Festival of Cinema NYC returns to the Regal UA Midway and the Queens Library at Forest Hills for its 7th year, August 3 – August 13. The festival opens with Christina Kallas’ indie NYC favorite Paris in Harlem and closes with Anna Baumgarten’s multiple award-winning drama Disfluency. Dito Montiel will be honored with FOC NYC’s inaugural Achievement in Filmmaking Award in conjunction with a special screening of his film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and Greg Brownderville and Bart Weiss’ groundbreaking Southern Gothic multi-media project Fire Bones will be presented live in New York City for the first time.
World premieres include Isaac Dell’s Boys At Twenty, and North American premieres include Aly Yeganeh’s Sibel’s Silence, Pelayo De Lario’s Tales of Babylon (above), and Cindy Drukier’s The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told.
After a pre-launch party inside Resorts World NYC’s famous 360º Bar and Lounge (110-0 Rockaway Blvd) on Wednesday, August 3, FOC NYC will screen over 100 independent films from local filmmakers as well as world cinema representing countries that include Turkey, Spain, Denmark, The Philippines, Germany, and more.
New initiatives and presentations include participating in the Theaters Unsilenced Initiative. A nonprofit organization founded by three sisters in Queens whose mission is to spread awareness and provide educational resources and tools to help improve communication with the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. As part of the initiative, participating filmmakers have added subtitles and captioning to aid in making the festival accessible to individuals with hearing impairment.
This year, FOC NYC has invited organizations that offer further resources to filmmakers. Phil Cappadora, founder of The Astoria Filmmaker Club, will host a seminar discussing how to get involved with the community of filmmakers based in Queens. The film festival will also include a special screening block of selected short films from members of Ghetto Film School – a Bronx-based organization dedicated to educating and developing the next generation of great storytellers. Other seminars include a presentation by entertainment lawyer Patrick Kondas, on the legalities of filmmaking and contracts; cinematographer Ray Preziosi will be holding a Cinematography workshop; and crowdfunding expert Melissa Center will talk about raising funds for indie film production. In addition, this year’s festival welcomes FoHI Improv, allowing attendees to participate in an improv 101 demonstration and an interactive presentation by members of The Station House Reading Series.
Also, new this year will be the addition of a script writing competition where 13 un-produced scripts will compete for top honors. Attendees will be given the opportunity to attend a live staged reading of each of the 13 Finalists.
Along with its presentation of more than 100 screenings, and FOC NYC’s popular Red Carpet entrances flush with seemingly countless filmmakers, actors, documentary subjects, and below-the-line talent, the festival will also offer filmmaking seminars and workshops, that are entirely free and open to the public, at the Queens Library in Forest Hills. The jam-packed week and a half of screenings and events will conclude with an Awards Ceremony on August 13th at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center in Jamaica Queens.
Festival of Cinema NYC Founder and Executive Director Jayson Simba, said, “This year’s edition of the film festival embraces the idea of not simply screening our films and celebrating our filmmakers, but underlining the ‘festival’ in “’film festival’, by emphasizing the connection of filmmaker to audience member via our panels, discussions, and Q&As, focusing on our accessibility, and increasing the interactive nature of FOC NYC. It always begins and ends with great films, but it becomes special by highlighting why we love to come to the movie theater and the artistic accomplishments of our filmmakers.”
Christina Kallas’ drama Paris Is In Harlem opens the film festival on Thursday, August 4. The film involves the lives of several strangers intertwining during a shooting at a jazz club in Harlem on the eve of New York City’s controversial “No Dancing” Law getting repealed. The screening will be preceded by Miguel Gallardo’s short film, Herizon. Anna Baumgarten’s Disfluency, a winner of several awards on the film festival circuit., closes FOC NYC on Sunday, August 13. The film follows a promising scholar who returns home without graduating as she deals with the PTSD resulting from the incident that sent her spiraling. The screening will be preceded by John Cappello’s short film, Floppies.
Images: Tales of Babylon, Where is the Lie and Paris is in Harlem
Provided courtesy of Wildworks PR
For further info please visit https://www.festivalofcinemanyc.com/
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