The Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, and the Rutgers University Program In Cinema Studies present the:
New Jersey Film Festival Fall 2022
Welcome to the Fall 2022 New Jersey Film Festival!
The 41st Bi-Annual Festival will be taking place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between September 9-October 16. The Festival will be a hybrid one as we will be presenting it online as well as doing select in-person screenings at Rutgers University. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. Each ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person screenings. The in-person screenings will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 7PM on their show date.
Tickets: $15=Per Program; Festival All Access Pass=$100.
New Jersey Film Festival Fall 2022 Schedule
Friday, September 9, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
The Sun Rises in the East – Tayo Giwa (Brooklyn, New York)
The Sun Rises in The East chronicles the birth, rise and legacy of The East, a pan-African cultural organization founded in 1969 by teens and young adults in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Led by educator and activist Jitu Weusi, The East embodied Black self-determination, building more than a dozen institutions, including its own African-centered school, food co-op, newsmagazine, publisher, record label, restaurant, clothing shop and bookstore. The organization hosted world-famous jazz musicians and poets at its highly sought-after performance venue, and it served as an epicenter for political contemporaries such as the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords and the Congress of Afrikan People, as well as comrades across Africa and the Caribbean. In effect, The East built an independent Black nation in the heart of Central Brooklyn. The Sun Rises in The East is the first feature-length documentary to explore this inspiring story. The film also examines challenges that led to the organization’s eventual dissolution, including its gender politics, financial struggles and government surveillance. Featuring interviews with leaders of The East, historians and people who grew up in the organization as children, The Sun Rises in The East delivers an exhilarating and compelling vision, showing just how much is possible. 2022; 58 min.
Sunday, September 11, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Howl - Martin Del Carpio and Martin Gerigk (New York, New York)
Experimental collage film where the filmmakers purge their inner demons. 2022; 3 min.
Cabeco – Brian James Crewe (Studio City, California)
A passionate Argentine Tango dance fantasy featuring a woman exploring the sensual and dangerous possibilities presented by a potential new lover. 2022; 8 min.
Soldier Island – Charly Santagado (Metuchen, New Jersey)
Soldier Island is a feature length screen dance loosely based on the best-selling murder mystery novel And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. In the novel, ten characters from various, seemingly unrelated walks of life are invited by an unknown host to spend a weekend at a mysterious mansion on Soldier Island. Within a few hours of arrival, the guests start to be killed off one by one. The death of the guests follow the trajectory of a rhyme that’s framed and hung in each bedroom of the house. 2022; 65 min.
Sunday, September 18, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Little Satchmo – John Alexander (Clearwater, Florida)
To the world, Louis Armstrong is iconic — a symbol of musical genius, unparalleled success, and unassailable character. To Sharon, he was simply Dad. Armstrong’s wholesome, non-threatening image preserved his singular career as a black performer with unfettered access to a white man's world. Yet he was more than a caricature; he had desires, he had longings, and in private, he held tightly to the things he loved. Perhaps closest to his heart was a child whom he hid from the world: a daughter sworn to a life of secrecy until now. 2021; 61 min.
Friday, September 23, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
A Crack In The Mountain - Alastair Evans (Tokyo, Japan)
Deep in the jungle of Central Vietnam, lies a magnificent underground kingdom. Hang Son Doong which translates as “mountain river cave”, is the largest cave passage in the world and a place of spectacular beauty. With more people having climbed Everest than visited Son Doong, its pristine charm has remained undisturbed for millions of years. In 2014, Son Doong’s future was thrown into doubt when plans were announced to build a cable car into the cave. With many arguing that this would destroy its delicate eco-system and the local community divided over the benefits this development would bring, the film follows those caught up in the unfolding events. Beautifully shot and scored, A Crack In The Mountain is a powerful exposé about how both good and bad intentions can ultimately lead to one of the world’s greatest natural wonders being trampled for money. As well as inspire those who care about our natural heritage to fight to protect it. In English and Vietnamese, subtitled. 2022; 100 min.
