30th Black Maria Film Festival - Season Finale

The International Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival will return to its home turf on Saturday evening, 15October for its North Jersey finale event. Director and Founder, John Columbus will present a selection of spirited and provocative award films from the 30th Annual Festival. The Black Maria’s name is taken from the world’s first motion picture studio built in 1893 by Thomas Edison in West Orange, NJ. The 15 October program caps the Festival’s tour to 70 institutions from coast to coast and begins at 8 PM at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex County, 35 Cleveland Street, Orange, NJ, just a stone’s throw from the birthplace of the motion pictures. Award winning documentaries, animation, experimental and mixed genre shorts will be included in the screening. Local filmmakers’ work will also be seen. Following a year begun in Poland where the Black Maria commenced its 30th Season, Columbus promises that the Orange program will be the most fetching in the Festival’s 30th season. This very special program’s is $10, and will include refreshments served in the “afterglow” reception on site. The program will be drawn from the sampler of award films listed below.

For more information on Black Maria or this showing, contact Frank Barszcz at 973-324-9351 or John Columbus at 201-200-2043. Refreshments are included in the admission which is $10.

The First Unitarian Universalist Church of Essex is a life-affirming liberal religious community that keeps an open mind to the religious questions people have struggled with at various times and places. It values personal experience, conscience and reason as the final authorities in religion; that the end religious authority lies not in a book or person or institution, but in ourselves. Sunday worship begins at 10:30 AM, September though June, with liturgy, fellowship, music and conversation.

For more information, please visit http://essexuu.org/, email info@essexuu.org, or phone 973-674-0010.

FEATURES
Mrs. Buck in Her Prime – 9.5 min. (2010) by Eric Yates Green, Washington, NC
Mrs. Buck in Her Prime is a tender, joyful documentary portrait of a spirited 104 year-old African American choir director whose music swings to her inner muse in her small hometown of Washington, North Carolina. This uplifting film captures the spirit of a true American heroine Jurors’ Choice Selection

The Stitches Speak - 12 min (2009) by Nina Sabnani, Mumbai, India
Fabric art graces this intriguing animation/documentary tracing Kutch artisans’ journeys between Pakistan and India in the forming the Kala Raksha Trust and School for Design. The women’s appliqués and embroideries reveal a powerful narrative in this visually rich work. Stellar Award - Animation Selection

The Burning Wigs of Sedition – 9:22 min. (2010) by Anna Fitch, San Francisco
An untamed, irreverent, and fractured pseudo musical set in the belly of a square-rigger bound for a crazed bacchanal. Stellar Open Style Selection.

Stanley Pickle – 11.33 min. (2010) Vicky Mather, Berkshire, England
A comic “pixilated” live action animation in which the quirky main character, Stanley Pickle, a 20 year old, never goes leaves the house where he lives with his parents. He likes to play with his clockwork toys and every night his mother kisses him goodnight. The trouble is that Stanley thinks this is all quite normal, until he spies a mysterious girl in the meadow outside his window. She turns his world upside down. The film premiered at the Edinburgh Film Festival and was given the McLaren Award for New British Animation. Jurors' Choice Selection

Steeples - 2.75 min. (2009) by Bryan Papciak, Providence, RI
Out of the blue comes one of the most insane animated films in the Festival’s 30th season. Church steeples inexplicably launch themselves into the stratosphere and beyond in a satirical nod to the classic Stanley Krubrick film “2001” and “Startrek.”

New London Calling - 10 min. (2010) by Alla Kovgan, Somerville, MA and Moscow, Russia
New London Calling is zestful urban dance film shot on location in New London, Connecticut. A tribe of 75 young people take over the city waterfront, playing sidewalk games, running, jumping, simply being exuberant. The youth’s extraordinary energy and individuality caught through the lens of an extraordinary cinematographer make this a truly enchanting experience.

Grandpa Looked Like William Powell – 4.33 min. (2010) by David Levy, Brooklyn, NY
An offbeat, witty, ironic and universally appealing animation in which a grandson considers his grandfather’s high school graduation autograph album and playfully deflates life’s truisms.

