Without sentimentality, these films consider where we come from as they variously dwell upon the importance of embodied experience, spiritual seeking, and finding home. Melanie Saumure’s powerful evocation of the boxer’s challenge–to transcend her own limitations through endless practice and vigilance—evokes the fine line between internal and external contests, as she dodges her own reflection in the mirror. In i was here before, Sadia Mir holds up a mirror to the life she might have lived as she returns to her native Pakistan. Carrying the Super 8 images her father captured there when she was young, she seeks a past that might have been, opening up a new sense of possibility. Probing the difficult knowledge of an aging generation of Holocaust survivors, Ernie Kestler’s Grains of Salt evokes the simple things one longs for in the face of monstrous circumstances. Deeply concerned with the growing level of poison in our waters, Inger Whist’s Bowl Tolling is an invocation to an awareness of the deep connection between the health of the oceans and the survival of life on our planet. Elaine Brodie’s To Have and To Hold: Collecting and the Heart’s Desire investigates the passions, motivations, and obsessions around collecting: Like gifts that weigh us down, they are a mixed blessing. Kate Schneider’s The Valley of Dry Bones follows the course of economic decline in Cleveland, Ohio, as the sub-prime fiasco swallows more victims, while simultaneously capturing the power of hope and faith in two women’s lives. Estelle Hébert’s Passing Lines soundscape comprises three personal narratives woven together to form a rich tapestry of sorrow, fear, and self–respect, as each recounts the need to flee a homeland that could not accept their gay identities.