Friday, September 30, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Shorts Program
The Hauntings of New Hope – Kasey Vincent (New Hope, Pennsylvania)
A short documentary profiling one of the most haunted locations in Pennsylvania; New Hope. Quirky, artsy, historical and haunted, this town is nestled in Bucks County and features The Ghost Tours of New Hope & The Creeper Gallery. 2022; 7 min.
Panta Rei (everything is in flux) – KWA (Fishers, Indiana)
"A New Cinema Where Your Perceptions are the Star"
Come along for this wild white-water ride where everything is becoming and nothing ever is.
A place where each audience members perceptions are the star of the show.
For no one walks into this same river twice; Life is flow in constant flux. 2022; 8 min.
The House - Liang-Chun Lin (Los Angeles, California)
Amy, the kind of person who would steal your vodka and replace it with water, moves into a haunted house for the great rent. She finds herself surrounded by ghosts whose personalities are suspiciously similar to her own. These beings don’t want justice or eternal rest. They want Hulu. They want potato chips. And they expect Amy to help. When Amy can no longer take their harassment, she decides to exorcise them…on a budget, of course. 2022; 9 min.
Urania Leilus – Andrew Serban (New York, New York)
A young female journalist is subjected to death threats and intimidation after witnessing human rights abuses at an ICE detention center for undocumented immigrant children. Urania Leilus is intended to be a warning about what might happen when a democracy succumbs to far-right extremists and descends into fascism — when immigrant children are ripped from their parents and locked up in cages without adequate food or medical care; when journalists and dissidents are regarded as “enemies of the people”, to be harassed, intimidated or "disappeared" by unidentified agents in unmarked vehicles — all of which have occurred (and continue to occur) in authoritarian regimes and have recently occurred in the United States. 2021; 21 min.
Joey Skaggs: Metamorphosis, Cockroach Miracle Cure – Judy Drosd (New York, New York)
Since the 60s, artist Joey Skaggs has pioneered the use of the mass media to make social political commentary. In 1981, Entomologist Dr. Josef Gregor (a.k.a. Joey Skaggs), along with his cult-like clinical volunteers, unveiled his revolutionary Cockroach Vitamin Pill developed to cure all ailments known to man including the common cold, acne, anemia, and menstrual cramps. It also made people invulnerable to nuclear radiation and could save humanity from self-annihilation. This short documentary is the sixth in the ongoing short film series of oral histories, "Joey Skaggs: Satire and Art Activism, 1960s to the Present... and Beyond". 2022; 27 min.
Wine and Fox - Chuanfa Wan (Shanghai, China)
A communication between wine and poetry, sex and spirit, emotion and love. A middle-aged couple trapped in a mediocre life, whose affections were stagnant and unable to communicate. Under the effect of alcohol and poetry, the couple suddenly started a dreamlike journey. In the blurred dreamland, they stirred up the memories of love in youth, inspected the hidden secrets deep in their heart, and became the most secret and valued misplaced lovers of each other. In Chinese, subtitled. 2022; 30 min.
Sunday, October 2, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Sign the Show: Deaf Culture, Access & Entertainment – Cat Brewer (Las Vegas, Nevada)
Sign the Show: Deaf Culture, Access & Entertainment brings together entertainers, the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HOH) community, and American Sign Language (ASL) interpreters to discuss accessibility at live performances in a humorous, heartfelt, and insightful way. 2021; 96 min.
Saturday, October 8, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!
Saving Strays - Michelle Dragun (New Brunswick, New Jersey)
Saving Strays is a short documentary film about Lauren Dragun who details her emotional journey of saving stray cats. 2022; 10 min.
Frontier – Tymofii Biniukov (Kyiv, Ukraine)
This film was shot in the last days before the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war. Natalia has been living in peaceful Kharkiv for a long time, she considers it her home. Her mother wants to return to Luhansk, which is occupied by militants, because she was born there. So, Natalie makes her way to her native city to check on her parents' house. But the area is already strange to her. And not strange at the same time. In Ukrainian and Russian, subtitled. 2022; 15 min.
