(NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ) -- The New Jersey Film Festival returns for its 40th anniversary with a great selection of films from September 10 through October 10. The Fall 2021 festival is a hybrid, meaning screenings are available live at their beautiful theater on the Rutgers University campus or virtually via Video on Demand (available for up to 24 hours on the screening date). Each ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the live and virtual screenings.
The live screenings will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street in New Brunswick, New Jersey beginning at 7:00pm for each program on their show date. Ticket buyers will also have special access to Filmmaker Introductions and Q+A Sessions for many of the films. Tickets are $15 per program (many include multiple films per program).
New Jersey Stage will be running feature articles on several of these films, but here's a look at the entire festival.
Friday, September 10 - The Nine O'clock Whistle & The Dark Forest. The Nine O'Clock Whistle, directed by Willa Cofield and Karen Riley, 60 minutes. For years on Saturday night, white authorities in Enfield, N.C. blew a siren, warning Blacks to clear the downtown streets. This curfew was one of many demeaning practices used to keep the Black population separate and unequal. One fateful night, three days after the March on Washington, hundreds of Blacks on the streets of downtown Enfield refused to heed the blowing of the nine o'clock whistle. The Nine O'clock Whistle tells the story of a dramatic cultural shift that rocked the segregated town of Enfield from 1963 to 1965 through the narratives of Willa Cofield, her former students, and current residents of the town. The video documents the racial indignities, segregation practices, and labor exploitation of the time. The story offers a supreme example of how the civil rights grapevine grew from one small act of resistance in Enfield to envelope an entire region. The documentary brings hope, spirit and encouragement to those struggling to overcome entrenched, powerful, and oppressive forces.
The Dark Forest, directed by Martin Del Carpio, 9 minutes. An experimental transcendental fable. "To honor the memory of his father who passed away in 2019, Martin Del Carpio opts for the medium of film once again, and delivers his most lyrical work to date. At once deeply personal, carefully veiled in a delicate fabric of pure emotions, and absolutely immersive in its dreamlike, mysterious beauty, The Dark Forest transmutes its author's innermost life into an admirable piece of introspective cinema. Opening with Dante Alighieri's quote which inspired the title, it takes the viewer on a short, yet transcendent journey through the bushes of symbols and trees of thoughts, in the company of a lovely (and cunning?) forest spirit embodied by Carly Erin O'Neil whose poise and grace translate as otherworldly. The enchanting imagery that we see on our way is the result of another tight-knit collaboration between writer / director Del Carpio and DoP / editor William Murray, whereby the dense atmosphere of meditative seclusion is complemented by Dan Shaked's ruminative voice-over and M. Nomized's haunting score which occasionally gives off some strong ‘classic Hollywood' vibes..." -- Nikola Gocic.
Sunday, September 12th - Ailleurs Partout (Elsewhere Everywhere) & Spinal. Ailleurs Partout (Elsewhere Everyhere), directed by Isabelle Ingold and Vivianne Perlmutter, 63 minutes. A computer screen, images from the four corners of the world. We cross borders in one-click while another trip's story reaches us in bits, through text messages, chats, phone conversations, and an immigration office's questionnaire. It's the journey of Shahin, a 20-year-old Iranian boy who, fleeing his country alone, lands in Greece, then winds his way to England where he claims asylum. In English, French, Persian, subtitled.
Spiral, directed by Mats Bjerknes, 6 minutes. In this short experimental documentary, the director who suffers from a muscle disease, films himself and tells a personal story from his perspective about ableism, body positivity, lack of intimacy and the love for his family. In Norwegian, subtitled.
Friday, September 17 - Into Schrodinger's Box, directed by Nasim Naghavi and Amir Ganjavie, 86 minutes. A middle-aged musician, Sofia, has to stay at home in quarantine for 14 days due to the infection of his husband to Covid-19. Sofia's loneliness leads to hallucinations as she feels that she is under control everywhere. Everything gets intensified after the arrival of a mysterious, beautiful woman named Lilith into her house. "Who is Lilith, how she could have access into her house?", while Sofia tries to answer these questions, her negative feelings about Lilith slowly changes; she seems to finally find a moment of peace and happiness in her life before a piece of shocking news once again disturb her life.
