Philly Abe

Flying Lessons

A tender portrait of an outsider artist fighting for tenant’s rights on the Lower East Side in New York City.

This Side of Heaven

V, an older trans woman, is desperately trying to hold on to her rent stabilized apartment in New York City.

Available Light

An experimental feature film about people in different cities who are trying to escape their loneliness through love, lust or a combination of both. The film was shot in real locations using only available light. The viewer is both a voyeur - watching the characters in intimate situations that are not meant to be seen - and an active participant - imagining what the characters are going through and making connections between them that may or may not be real.

The End of Cruising

A documentary about gay male cruising and public sex and how it has changed over the years.

Fire Island '79

Filmmaker Chase Hook committed suicide on December 31st, 1979. His conservative family destroyed all of his films. Recently Super 8 home movies of his last summer on Fire Island were found. Also recovered was the tape from his answering machine.

Tom's Gift

Voice-over narration describes Tom's Gift, a sex shop in rural America closed by municipal ordinance.

The Endless Possibility of Sky

Sex and drugs-getting hooked and getting off –can be addicting. For Drew (Brad Hallowell), eking out a mundane life in Waterville, Maine, it is resisting the illicit pleasure in New York; for Mistress Datina (Philly), it means operating a sex and drug den to cope with her life. In his visually and sexually stimulating film, director Verow introduces multiple characters and overlapping narratives that portray the physical and emotional faces of addiction. For Rob (newcomer Rob Ordonez), drugs and sex are means of finding a bed to sleep in every night – while they provide Christian (Michael Vaccaro) a means of dealing with his helplessness and loss. A writer records these characters and their unforgettable stories. The themes are universal, but the possibilities are endless.

Deleted Scenes

When 30 something Sean meets Eastern European immigrant Wolf, sparks fly. They return to Sean’s apartment and begin a high energy and hugely sexual affair. What starts as a mere chance meeting slowly evolves into something more. Wolf is easy going, turning tricks to supplement his living, while Sean is needy, talkative and neurotic. Creating a stable relationship is fraught with problems. With Wolf disappearing for hours at a time and Sean doing drugs the two of them seem to be headed down a path of destruction.

The Boy with the Sun in His Eyes

John (Tim Swain) agrees to be Italian horror actress and singer Solange's (Mahogany Reynolds) assistant, and he's thrilled to be swept into her glamorous, arty European world. But when the sex and drug lifestyle gives way to murder, John begins to question Solange's motives. Based on the novel by James Derek Dwyer and filmed on location in Europe, this offbeat comedy pays homage to the cinema of the 1980s and features a hip soundtrack.

Xx: Where Your Heart Should Be

Todd Verow's experimental narrative feature heralding the end time. Split up into 20 short films, the film explores the fear and longing of several characters as they wait for some unspecified apocalyptic event. Some try to escape physically, emotionally or sexually while others welcome the end with open arms. A woman (PHILLY) is busy dragging her own corpse, trying to find a resting place for it, when she encounters an old lover (MICHAEL BURKE) who used to be a she but has transitioned to a man. He wants to get out of town but she wants to stay it's the end of time when nothing is a crime. Several gay men engage in more and more extreme sexual activity, they want to experience it all before the big collapse. Two gay ex-lovers try to reconnect and feel something, anything but total emptiness. Porn actors and producers make more unsafe films as fantasies grow darker and more violent. Will the world end with a whimper or a bang? Or worse will it not end at all.

Fetal

a film by Todd Verow starring Philly Abe.

Fucking Different New York

What do construction workers do in their well-earned breaks? How might Angelina Jolie's and Brad Pitt's relationship have ended? And what really happened between Marilyn Monroe and Joan Crawford during the summer of 1959? The answers to these and many other interesting questions are provided by twelve queer New York filmmakers. Their films also scrutinize such topics as the difference between the way men and women dream, and how erotic tying a necktie or having a manicure can be.

Anonymous

A man finds himself homeless after a fight with his significant other.

Die, F*ggot, Die!

Two lesbians decide to kill their gay roommate.

Ex-Votos

An ex-junkie, ex-stripper, demolition derby driving bartender who has finally settled down, tries to get her on the run girlfriend to stay with her. An East Coast woman who's marriage of 34 years has abruptly ended, goes to Hollywood to try to reconcile with her estranged daughter and her own abandoned dreams. Two guys celebrate their ten year anniversary by imagining ways they might have met and how they might eventually break up. A washed-up B-movie extra, who's star on the walk of fame has been somehow 'misplaced' years ago, befriends a punk rock girl whose boyfriend has just ditched her and his guitar.

Burnout

A metropolis awash in electrical overdrive crashes in the heat of summer and sends a Bronxite into the clutches of a waterworld further north. It is there that we witness the cooling fogs and diving mammals of maritime yore and sail free in winds of a nautical nature. A nature that fills the summer sky with twinkling tidbits and the tummy with protein rich denizens of Neptune’s soup. A tour of the towering turrets of tomorrow land and the spatial splendor of yesterday’s yearnings captured on both chemical and electrical media.

Venus Boyz

This intimate look into the real world of drag kings -- women exploring their masculinity -- crosses continents, traveling through drag king nightclubs from New York to London.

Take Away

An actress on location in Berlin, Germany begins to blur her own life with the character she plays.

Against

Stan, a cross-dresser, inherits a house haunted by his parents.

Once & Future Queen

This film follows the life of a mentally ill street itinerant whose name is not worthy of mention. When not sleeping in the gutters of Manhattan's Lower East Side, our protagonist keeps busy juggling her schedule of drug abuse, trips to her shrink, and stealing from those misguided souls who, after taking pity on her, allow her temporary shelter in their homes.

A Sudden Loss of Gravity

Three generations of small town rebel-rebels crash into each other and burn in Todd Verow's new film, A Sudden Loss of Gravity. The small town of Bangor Maine is finally entering the 80's with a pile-up of new wave proportions. Based on true stories of the Northeastern town.

Metropolitan Monologues

The New York City summer is fueled by the sultry emanations of hot air that tumble off the tongues of potential thespians as they attempt to decipher the gastric guesswork embedded in the prose of the pre-production process. The video camera flits across the boroughs of NYC in a splash-dash sojourn of sumptuous banquets and bohemian bombast, while the down-to-earth wisdom of the seeing impaired helps to guide the protagonist into detours of wisdom befitting his putrid project. A theatrical play incubates in the balding head of the videomaker and as its presence makes itself felt among the various victims of his vision, we share with them the horror of advancing age and the descriptive diatribes toward the destiny of the decrepit damned.

The Trouble With Perpetual Deja-Vu

A young married couple living year round on Cape Cod face the winter season uncertain of their future, apart or together.

Shucking the Curve

Suzanne Fountain moves to NYC and plummets headlong into a twisted wonderland.

Nitwit

Nitwit" is a story of mouth disease, rebellious hair and transdimensional farting. It is also a story of mothers and their children. Finally it is a story about the power of stupidity.