Hail – 3 min. (2010) by Emily Hubley, South Orange, NJ
This whimsical hand drawn animation is based on a song composed and performed by the musician Hamell on Trial. Hubley’s art illustrates the song about three hate-crime victims who meet up in heaven. This lyrical piece was created as part of a documentary by Vic Campos about the song’s composer.

Irma – 12.25 min. (2010) by Charles Fairbanks, Lexington, NE
Irma is a droll, feminist character portrait of Irma Gonzalez, the former world champion of women’s professional wrestling. Filmed in Cudad Nezahualcoyoti – a notorious district of Mexico City – Irma’s slays her X husband’s machismo in a spunky recording written and produced by Ms. Gonzalez. The film is a colorful yet tender portrait of a strong willed woman.

Just About Famous – 14.50 min. (2009) by Jason Kovalsev and Matt Mamula, c/o Blue Collar Films, Los Angeles, CA
This film is full of shtick. Is that actually Robert DeNiro doing a sort of standup routine about the hassles of being recognized? Oprah, Whoppie Goldberg, Sarah Palin, Britney Spears, Robin Williams, Dame Edna, President’s Obama and George Bush and Elvis populate this spoof-like documentary. Celebrity look-alikes often started in the early 1980s with singing telegrams through entertainment companies and can be talented in their own right.

Fatum! - 9 min. (2010) by Pablo Millan, Galicia, Spain
“The word Fatum refers to a boundless force against free will” – Friedrich Nietzche. Tchaikovsky wrote a symphonic poem (Opus 77) and there was a 1915 Dutch silent drama titled Fatum. Also there was a class French film series by Louis Feuillade titled Fantømos as well as later iterations of the original text by writer Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre about a master criminal. Elements of Pablo Millan’s short seems to conjure up a bit of the feel and lool of the Feuillade film but it’s technique is extraordinarily original. The protagonist finds himself in media loop, running through newspaper and media coverage of events which prompt his sudden insertion into the print and electronic realm. A most engaging work.

A City Symphony Underground - 12 min. (2010) by Catherine Stratton, Maplewood, NJ
In an homage to classic documentaries such as “Berlin: Symphony of City” (1927), by Walter Ruttman and “Manhatta” (1921) by Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler, Catherine Stratton’s work is arranged in movements that evoke her subject’s daily shifting timbre. In the case of A City Symphony Underground, the topic is the New York City subway system, shot in an intimate, highly observational manner. Blending footage shot in 1905, six months after the subway opened, with present day scenes the film captures the spirit, energy and rhythms of the people and the textures and colors of the underground marvel in all of its gritty beauty.

Carpe Diem - 5 min. (2010) by Alison Neale, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
This is a campy and rowdy musical satire, set aboard a corporate jet flight from oil crazed Houston, Texas to Ft. McMurray, the capital of the Alberta, and the Canadian Oil Tar Sands. The “VP” of Hexxon Oil sings of his love of the earth and its environment including all that lies above and below it. The “VP” is confronted by a singing two-headed fish; evidence of big oil’s environmental impact in this over-the-top hors-d’oeuvre operetta.

Pinburgh - 5 min. (2010) by Doug Cooper, Pittsburgh, PA
Pinburgh is a highly inventive musical fantasy, combining live action and digital animation techniques. The piece is set in Pittsburgh’s hilly industrial landscape. A live actor is seen dancing down a drawn set of steps and into a bar where a patron plays a game of pinball. As balls bounce out of the bar and about into the city, they activate drawings which conjure up the perspectives of M.C. Escher yet retain an originality that reflects a quirky and witty sense of humor. Jurors’ Citation Selection

Earl Butz – 2.5 min. (2010) by Dorothea Braemer, Buffalo, NY
Filmmaker Braemer has created an inventive, edgy and biting “Pop Art” collage which critiques the dominance of “agribusiness” and its impact on American family farm. The filmmaker points to Earl Butz, the 18th (1971-1976) U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under President Richard Nixon as the culprit whose mantra was “get big or get out” led to the decline of the family farm. The low tech stylistic originality of this piece is as important as the message.