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Goodbye, Brooklyn[/caption]
This year’s 2018 Slamdance Film Festival which kicks off on Friday January 19 thru 25 in Park City, Utah, will feature an impressive Beyond and Shorts programs for their 24th edition. The short film lineup showcases productions from 26 countries, with shorts in the Narrative, Documentary, Animation, Anarchy and Experimental sections all eligible for the 2018 Oscar® Qualifying Shorts competition.
Several Slamdance Alumni return with highly anticipated presentations in the Beyond lineup. All films in this highly-selective program are made by emerging filmmakers working just beyond their first features.
“The films in the Beyond Program exhibit singular directorial vision while sharing a common commitment to challenge audiences to step outside their comfort zones,” says Beyond programmer, Josh Mandel. “These bold and adventurous filmmakers represent the most current voices in American independent film, and will continue to push boundaries in the years ahead.”Along with continued standout programming in every category, Anarchy Shorts promises another year of exuberantly subversive cinema. “The Department of Anarchy has curated a diverse program of sublime, dangerous, and deviant films that provide shock therapy to the soul.” says Anarchy Shorts programmer, Noel Lawrence. “We hope to provoke, challenge, and enlighten audiences by smashing the status quo on any and all levels.”
BEYOND PROGRAM
Back at the Staircase
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Drew Britton
Five distinctive people, each with a flimsy coping strategy, find themselves stuck together after an accident.
Cast: Jennifer Lafleur, Stephen Plunkett, Leonora Pitts, Mickey O’Hagan, Logan Lark, Heather LaVine
Funny Story
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Michael Gallagher
After years of being a neglectful father, a womanizing TV star decides to crash his estranged daughter’s vacation in Big Sur.
Cast: Matthew Glave, Emily Bett Rickards, Jana Winternitz, Nikki Limo, Lily Holleman, Jessica Diggins, Pete Gardner, Reginald VelJohnson
My Name is Myeisha
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Gus Krieger
A beloved teenager crosses over into a hip-hop-musical dreamscape at the moment of her tragic death and contemplates her life; what it was and what it could have been.
Cast: Rhaechyl Walker, John Merchant, Dominique Toney, Dee Dee Stephens, Yvette Cason, Gregg Daniel
The Rainbow Experiment
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Christina Kallas
An investigation uncovers more than just blame at a Manhattan high school when a science experiment permanently injures a student.
Cast: Chris Beetem, Francis Benhamou, Christian Coulson, Kevin Kane, Nina Mehta, Laura Pruden, Connor Siemer, Lauren Sowa, Swann Gruen, Christine McLaughlin
Savage Youth
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Michael Curtis Johnson
The lives of six troubled teens in a racially-divided small town take a violent turn over drugs and broken hearts. Based on true events.
Cast: Grace Victoria Cox, Tequan Richmond, Will Brittain, Chloe Levine, Mitchell Edwards, J. Michael Trautmann, Sasha Feldman, Tomas Pais
NARRATIVE SHORTS
The 99 Steps Left from the Square
(Finland, Turkey)
Director: Sevgi Eker
The iron gate safeguarding an old man’s peace is opened.
Cast: Sirin Erensoy, Yasemin Erensoy, Salih Kalafatoglu, Hasan Kurun
Abbas Kiarostami; The Director
(Iran)
Director: Mohsen Khodabakhshi
A boy wants to take a photo with Abbas Kiarostami…
Cast: Mani Sherafat – Nazli Gorgani – Shahed Sherafat
Audition
(USA)
Director: Richard Van
Unable to find a sitter, an aspiring actress has no choice but to drag her 3-year old son to her audition.
Cast: Shaquita Lopez, Nezih Lopez, Ernest Walker Jr, Laura Price
Clean Blood
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jordan Michael Blake
A family drama about Christmas, The Apocalypse and an IMMACULATELY PREGNANT man.
