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Best of the 2024 New Jersey International Film Festival + Free Screening


By Al Nigrin

originally published: 10/02/2024



Still from Sean Pecknold's Tennis, Oranges!

This Friday, October 4 the Fall 2024 New Jersey Film Festival will screen the Best of the 2024 New Jersey International Film FestivalSome of the prize-winning films from this past June’s 2024 New Jersey International Film Festival will be shown online only on this date for 24 hours. Films include: Tennis, Oranges – Sean Pecknold (Winner Best Animation); INFINITY! – Benjamin To (Winner Best Short) and FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM!  – Peter Flynn (Winner Best Documentary). Here is more info on these below. 

Tennis, Oranges – Sean Pecknold (Los Angeles, California)

A robotic vacuum suffering from burnout quits its job at a hospital and sets out to find community and a greater purpose on a quiet street where two lonely rabbits are stuck in perpetual loops. 2023; 11 min.

INFINITY! – Benjamin To (Chino Hills, California) A famous Japanese-American ballroom dance duo must choose between their passion or their lives as WWII concentration camps begin to rise in the U.S. 2023; 12 min.

FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! – Peter Flynn (Wakefield, Massachussets)  FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! explores the vanishing world of private film collecting—an obsessive, secretive, often illicit world of basement film vaults, piled-high with forgotten reels, inhabited by passionate cinephiles devoted to the rescue and preservation of photochemical film. Condemned as pirates and hounded by the FBI, film collectors have long lurked in the shadows. Yet their efforts have resulted in the survival of countless films that would otherwise have been lost to history. Archives and studios now look to private hands for long-lost titles and many collectors have begun restoring and releasing films themselves. As analog film fades from memory, the basement-dwellers and bootleggers of old are finally being given their due. FILM IS DEAD. LONG LIVE FILM! is a lively tribute to the private film collector, a celebration of the fetishistic subculture of pre-video movie-love, and a timely reminder of the glories of analog film. 2024; 102 min.




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Also, the Fall 2024 New Jersey Film Festival will be presenting a FREE 50th Anniversary screening of 3 Days On Big City Waters in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 5PM . This environmental documentary documents a trip taken Labor Day Weekend 1973 by Rutgers University Emeritus Professors Michael Rockland and Charles Woolfolk, who traveled by canoe from Princeton, N.J. to Manhattan. There will be a Q+A after the screening with Prof. Rockland. 

The 43rd Bi-Annual New Jersey Film Festival will be taking place on select Fridays and Sundays through October 18, 2024. The Festival will be a hybrid one as it will be presented online as well as doing in-person screenings at Rutgers University. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. VoD start times are at 12 Midnight Eastern USA. Each General Admission Ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person screenings. Plus, acclaimed electronic music artist Jim Haynes will be doing an audio-visual concert on Friday, October 18 at 7PM! The in-person screenings and the Jim Haynes Concert will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 5PM or 7PM on their show date. General Admission Ticket=$15 Per Program;  In-Person Only Student Ticket=$10 Per Program. The Sunday, October 6 screening is FREE! General Admission Jim Haynes Concert Ticket=$25. To buy tickets go here

 

 

 



Albert Gabriel Nigrin is an award-winning experimental media artist whose work has been screened throughout the world. He is also a Cinema Studies Lecturer at Rutgers University, and the Executive Director/Curator of the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, Inc.




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EVENT PREVIEWS

Immersive

Immersive The Hollowing screens at the 2025 New Jersey Film Festival on February 1st!

The Hollowing, directed by Steven Weinzierl, follows a couple as they try an experimental therapy to test the compatibility of their relationship. They are placed into a sleep state and are put into a false reality together. This dream-like version of their life showcases the mundane, everyday scenarios of a relationship to the more supernatural and grotesque elements that are unearthed by this therapy. It starts off with relatable feelings of relationship trouble while introducing and building up who the characters are and their relationship to each other, before taking dramatic turns and heightening the stakes of the relationship between the two as the therapy procedure continues. The film plays with the line between reality and dream in a way that is both noticeable and unnoticeable, creating a sense of suspense that is only heightened by the events unfolding onscreen. The film also showcases stellar cinematography and lighting that make the false reality just as immersive for the audience as it is for the characters.



Emotive

Emotive short Phantom Limb plays at the New Jersey Film Festival on February 1!

Alice Jokela’s Phantom Limb is an experimental short film that immerses the audience in the emotional journey of navigating trauma and the search for autonomy. The short film centers on Violetta (Shay Yu), a young woman who lost her right arm in an electrical shock accident while tagging in an underground railroad with her boyfriend. With her body forever altered, Vi wrestles to build a sense of identity while coping with the emotional impact of her trauma. In an interview with The New Jersey Film Festival, Jokela expressed her intention to create a film focused on female rage and the overt trauma that often goes overlooked or misunderstood because of the internal, invisible nature of pain. This is reflected in the short film, as those around Vi misperceive her emotional scars. Vi’s story emphasizes how internal trauma can be complex for others to recognize, especially when it’s not immediately visible.



Two

Two riveting shorts The Hollowing and Brooklyn screen at the New Jersey Film Festival on February 1!

How a filmmaker utilizes certain filmmaking techniques holds the power to change the film in immeasurable ways. Achieving the best look and flow of the film requires evaluating things such as lighting, color, and composition and determining how they can be applied. The outcome of these evaluations is a carefully articulated and well-done film that crafts an interesting narrative told not just through storytelling but through every part of the film. Two examples of this are The Hollowing, by Steve Weinzierl, and Brooklyn, by Timur Guseynov, both films that tell their stories well through various cinematography and filmmaking language techniques such as color, lighting, and frame composition.



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It’s A to Z: The Art of Arleen Schloss New Jersey Film Festival Filmmaker Video Interview

Al Nigrin, Executive Director and Curator of the New Jersey Film Festival, sits down with Stuart Ginsberg, Director of It's A to Z: The Art of Arleen Schloss, for a filmmaker video interview at EBTV.



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Timely Documentary We Are Not Machines screens at the New Jersey Film Festival on February 2!

Although the necessity for the film is troubling, the people followed throughout We Are Not Machines (No Somos Máquinas) turn a horrible situation into fuel for reconstruction, choosing to fight with passion and determination against the system that affects them rather than passively falling victim to it.