Sunday, September 19 - The New Blockheads as a private case, Parenthesis, Lucid Dreams & Invention in C. The New Blockheads as a private case, directed by Lana Berndl, 60 minutes. The New Blockheads Group was established in the "wild" nineties in St. Petersburg and split up in 2002. Inspired by the absurd poetry of the futurists and modern philosophy, they were spontaneous in their creative actions and combined performance, installation, philosophy, literature and design to create works according to the ideals of the group. One of its members, Sergei Spirikhin, has lived in Vienna since 2002 and we follow him as he creates art wherever he goes in this wild and crazy documentary. In Russian and German, subtitled.
Parenthesis, directed by Vasilios Papaioannu, 5 minutes, is a short impressionistic poem, liberates the inserted thought from its master. The film's mirrored beginning and ending render the inserted material, not as an explanation or afterthought but rather as the dominant point where the natural and civilized worlds claim their separate space before colliding, as the continual breathing of the sea becomes increasingly intense and urgent. Whatever may be going on in the outside world is kept at bay by the visual parentheses.
Invention in C Major, directed by Richard D Lopez, 4 minutes. Haunted by the music coming from inside her, a music machine comes face to face with reality when an unexpected visitor appears. Will her past dictate her future?
Friday, September 24 - Zero Gravity, directed by Thomas Verrette, 74 minutes. A diverse group of middle-school students go on the journey of a lifetime when they compete in a nationwide competition sponsored by MIT to code satellites aboard the International Space Station.
Sunday, September 26 - Ela: Breaking Boundaries & Painting Class. Ela: Breaking Boundaries, directed by Swapna Kurup, 53 minutes, provides an intimate look at the art and life of New Jersey-based Indian artist, Ela Shah.
Painting Class, directed by Yifei Song, 11 minutes, is about Feifei, a ten-year-old-girl who wants to enroll for a painting class but is refused by the parents, steals the money from her brother. In Mandarin, subtitled.
Friday, October 1 - The Dirt Whisperer & Jethro Tull: Aqualung. The Dirt Whisperer, directed by Giorgio Litt, 60 minutes. A systems program manager and his wife trade their corporate lives for one of biological farming, permaculture, and a sustainable way of living driven primarily by the health of their soil. Raised on homesteads, Brian and Shelby's move to the city to work for two of the largest corporations on the planet seemed to be a tacit rejection of their upbringings. So with rising temperatures and cost of living, it's no wonder that their search for meaning, fulfillment, and a closer connection to their food lead them right back to a self-sufficient and rural way of life still second nature to them.In a journey for Brian and Shelby to rediscover a way of life, the process of disconnecting from nearly century-old agricultural systems hasn't revealed a simple answer to the question of sustainability and crop health. But it has revealed where lies the answer: In the health of their biodiverse soil.
Jethro Tull: Aqualung, directed by Sam Chegini, 7 minutes. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Jethro Tull's Aqualung, this is an updated look into the band's most celebrated song about the homeless and homelessness. This incredible illustrated video is a must see.
Sunday, October 3 - Last Call & A Moment on Main Street. Two films that focus on how COVID affected businesses. Last Call, directed by Johnny Sweet, 60 minutes. The hospitality industry is the artistic heartbeat of New York. Nowhere is that more prevalent than in Queens. Thousands of artists, musicians and actors flock to the city's most diverse borough to work in the service industry to supplement their dreams. In March of 2020 these dreamers put their lives on hold, self-isolating and sacrificing their income as Queens became the global epicenter of covid-19. As the weeks go by we follow two local bars fight off the virus, financial ruin and the deaths of loved ones, while the frontline workers battle to slow down the death toll engulfing the borough. Under strict and safe filming guidelines, we witnessed how both industries needed each other in order to bend the curve. It's a tale of two sacrifices that saved not only the lives of thousands but the future of New York.
A Moment On Main Street, directed by Brianna Stimpson, 18 minutes, explores the impact of COVID-19 on one Main St. in the New Jersey and the perspective of the people who own businesses there.
Friday, October 8 - When the Music Changes, Swim to Steven, The Color of You & Lion on the Mat. When the Music Changes, directed by Lakshmi Devy, 47 minutes. Devy is an Indian American filmmaker who goes to India to shoot a documentary and also meet her long distance boyfriend. Trying to keep her sanity while dealing with elements of toxicity around her Devy is at a crossroads in life. An unforeseen incident wipes away her blurry thoughts and brings out the warrior in her.
Swim To Seven, directed by Amy French, 15 minutes. When a middle-aged mother takes her young son to his first swim class, the handsome instructor jogs a memory from her adolescence and uncovers some unresolved issues in this hilariously awkward short that shows you never really grow up.