Cast: Jordan Michael Blake, Stephanie Allynne
Falling
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Ewen Wright
A potentially psychosomatic white man, a woman stuck in a vortex of “man-splaining,” and a young black man caught in a racially charged standoff are set on a collision course as society falls apart around them in this absurdist dark comedy.
Cast: Sarah Hollis, Elijah Reed, Davey Johnson
Flatbush Misdemeanors
(USA)
Director: Dan Perlman, Kevin Iso
Longtime friends Dan and Kevin adjust to their evolving surroundings in the unforgiving environment of Flatbush, Brooklyn. A raw comedy of city life.
Cast: Drew Dowdey, Kareem Green, Kevin Iso, Dan Perlman
Goodbye, Brooklyn
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Daniel Jaffe
Struggling with New York living, Dana Schapiro decides to move, saying goodbye to a neighborhood that can barely remember who she is…
Cast: Michelle Uranowitz, Angela Pietropinto, Luke Marinkovich, Ione Saunders
Hail Mary Country
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Tannaz Hazemi
Macho grandmother Irene Dandy has to defend her family of football fanatics from a gang led by a cocky thief named Nora.
Cast: Vera Cherny, Catherine Taber, Lori Jean Wilson, Alison Yates
Iris
(Canada)
Director: Gabrielle Demers
As the storm rages outside a special lust for Laura grows inside Emanuelle.
Cast: Marie Babbini, Daphné Germain
Katalysis
(Sweden) World Premiere
Director: Ashley Michael Briggs
A doctor and an artist use Anna’s body as an tool to further their own professional progress.
Cast: Moa Nilsson, Adam Stålhammar, Peter Hildén, Anna Ladegaard
The Knits
(Canada) US Premiere
Director: Lisa Birke
A sweater, lovingly and arduously knit by a mother, incrementally unravels as her daughter treks her way across Canada by foot.
Cast: Barbara Birke; Lisa Birke
Magic Bullet
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Amanda Lovejoy Street
A psychologist combats grief with self-soothing rituals; a shopping network host obliterates hers in a self-destructive haze. They collide in a televised confrontation.
Cast: Rosemarie DeWitt, Molly Parker
Night on Floating Island
(Australia) North American Premiere
Director: Jack Atherton
From a storm drain, a strange man watches a tourist rollerblading through an unfamiliar nightscape in search of his missing girlfriend or an anonymous sexual encounter in a park.
Cast: Gavin Drumm, Annie Schofield, André Shannon, Kate Coates
Ok, Call Me Back
(USA)
Director: Emily Ann Hoffman
Craving companionship, a woman leaves a voicemail late at night.
Cast: Emily Ann Hoffman
Onikuma
(Italy, USA)
Director: Alessia Cecchet
Surrounded by a foreign landscape, two women will understand that demons can come in different forms.
Cast: Sandy Siquier, Sarineh Garapetian
Parthenon
(USA)
Director: Frank Mosley
A naked body moves a stranger to empathy.
Cast: Lily Baldwin, Tallie Medel, Thiago Martins
Reunion 1
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Brock Neilson
The artist re-enters a space from their childhood as an adult and is struck both by the haunting tone of the setting and an indelible memory from the past.
Rupture
(Jordan, Canada) US Premiere
Director: Yassmina Karajah
Rupture follows the journey of four Arab kids whose repressed traumas surface during their quest to find a public pool in their new city.
Cast: Asaad Al Arid Salam Almarzouq Hussein Al Ahmad Wazira Al Ahmad
Slap Happy
(Canada) US Premiere
Director: Madeleine Sims-Fewer, Dusty Mancinelli
A dysfunctional couple with a penchant for twisted sexual fantasies fight to stay together as their relationship crumbles over the course of a day.
Cast: Jesse LaVercombe, Madeleine Sims-Fewer
That Thing
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Dan Roe
Tabby is conflicted about Patrick’s sexual quirk.