Rebuilt from Broken Glass – Larry Hanover (Voorhees, New Jersey)
At age 12, Fred Behrend’s life was ripped apart. He was living 65 miles from home with the family of Cantor Max Baum so he could attend a secular Jewish school after the Nazis banned Jews from public school. In November 1938, he witnessed the horrors of Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), seeing synagogue after synagogue torched in the city of Cologne. Fred did not know that back home, his father, like 30,000 other Jewish males, had been arrested for transport to a concentration camp. All Fred knew was that his idyllic time with the Baum family and his friend Henry was over. His mother frantically sent a car to pick him up. Fred’s family lost most of its material possessions. But they escaped to Cuba and, eventually, America. Fred would turn the tables in 1946 as an American GI. He was part of a little-known denazification initiative called the Intellectual Diversion program at a Virginia military base. Selected for his ability to speak German and his counterintelligence training, Fred was taught by elite professors to give crash courses to German POWs about American-style democracy. In his later years, Fred began to speak to schoolchildren about his Holocaust past. In 2018, he was speaking to students at a Jewish day school on the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht about that fateful day and his friend Henry Baum. The head of the school left the room for 10 minutes and returned later holding a cellphone. He handed it to Fred. On the line was Henry Baum. Soon they would meet—in one more powerful victory over Hitler and the Nazis. 2022; 40 min.
Sunday, October 9, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours!
Vertigo – Haruo Inoue (Shinjuku, Japan)
Gozo Yoshimasu, a pioneer of Japanese contemporary poetry, pursued the vision of his ally, the late Jonas Mekas in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The time is the end of January 2020, just before the coronavirus strikes NYC, and the trip is just in time. This film depicts the dramatic birth of a poem that could be called a requiem on the first anniversary of the death of Mekas, who was considered a giant of experimental cinema. “Why are your poems and films so shaky?” Someone asked this question to Jonas Mekas, the poet deemed the godfather of American avant-garde cinema. Mekas replied “My life is shaky.” In English and Japanese, subtitled. 2022; 118 min.
Saturday, October 15, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours!
Best of the Summer 2022 New Jersey International Film Festival
The Mental State – James Camali (Brooklyn, New York)
In the heart of rural Kentucky, a high school senior and his family struggle to cope with the true identity and intentions of a dangerous town shooter. The film follows Andy Cady, an artistic loner, as he covertly follows the directives of a local, Navy SEAL veteran, Dylan. Dylan convinces Andy to believe destructive conspiracies. Andy's impoverished, single mother, Angela, worries about Andy's health and safety when Andy's recent erratic behavior and beliefs causes him to emotionally harm a fellow student. Angela tries to find resources she needs to keep Andy out of trouble until the film crescendos with a tragedy at the local high school. 2022; 105 min.
Sunday, October 16, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours!
Best of the Summer 2022 New Jersey International Film Festival
Composition – Paul Sestakov (Austin, Texas)
An experimental tale of a young grieving mother whose intense connection to her art has taken a dark turn. 2021; 13 min.
Eureka – Miida Chu (Toluca Lake, California)
A young indentured Chinese prostitute must overcome her toxic dependency on the brothel madam on the eve of the 1885 anti-Chinese riot in Eureka, California. In English and Cantonese, subtitled. 2021; 15 min.
Self Defense - Joni Whitworth and Sam Tam Ham (Portland, Oregon)
Self Defense is a short film documenting a poetic performance art piece. The piece explores my time navigating the world as a neurodivergent person. Neurodivergence refers to variations in the human mind — variations in sociability, learning, mood, sensory processing, and behavior. Many people are leaning towards the word "neurodivergent", and away from the word "autistic". I don't mind what term we use, so long as we can have a creative conversation about the label's implications. Against the violence and degradation of this year, marginalized creatives are tasked with generating an equal and opposite response. This piece is an attempt at such, knowing that queer and autistic writers have a lot to offer in terms of social and cultural feedback and constructive criticism. The work addresses several cultural issues, including how an autistic person can defend a Self moving through various categories of spaces and relationships. The words unfold as slowly, in juxtaposition to the most commonly known cultural narrative of autism, which is that of Rain Man or a weird or quirky man. Many other types of people are autistic; there are dozens of unexplored autistic elements, areas that may be not related to math or memorizing facts but details that are more generous, emotional, or sensual. 2021; 20 min.
