decade, teaching film, video and new media art at Colgate University, Bard College, Hampshire College and Williams College.  Now she works full time as a film director and co-founder with Gabriel Sedgwick of Spinning Nancy. She and Gabriel recently Executive Produced their first project, TIME BOMB Y2K, an HBO Documentary Film directed by Marley McDonald and Brian Becker.

And yes, Penny Lane is her real name.