Cast: Claire Lucido, Sam Yarabek
The Things You Think I’m Thinking
(Canada) US Premiere
Director: Sherren Lee
A black male burn-survivor and amputee goes on a date with a regularly-abled man for the first time since his accident, ten years ago.
Cast: Prince Amponsah, Jesse LaVercombe
Transmission
(USA)
Director: Morgan McGlothan
Father, daughter, and her 1999 Toyota Camry.
Cast: Darrin McGlothan, Morgan McGlothan
The Troubled Troubadour
(South Korea) North American Premiere
Director: Forest Ian Etsler & Sébastien Simon
An embittered old musician embarks on a journey which becomes the outward manifestation of his inner landscape.
Cast: Kasuga “Hachi” Hirofumi, Tetsu Kono, Lee Hwajin, Kang Saneh
Welcome To Bushwick
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Henry Jinings
On the heels of a successful first date, Evan and Marceline end up back at her place.
Cast: Tim Platt, Liba Vaynberg
Whales
(Iran) North American Premiere
Director: Behnam Abedi
A police officer and a soldier are assigned to investigate a case wherein seven dead bodies are found on a beach.
Cast: Majid Norouzi, Khosrow Shahraz, Majid Aghakarimi
DOCUMENTARY SHORTS PROGRAM
Big Surf
(USA)
Director: Brian Smee
San Francisquito Cyn, March 12th, 1928: The sound a horse makes as it’s drowning.
Do I Have Boobs Now?
(Canada)
Director: Milena Salazar, Joella Cabalu
A trans activist’s journey to challenge Facebook and Instagram’s censorship policies.
Ex Nihilo
(Finland) World Premiere
Director: Timo Wright
Ex Nihilo is an experimental short documentary about a doomsday seed vault, an advanced robot and a cryonics facility.
Homeland
(Belgium)
Director: Sam Peeters
Homeland is a creative documentary about right-wing populism and narrow-mindedness in the Belgian suburbs.
House
(Iceland, USA)
Director: Kyja Kristjansson-Nelson
A meditation on emigration and immigration, house and home.
Icon
(Poland) US Premiere
Director: Wojciech Kasperski
An old doctor who has spent his life working at a psychiatric hospital in the Siberian countryside – The place, which was inaccessible for film crews, can be shown thanks to its residents, some of whom spent several decades at the hospital.
The Last Man You Meet
(USA)
Director: Chris Bone
Take an exclusive look inside the gritty business of death as a third-generation funeral director reflects on his life.
Lorem Ipsum (pain itself)
(USA)
Director: Gabrielle Kash
A handmade look at why artists hate making, and keep making art.
Nueva Vida
(USA)
Director: Jonathan Seligson
A ball, some brains, and a lot of fluids. A cautionary true tale on the dangers of playing soccer from my dear brother, Kenny.
Phototaxis
(USA)
Director: Melissa Ferrari
Rooted in nonfiction, “Phototaxis” connects Mothman, a prophetic demon in West Virginia folklore, and Narcotics Anonymous, the primary treatment program in West Virginia’s addiction epidemic.
Pocket Sized Feminism
(USA)
Director: Valerie Schenkman
“This house is for wallpaper women. What good is wallpaper that speaks?” Women speak out about women’s rights, or human rights.
Quiet Hours
(USA)
Director: Paul Szynol
Donald Hall, America’s Poet Laureate and winner of the National Medal of Arts, lives in the fragile space between loneliness and solitude.
Taobao
(USA)
Director: Noah Sheldon
Modelling for China’s largest online shopping site, Taobao.
True Love in Pueblo Textil
(Cuba, USA) US Premiere
Director: Horatio Baltz
Nine-year-old Maribel explains to us how it feels to be stricken with the world’s oldest infliction: love.
Where Are You From
(USA, China)
Director: Xizi “Cecilia” Hua
In a world where western values dominate, coming to America as a “Parachute Kid” makes the filmmaker feel ashamed of her “Chinese” and “foreign” identity.