The Color Of You, directed by Jacob Rodier, 14 minutes. Ash is stuck to a screen like the rest of society. But one day he notices Scarlett, a girl who doesn't seem to fit in with everybody else. As their lives become further intertwined, Ash has to learn to step out of his comfort zone in his quest to find out who Scarlett really is.
Lion on the Mat, directed by Asali Echols, 17 minutes. This short documentary follows Mai Nguyen, a 29 year-old Vietnamese-American martial artist, as she trains for an upcoming Jiu Jitsu match. We witness her training process, and learn how she mentally, as well as physically, prepares. We also see her balance the demands of regular life — job, being a single mother — with training. We meet her four-year-old son Benji, and understand more of the stakes in her decision to keep fighting. Gradually, we learn more about her childhood in Vietnam, her experience immigrating and assimilating to the US, and her return to martial arts as a way to recover from the trauma of her abusive childhood and ex-husband.
Sunday, October 10 - Best of the 2021 NJIFF Program 1 - Full Circle & S T O P. Full Circle, directed by Anne Via McCollough, 76 minutes. Full Circle is a film that celebrates one woman's triumph in conservation: the Great Gull Island Project, Helen Hays' 50-year quest to save two species of threatened seabirds. During her long term study, she vastly increased the numbers of nesting Roseate and Common Terns on a small, uninhabited island in Long Island Sound. The film reveals the nesting season of the terns up close - arrival, courtship, hatching, feeding, fledging - and highlights the myriad of volunteers fostered & inspired by Hays over the decades; her extensive collaboration with scientists in Argentina, Brazil and the Azores; and also her remarkable & heartwarming connection with a small fishing village on the north coast of Brazil. Hays' dedication has helped complete an important circle, not only in conservation efforts, but also in connecting people from all over the globe… people who were once strangers, are now friends & colleagues working together for a common cause. 2021
S T O P, directed by Marieli Froehlich, 16 minutes. We are all almost uninterruptedly exposed to countless unfiltered events, both near and far. Reflecting this kind of overwhelming situations the idea for STOP came up. The project can be understood as an action of deceleration, a call for slowdown from a state of sensory overload, a flood of stimuli, that consequently leads to a restriction of our original perception. Contemplation or meditation, an exercise that has had its place in all cultures, offers people the opportunity to experience oneness within themselves and further leads to a feeling of unity with their fellow men. Referring to this project, people from all walks of life, of all ages, religions and race from around the world were and are invited, to take on a sort of meditative sleep state without preparation or artificial setting in their personal environment and stand still for a few minutes, allowing me to record them. During their brief pause the world keeps turning and the grass still grows. The participants are turning towards silence experiencing a gentle stillness spreading throughout themselves. The goal of that continuing project is to collect as many people as possible to participate in the experiment. Experiencing the projection of an “entire world” of people in contemplation also creates a feeling of oneness and inclusion for the viewers. Division and prejudice, whether racial, religious, gender, class or political believes, are thus consequently eliminated in this moment.
Sunday, October 10 - Best of the 2021 NJIFF Program 2 - Bone Cage & First Light. Bone Cage, directed by Taylor Olson, 79 minutes. In this gorgeous feature film from Nova Scotia, Jamie works operating a wood processor, clear-cutting for pulp. At the end of each shift, he walks through the destruction he has created looking for injured animals, and rescues those he can. Jamie's desire to break free from this world is thwarted by the very environment and circumstance he's trying to escape. Bone Cage is a sensitive examination of the parallels between the toxic ideals of masculinity that children are taught who become men, and how this goes hand in hand with the destruction of our earth.
First Light, directed by Amy Lee Ketchum, 9 minutes. Rising from the sea monster of death, a young woman's ghost leads her grieving sister through the heart of darkness in search of light. The story of First Light is revealed through a synthesis of music and art; a hybrid of traditional hand-cut puppet and hand-drawn 2d character animation with digital effects, and an original classical score. Its poetry is sung by Maren Montalbano and Jessica Beebe, vocalists in Grammy® Award-winning ensembles.
Twenty films will have their New Jersey or Area Premiere (Middlesex County) screenings as part of the New Jersey Film Festival. All the works being screened are part of the Fall 2021 New Jersey Film Festival Competition and were selected by a panel of judges including media professionals, journalists, students, and academics. These judges selected the 20 finalists which will be publicly screened at our Festival. The finalists were selected from over 401 works submitted by filmmakers from around the world. In addition, the judges will choose the Prize Winners in conjunction with the Festival Director. Prize winners will be announced after the screenings on October 10, 2021.