Bendix: Sight Unseen - Anthony Scalia – (Lodi, New Jersey)
Surrounded by highway traffic sits the unassuming Bendix Diner, owned and operated by John Diakakis. As the blind, single father of three young children who also work at the diner, John attempts to address and overcome his obstacles in order to provide a better life for his family. 2021; 26 min.
General Information:
Welcome to the Fall 2022 New Jersey Film Festival!
The 41st Bi-Annual Festival will be taking place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between September 9-October 16. The Festival will be a hybrid one as we will be presenting it online as well as doing select in person screenings at Rutgers University. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. Each ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in-person screenings. The in-person screenings will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at 7PM on their show date. Tickets: $15=Per Program; Festival All Access Pass=$100.
Live Screenings Info, Location, Directions and Parking:
Face coverings and proof of vaccination will be required for the in-person screenings.
Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ = Take the NJ Turnpike to Exit 9 and then take Route 18N (New Brunswick direction) and go for 2 1/2 miles to the College Avenue Campus/George Street exit (immediately after the Route 27S exit). Make a left at the light at the end of the exit ramp onto George Street, then go to the next light and make a right onto Hamilton Street. Then go to the next light and make a right onto College Avenue. Almost immediately on your righthand side you’ll see a University Parking Lot (#9) which is made available for New Jersey Film Festival patrons to park in. Voorhees Hall is adjacent to the Zimmerli Art Museum and is 100 paces across the Voorhees Mall from Parking Lot 9. Patrons can also park in Rutgers Lots #1 (next to Kirkpatrick Chapel) and #16 (next to Murray and Milledoler Halls).
A map and directions can also be accessed online here
Note: Parking in the lots listed above are only for visitors to the University.
Faculty, staff, and students must park only in the lots they are authorized to park in.
Visitor vehicles must be registered prior to parking here.
Information
New Jersey Film Festival
Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center
Rutgers University Program in Cinema Studies
4170 Academic Building, 15 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, New Jersey, 08901-8525 U.S.A.
Phone: (848) 932-8482
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Websites: www.njfilmfest.com
https://watch.eventive.org/newjerseyfilmfestivalfall2021
Sponsors:
The New Jersey Film Festival is funded and/or sponsored in part by The Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center; The Rutgers University Program in Cinema Studies/School of Arts and Sciences; Middlesex County, a partner of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts - Funding has been provided by the Middlesex County Board of County Commissioners through a grant award from the Middlesex County Cultural and Arts Trust Fund; The Rutgers University Office of Summer and Winter Sessions; OVID/Icarus Films, The Rutgers University American Studies Department; Rutgers University School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program; The Rutgers University Zimmerli Art Museum; The Rutgers University Writer’s House; The Rutgers University Office of Disability Services, WRSU; New Jersey Stage; The Home News, The Asbury Park Press; New Brunswick City Center; The Rutgers University Office of Community Affairs; Design Ideas; Advanced Printing; Steven C. Schechter, Esq.; Share and Harris.
Rutgers Film Co-op/NJMAC 2022 Staff
Executive Director/Curator: Albert Gabriel Nigrin
Office and House Managers: Katie Scrivani, Hamsa Hassan, Dana Lauria, Jennifer Stanilla
Volunteers/Interns: Justin Almodovar, Claire Apel, Isabelle Bonvini, Michelle Dragun, Jude Anthony Ferrigno, Alexia Fraser, Dennis Geissler, Jack Greenberg, Thomas Kozakiewicz, Alexandra Mazza, Yazmin Omana, Emily Ranieri, Rebecca Raush, Sahar Saiyed, Jordan Sickafoose, Loren Simon, Natalie Tango, Vanessa Tirok
Advisors: Bob Brodsky, Victoria Connor, Matthew Maginley, Dr. Susan Martin-Marquez, Dr. Daniel Nigrin, Dr. Meheli Sen, Toni Treadway, and Dr. Alan Williams
Board of Trustees: Dr. Irene Fizer, Bill Harris, Albert Gabriel Nigrin, and Steven C. Schechter, Esq.