ANIMATION SHORTS PROGRAM
Airport
(Switzerland, Croatia)
Director: Michaela Müller
An exploration of the place in modern society where the limits of borders, security, and tolerance are constantly tested.
Ascribed Achievements
(Iran)
Director: Samaneh Shojaei
A man’s suicide attempt leads to the idea that fate is breakable.
Black Dog
(USA)
Director: Joshua Dean Tuthill
A dark family drama set during the space race of the 1960’s, utilizing stop-motion animation and archival footage to elucidate a time of heated social and political tension.
Gusla ou les Malins
(France) US Premiere
Director: Adrienne Nowak
Adrienne goes back to Poland to see her grandmother and ask her family about communism. In their cozy kitchen she will learn about the spirits that haunt the Polish imagination and the unexpected superstitions used to face them.
Icebergs
(USA, Greece) North American Premiere
Director: Eirini Vianelli
An existential, dark comedy of 14 stop-motion vignettes both mundane and absurd.
Interstitial
(Japan) North American Premiere
Director: Shunsaku Hayashi
A hybrid project of a painting and additive animation exploring a spacelessness of humanity in the defined space of a canvas of a continuous horizon.
Mak
(USA)
Director: Natalya Serebrennikova
Searching for opium, Big Macs, and cultural identity, a teenager visits her hometown in Russia and finds that her best friend has already grown up.
Mountain Castle Mountain Flower Plastic
(USA)
Director: Annapurna Kumar
The most efficient containers can store multiple pieces of information in the same location, intersecting from different angles.
Railment
(Japan)
Director: Shunsaku Hayashi
In the anonymous crowds of commuter rail lines, it’s possible to move at high speeds while remaining perfectly still.
The Realm of Deepest Knowing
(South Korea)
Director: Kim Seung-hee
A playful exploration of how knowing someone on the deepest level becomes a love that spans across objects.
Red Fat Cat
(Germany)
Director: Klaus Hoefs
A singer-songwriter animation confronting the dichotomy of drowned refugees washing up on a public beach while residents go about their settled, everyday lives filled with antique cars, dogs, and cats.
Satellite Strangers
(USA) World Premiere
Director: James Bascara
A zoom into a microscopic world reveals a strange cacophony.
EXPERIMENTAL SHORTS PROGRAM
38 River Road
(USA, Switzerland)
Director: Josh Weissbach
Fear resides in the gesture of a telling.
Are you tired of forever?
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Caitlin Craggs
A surreal meditation on the experience of self.
Cloud Of Petals
(USA)
Director: Sarah Meyohas
At the former Bell Labs, sixteen workers photograph 100,000 individual rose petals to map out an artificial intelligence algorithm that learns to generate new petals forever.
I’m Not Sure
(Germany) World Premiere
Director: Gabriel Hensche
By confronting an app with Surrealist paintings I’m Not Sure explores the psychology of artificial intelligence.
No Stories Now
(USA)
Director: CT Bishop
Hopefully, in moving toward weakness, there can be recognition of false relief.
Silica
(Australia, UK)
Director: Pia Borg
An unseen location scout explores an opal mining town in South Australia in this sci-fi-laced essay film, which finds in this semi-deserted region both the traces of indigenous culture and remnants of cinema history.
ANARCHY SHORTS PROGRAM
AniMal
(Iran)
Director: Bahram Ark, Bahman Ark
A man disguises himself as a ram to cross a border into another land.
Cast: Davoud Nourpour
Breaker
(Japan)
Director: Philippe McKie
In tomorrow’s Tokyo, the technologically-enhanced body of a young mercenary hacker is overrun by a sentient data weapon.
Cast: Yuka Tomatsu / Arisa Hanzawa / Kazuya Shimizu
Clipping. – “Back Up”
(USA) US Premiere
Director: Anna Zlokovic
An unnamed filmmaker stumbles upon a horrifying discovery—an underground cult-like society where adults have baby faces and milk is the drug of choice.
