Whisker Wars (Thom Beers)
"Whisker Wars" profiles a group of men as they travel the country in search of top honors in a host of competitions, from the National Beard and Mustache Championship in Bend, OR to the World Competition in Norway. With Germany the reigning champion, over 80 local U.S. chapters attempt to come together to form Beard Team USA. - IFC

Sasquatch Birth Journal 2 (Zellner Bros. | Austin, TX | 4 min.)
An unprecedented peek at the mysteries of nature.

Irma (Charles Fairbanks | Lexington, NE | 12 min.)
Irma is an intimate musical portrait of Irma Gonzalez, the former world champion of women’s professional wrestling. Filmed in Ciudad Nezahualcóyotl – a notorious district of Mexico City – Irma contradicts everything we have come to expect from stories reported from Mexico. Featuring original music written and performed by Ms. Gonzalez, Irma’s story surges with love and deceit, masculine strength, feminine charms, and an extraordinary sense of humor.

Negativipeg (Matthew Rankin | Canada | 15 min.)
Rory Lepine gives a personal account of his fateful and infamous encounter with The Guess Who's legendary lead singer, Burton Cummings, in a Winnipeg 7-Eleven in 1985. [Sundance]

Satan Since 2003 (Calos Puga | New York | 19 min.)
For Emmy Award-winning documentarian Carlos Puga (True Life, MTV), three months' access to The Hell's Satans (Richmond, Virginia's premier moped gang) produced enough material for not only an eye-popping peek into this otherwise reclusive society, but also a satirical jab at the process of documentary film-making. [SXSW]

Declaration of Immortality (Marcin Koszalka | Poland | 29 min.)
Polish documentary veteran Marcin Koszałka returns to a forgotten genre: the mountain film. The protagonist of his story is Piotr “Mad” Korczak, a legendary mountain climber who revolutionized the art of mountain and rock climbing and figured out how to scale some of the most impossibly steep natural rock structures in the world. Featuring gorgeous and vertigo inducing cinematography and Koszalka’s magnificently stoic observations, Declaration of Immortality is a thrilling trip to the edge of the abyss and a poignant portrait of a man driven by an insatiable desire to live as large and as long as humanly possible.

Elle King
"Singer/songwriter Elle King (her first name is pronounced like the letter L) has one of those voices than when you hear the very first time you damn near drive off the road. Even if you’re not driving. The 20-something has penned an absolutely breathtaking song, “Good To Be A Man,” that recently hit my inbox that you should download below. The song starts with a banjo, then her voice kicks in and takes over. It’s got a bluesy drawl but it’s not the blues. Then the band punches up in a Tom Waits’ sloppy but calculatedly measured “Clap Hands” kind of way and Elle brings it all home with a slurry folksiness. But folks, this sure as hell ain’t no folk. What I’ve heard so far, I’m impressed. She’s got an old soul’s voice; a voice as distinctive as Ms. Newsome or Bjork or Lucinda Williams." -Some Velvet Blog