In 1974, the Maternity Center, located in a low-income Chicago neighbourhood, is acutely threatened by lack of financing from its funding body, North Western University. Resistance begins to form in the predominantly Black community, since this is an institution with a 75-year-old history that has provided countless woman with safe and affordable home-births. “The Chicago Maternity Center Story” uses this civil protest as a starting point to tell the story of the rampant commercialisation of medical care in the USA, including its sexist and racist connotations. A film that approaches the issue sometimes gently, sometimes with agitprop vigour.

Can a geometric structure be seductive? The answer of this spare and yet utterly charming film is clear: Yes, it can! A simple white line on a black background bewitches us with its dynamic curves as we marvel, open-mouthed, at its suppleness and excellent timing. This line is a saucy star that would be a credit to every burlesque show.

In her second feature-length film, Lee Anne Schmitt leaves California behind to explore the disparate influences that have shaped life in Utah’s Henry Mountains, home to one of the country’s last remaining bison herds, which are hunted to this day. Hewing closer to pure observation than much of the rest of her work, Schmitt and her roving camera stick tightly to the everyday rhythms of the contemporary cowboys who organise these now touristic hunts. The images of buffalos being shot at close range, disembowelled or stuffed speak for themselves, as do the endless landscapes, stubborn iconography of the former Wild West and the story of the Native American dream recounted in voice-over: the impossible return to a land never again empty.