Black Maria Film Festival Touring the Northeast

If you're a fan of short films and you live in the NY/NJ area, try to catch the Black Maria Film Festival. I've written about it before; it's a unique festival that travels with a rotating schedule of films.

I caught tonight's show at the Donnell Library in midtown Manhattan, and as usual there was a diverse range of shorts, lasting from three minutes to nearly a half hour. One of the most entertaining was called "Bodega," about two men in the Bronx who go to different bodegas in the area and explain for viewers the "bodega food pyramid," from pork rinds and mini-donuts to the 40-oz. bottle of Olde English malt liquor

The festival will be touring near its New Jersey origins for the rest of its run this year, which goes until the end of June. The Black Maria Film Festival will be at the Donnell Library again this Saturday, April 26th. After that it will be playing in Jersey City; Baltimore; Glen Falls, New York; and several other towns in New Jersey. Check out the schedule at the link above.

2008 Black Maria Film Festival

The first movie studio in the world was not in Hollywood, but in New Jersey. Thomas Edison was a pioneer in the developing motion picture technology, and started the first movie studio, nicknamed Black Maria, at his West Orange laboratory.

Since 1981 the Black Maria Film Festival, based in New Jersey, has honored Edison's legacy by showcasing the best in short films. But you don't have to go to New Jersey to see the winning films in the juried festival. The Black Maria Film Festival is unique in being a touring festival, traveling to a number of different states.

The 2008 Black Maria Film Festival had its premiere Feb. 1st at New Jersey City University (the home base of the Festival), and continues showings in various venues until the end of June. I attended the fourth screening of the Festival at the Hoboken Historical Museum and it was an enjoyable and diverse menu of shorts, from a stark animation of a Vietnam War vet's memories to a folksy profile of a Brooklyn rooftop beekeeper.

The films screened at Black Maria differ from location to location, so if you're a fan of short films I'd recommend going to several screenings if you can, so you can see a variety of different films.

Visit the Web site of the Black Maria Film Festival to find out locations, dates, and times of the screenings.

Sundance, Cannes, Tribeca... Hoboken?

That's right, the Mile-Square City of Hoboken, New Jersey is joining those other famous venues in launching a film festival this year. The first Hoboken International Film Festival, which runs from June 1st to the 7th, hopes to spotlight the city's long and illustrious connections to filmmaking.

Best known as the birthplace of Frank Sinatra, Hoboken was itself practically a star of the classic '40s film "On the Waterfront" (alongside a young Marlon Brando), which was filmed largely in the city. More recently, a number of films, commercials, and other works have been shot in Hoboken, taking advantage of the city's old-time urban grit and many examples of classic architecture, many of which have been refurbished since Hoboken's resurgence beginning in the 1980s.

Danny Aiello, who has appeared in a number of films that were partly filmed in Hoboken, was to meet Hoboken's mayor on May 15th to formally announce the Hoboken International Film Festival. (Several of Aiello's films will be screened at the Festival.) I'll have more on Aiello's films and career in a future post.

And Hoboken is home to legendary indie filmmaker John Sayles, whose acclaimed movies range from "Brother from Another Planet" to "Eight Men Out," "The Secret of Roan Inish," "Lone Star," and "Passion Fish."

New Jersey's role in movie history goes back much further than "On the Waterfront," though. Thomas Edison was a motion picture pioneer and created America's first movie production studio, called Black Maria, not far from Hoboken in West Orange, New Jersey. And since 1981 there has been a Black Maria Film and Video Festival--based in New Jersey--that has toured around the U.S.

The Hoboken International Film Festival will include a mix of narrative feature films, documentaries, and shorts. Some of the features to be screened at the Festival include:
"Polycarp," a horror/psychological thriller
"Fingerprints" starring Lou Diamond Phillips
"Animal People," a look at the animal protection movement in the U.S.
"Get Thrashed: The Story of Trash Metal"
"Chasing the Lotus," a documentary that takes a worldwide look at surf culture