Cast: Daveed Diggs, Antwon, Signor Benedick The Moor
Information Superhighway
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Mathew Nelson
A man participates in an experiment to test artificial intelligence in driverless cars.
Cast: Luke Banham, Elias Harger, Anna Faye Hunter , Michael Lee
Little Wonder
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Jojo Carlman
This refreshing tale of puppet sexuality follows Username: Stray_Cat as he trolls internet dating sites and vaguely meditates on the loneliness of death.
Cast: Christine Moore, Daegan Palmero, Brisco Diggs, and David Breen III
Love After TIme
(Taiwan)
Director: Tsai Tsung-han
After a nuclear explosion, two mutant humans fall in love.
Cast: Lee Hong chi, Nana Lee
Manila Death Squad
(Phillipines, USA)
Director: Dean Colin Marcial
An ambitious journalist challenges the leader of a violent vigilante group to a high-stakes drinking game. Its outcome may score her a scoop… or a bullet to the head.
Cast: Sid Lucero, Annicka Dolonius
The Order of the Orchid
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Alex Italics
A lonely spinster’s failed attempt at arranging flowers summons an ominous shadowy figure that sends her into a psychedelic netherworld to confront her own mediocrity.
Cast: Juliette James, Sean T. Randolph
Santa Ana
(Spain, USA) North American Premiere
Director: César Pesquera
Part art-film, part documentary, Santa Ana aims to elucidate the link between evil and the famed Santa Ana winds, extremely dry down-slope winds in Southern California supposedly responsible for a tense, uneasy, wrathful mood among the people of Los Angeles.
Steve’s Kinkoes
(USA) World Premiere
Director: Emma Debany
A man copies posters for his missing (and dead) cat at an otherworldly 24/7 photocopy shop. What will happen to him if he stays forever?
Cast: Timmy Gibson, Chance Bartels, John Archer Lundgren
Read more
Aurora Borealis: Északi fény[/caption]
The 2018 Stony Brook Film Festival presented by Island Federal Credit Union presents films of great diversity this summer, both in their themes and their settings. The schedule for the ten-day Festival, held at Staller Center at Stony Brook University from July 19-28, is available online at stonybrookfilmfestival.com.
Alan Inkles, founder and director of the Stony Brook Film Festival, comments, “Films from nineteen different countries, from Scotland to Spain, Argentina to Afghanistan, and coast to coast across the United States, promise to take filmgoers on an extraordinary journey. We have carefully curated this Festival to give patrons a great mix of the best in new independent films. Many filmmakers and actors are coming to the Festival to represent their films and will take the stage for questions and answers. It’s a highlight of the Festival to hear from them.”
This year the Stony Brook Film Festival travels from a war-torn past to an embattled future, from light-hearted comedies to heart-stopping thrillers, and from modern class struggles to sexual abuse stories that feel straight out of the #MeToo movement. Some of the films take place over decades, while others unfold in real time. There are social-media addicted mobsters, Shakespearian partygoers, and a shoe-stealing soccer prodigy.
The opening night film, Shelter, is an international spy thriller from returning filmmaker Eran Riklis (Lemon Tree, Zaytoun) that follows an Israeli agent protecting a Lebanese informant in Germany, and features actress Golshifteh Farahani (best known to U.S. audiences from Paterson, and to Stony Brook audiences from My Sweet Pepperland and About Ella) as well as acclaimed Israeli actress Neta Riskin. (Thursday, July 19 at 8:00 pm)
The closing night film, Aurora Borealis: Északi fény, was directed and co-written by the incredible Márta Mészáros, who—with 65 directing credits to her name going all the way back to 1954—is one of Hungary’s most accomplished female directors. A film that is part mystery and part war-drama, it not only uncovers atrocities during the Soviet occupation of Hungary, it also confronts secrets from the past and the measures people will take to protect those they love. (Saturday, July 28 at 8:00 pm)
The Etruscan Smile[/caption]
Acclaimed actor Brian Cox returns to the Stony Brook Film Festival in the U.S. Premiere of The Etruscan Smile, in which a rugged, old Scotsman who has reluctantly left his beloved Scottish Isle for medical treatment finds his life transformed by a new-found bond with his baby grandson. This gem also stars Thora Birch, JJ Field, and Roseanna Arquette, with several of the actors planning to be in attendance at the 9:30 pm screening on Saturday, July 21st.
Other U.S. Premieres include Octav, a nostalgic, life-affirming story from Romania (Saturday, July 21st at 7:00 pm), Outdoors, a captivating film about a city couple building a home in the country from Israel (Tuesday, July 24 at 7:00 pm), Growing Up, a riotous, romantic comedy from Spain (Friday, July 20 at 9:30 pm), and A Dysfunctional Cat, a quirky story about two Iranians navigating their arranged marriage—and a very bizarre cat—while living in Germany (Wednesday, July 25 at 7:00 pm).
IN THE ORCHARD[/caption]
The 21st annual Sonoma International Film Festival came to a close over the weekend with the awards ceremony, and IN THE ORCHARD directed by Christopher Knoblock won the prize for Best American Independent Feature. In the film a grief-stricken woman befriends a Marine Veteran with PTSD, and the two begin a relationship which may lead them towards tragic consequences.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv3eTd7rEYU
Other winners include SALYUT-7 directed by Klim Shipenko snagging the prize for Best World Feature; and THE NEED TO GROW directed by Rob Herring & Ryan Wirick won for Best Documentary Feature.
In SALYUT-7, Astronauts are sent to the rescue of Salyut 7, an unresponsive Soviet space station in what will become one of the most complicated mission in the history of space navigation. The documentary THE NEED TO GROW follows the personal journeys of solution innovators as they fight to localize sustainable food systems and regenerate Earth’s dying soils.
The SIFF 2018 winners are:
Rock Steady Row – Winner of the Narrative Feature Award and the Audience Feature Award. l-r. Bomani Story (Writer) and Trevor Stevens (Dir.) of Rock Steady Row.. Photo credit: Lauren Desbrg/SLAMDANCE[/caption]
The 24th Slamdance Film Festival wrapped last weekend and presented prizes to the winners of this year’s Sparky Awards in the Audience, Jury, and Sponsored Categories. The festival also announced the recipients of three new awards: The Russo Brothers Fellowship, the CreativeFuture Innovation Award, and a curated Acting Award.
The Sparky Award for Best Narrative Feature went to Rock Steady Row, directed by Trevor Stevens and written by Bomani Story. “Rock Steady Row is a shining star in genre, young adult themes, and ‘save the day’ filmmaking. Done creatively in a comic book meets George Miller meets John Carpenter universe. Sharply directed by Trevor Stevens and written by Bomani Story. With strong ingenuity not commonly seen at this budget and experience level, Rock Steady Row stands tall,” said jurors.
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Mr. Fish: Cartooning From The Deep End
My Name Is Myeisha Winner of the Audience Beyond Feature Award. Actress Rhaechyl Walker was also honored with an Acting Award. l-r. Alex Hines, John Merchant, Rhaechyl Walker, Dee Dee Stephens of My Name Is Myeisha. Photo credit: Lauren Desberg/SLAMDANCE[/caption]
Awards were also given to festival favorites, voted on by Slamdance audiences. The Narrative Feature Audience Award was presented to Rock Steady Row, directed by Trevor Stevens. Freedom For The Wolf, directed by Rupert Russell, received the Documentary Feature Audience Award, The Beyond Feature Audience Award was awarded to My Name Is Myeisha, directed by Gus Krieger.
The festival also recognized the Audience Award runners-up in their respective feature categories: Charlie And Hannah’s Grand Night Out (Dir: Bert Scholiers), MexMan (Dir.: Josh Polon) and Funny Story (Dir.: Michael Gallagher).
A full list of winners is below: