23rd Annual Film Festival 2022
CLICK HERE FOR 8 MEG PDF POSTER FOR THIS YEARS FILM FESTIVAL
Woodstock Museum 23rd Annual Free Film Festival
SEPT 2 - FRIDAY
6:45PM Opening Ceremony Nathan Koenig & Shelli Lipton
7PM Daughter Father Food Forest When the pandemic forces Katie to make big changes in her life, she moves into her fathers home to start a backyard food forest.
Director Biography - Katie Kamala Haley
I am a graduate of the film program at Palm Beach College-2020. So far I have written, directed and produced 4 short films. To my amazement I have won several film festival awards which I consider to be an honor and a sign that I am progressing along my path.
7:06 Waiting in the Wings How will these two non-profit California theaters survive as they reopen during the Covid 19 pandemic?
A short documentary that follows Five Star Theatricals and Teatro Frida Kahlo, two non-profit theaters in southern California as they attempt to reopen amidst the Covid19 pandemic. With the threat of surging coronavirus cases and bureaucratic hurdles, how will they save the art form that has sustained them both financially and emotionally?
Director Biography - Josie Andrews
Josie Andrews is a third-year MFA candidate at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. A double Trojan, she graduated as the Salutatorian of USC's class of 2018, receiving her bachelor’s degree in Cinema and Media Studies while holding internships at Lionsgate, NBC Universal, London Alley Entertainment, and The Weinstein Company. The New Jersey Native began performing professionally at the age of eight, touring with Broadway musicals and appearing in countless Off-Broadway and regional productions before going on to write and record her own music. By thirteen, she was opening for Radio Disney acts including Raven Symone and the Naked Brothers Band. She is currently completing her thesis film, WANNABE which she wrote, directed, and created original music for to culminate her time at USC.
Director Statement
I fell in love with theatre when I was three years old. Growing up in New Jersey, my parents would take me through the Holland Tunnel every December to see a new show on Broadway. By the time I was eight, I was searching Backstage.com for open calls, begging anyone and everyone in our phonebook to take me and ultimately booking my first national tour. From there on, I was inducted into a diverse community that would raise me to respect, embrace and celebrate so many people different from myself. While the arts at large have served as a space for meaning-making, healing, and joy since the beginning of time, live theatre provides a unique kind of magic that can’t be recreated or replaced. It provides not just a living for hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, but a sense of purpose for countless others, myself included.
Facing this dark and uncertain moment in history, laden with death, isolation, and hardship, the future of theatre was the last thing on people’s minds. Some say theatre has been dying a slow death for the past five hundred years. After twenty years of performing for seas of silver-haired patrons, I couldn’t help but wonder who might fill their seats when they were no longer with us. And after eighteen months of Broadway sitting dark, I couldn’t help but fear that this might be the nail in the coffin. But while most wouldn’t give a second thought to theatre’s dwindling place in the world, for some it remains their entire world. This is the story of two communities who lost their work, identities, and purpose in the pandemic and their fight to get it back. This film is an ode to my first love, a celebration of coming back together, and a promise that no matter what tomorrow brings the show will go on.
7:30 Nurture Animation of an infant's first nourishment of milk provides love & sustenance between mother & child.
Director Biography - Ying-Fang Shen
Ying-Fang Shen is a Taiwanese independent filmmaker with advanced training in ink painting and digital art. Her work reflects experiments in painting, illustration, digital filmmaking and animation that are heavily influenced by the handmade aesthetics of traditional East Asian art and Taoist philosophy.
7:40 Town Band A personal tribute to a small town story of a woman’s childhood and vanishing rural life in Sullivan County, NY. Q&A
Director Biography - Alice Elliott
Alice Elliott is an Academy Award nominated documentary director for The Collector of Bedford Street, an advocate for people with disabilities through inclusive media, and Area Head of Documentary Studies at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts.
A Guggenheim Fellow award recipient, Ms. Elliott makes training films and branded content that use high quality visuals and people with disabilities to tell their own stories. As a media diversity and accessibility consultant, she develops programs for corporations, governments agencies and non-profits.
She and Emmy Award winner Jason DaSilva are co-directing a feature film, The Dismantled. Her PBS Award winning documentary Body & Soul: Diana & Kathy is now being made into a musical.
Recently she completed Miracle on 42nd Street, a documentary about affordable housing for artists for that won a 2020 NY Emmy Award for Best Documentary. Through her social media presence, she tweets regularly on topical disability news. Currently she is developing an app on the history of disability rights.
Director’s statement: Although I’ve been coming to rural Sullivan County, NY for 37 years, in some ways I’m still an outsider. This is the place where my husband grew up, went to high school and moved away from, only to be drawn back every summer by the beauty, memories, and his small-town heart. I was born in North Carolina and raised in a small town in Pennsylvania. My husband and I share a respect for the lessons we learned in these towns and it has been one of the foundations of our marriage. Community, respect, privacy, humor, and self-sufficiency are some of the values we share. My husband always said he learned to get along with everyone because, coming from a small town, you couldn’t afford to go around making enemies. There was nothing disposable about the people you lived near. They were your neighbors and that made them important.
This film is a highly personal tribute to the small town of my childhood and the vanishing rural life some of us remember. As a child, I was also a musician and learned to play the flute. Making music, theatre and film is something I still cling to and pass on. As a teacher at New York University in the Film School, I’m able to continue working with young artists, encouraging them in new story-telling traditions. Art, artists, and community are bound together since the beginning of mankind. They flourish together and make each other possible.
8:15 Searching for Zachary Richard Singer, songwriter, environmentalist with musical roots in Louisiana Cajun culture.
Director Biography - Crocque / Hoffman
After a stint in Fine Arts and English studies. Stéphane Crocquey was for two years a French-language assistant in Dublin and then in London. On his return to France, he was a radio host for the Ferarock network. It was then that he crossed paths with authors passing through Lille and developed his talent as an interview leader in the company of Howard Butten, Michel Onfray, Pascal Brückner, Amélie Nothomb or Charles Aznavour...
At the same time, he scored the music scenes with two rock song groups : Cépheïd's and Vereeck. Caught up by his passion for the image, an audiovisual diploma in his pocket, he freelances and signs many subjects on culture, environmental protection and the social and solidarity economy in the region. Trained in documentary writing by Pictanovo, the image community of the Hauts de France region, he directed in 2013 a documentary on the question of origins in a village in the Pas-de-Calais that hosts a migrant camp. In 2015, he wrote and co-directed the documentary "Les enfants de la dune".
In 2017, he signed the transposition for the web of this walk-movie that goes to meet the inhabitants of the coast of the North Sea. In parallel with his work as an author, he is, since 2018, head of audiovisual projects within Volutes Media
9PM Globes The bond between humans and bees. "We don't live to work. We work to live," says a beekeeper.
While dancing, bees tell each other stories about the world around them. People also claim a role in those stories, sometimes very close and intimate, sometimes distant and on an industrial scale. Nina de Vroome's thoughts also swarm with the bees: from the smallest cell in a honeycomb to the global economy, her essayistic nature documentary Globes charts the bond between humans and bees. As accomplished storytellers, they both give shape to their lives under the sun.
Director Biography - Nina de Vroome
Nina de Vroome (1989) is an independent filmmaker. She studied film at KASK / School of Arts in Ghent. Her graduation work Waves (2013) is a reflection on sound and the way it influences senses of community. In 2016 she completed A Sea Change, a feature documentary film about a maritime boarding school near the Belgian coast. The short documentary A Dog’s Luck (2018) is a portrait of a group of police dogs during their training. Her films were shown at international festivals like Visions du Réel and International Film Festival Rotterdam. She is a writer and editor for Sabzian, a Belgian magazine on cinema. As a teacher she is involved in various educational projects. She makes collages and engages in collaborations as a sound engineer and editor.
Director Statement
The title refers to a notion of ‘worlds’, of which the earth comprises many. The documentary considers our globalized economy, but also the landscapes around the beehive. The microlevel is thus always connected to the macro-level, the local to the global. In Globes, bonds are forged between culture and nature and the ways in which the concept of 'ecology' can be given meaning are explored. Through these encounters, the film both wanders and always returns to its core, much like the bees which fly around on the hunt for flowers return to their hives laden with nectar.
SEPT 3 - SATURDAY
7PM A Tumba Abierta Animated retrospective of The Beatles myriad transformations.
An introspective fable about a musical and artistic movement, where the figure of Alfredo Calonge (1961-2014), one of the greatest exponents of this genre, being the leitmotiv of the same, and at the same time introduces us to an urban subculture in which a group of multifaceted artists developed; musicians, painters, editors and publishers of fanzines, record labels, recording studios, music venues, promoters, illustrators, or DJs, in addition to the public, who attended all the events and who animated for more than a decade this city, consolidating the bases that led in the mid-nineties to coin the term 'Swinging Barcelona' for that time and that community.
7:20 Digital Champions Leading the Fight Against FGM in Tanzania Gender based violence monitored with smartphone app.
Girls at risk of FGM in Mara, Tanzania live in very remote villages, far from the rule of law. Digital Champions help map these villages to ensure girls can be found quickly, especially in the middle of the night when most calls for urgent help are received, particularly during the “cutting season”. They also educate their communities and report cases of Gender Based Violence using a free smartphone app.
Director Biography - Steven Hervieu
Stephen Hervieu is a producer/director at Tigervision. He has extensive experience producing inspirational video content for a wide range of commercial, government and NGO clients.
Director Statement
I like to give back where I can and am proud to have contributed my services FOC to this very worthwhile campaign.
7:25 Veral Is understanding possible between city slickers & this reclusive community? Urban/rural divide takes a newspaperman to High Plains, CO.Q&A
Haze, “big-city” newspaperman, searches the High Plains for a “country-flavor” story for the Post. The urban/rural divide is palpable the moment he arrives. Is understanding possible between city slickers and this reclusive community? His search leads him to the Veral "Wax" Museum, presided over by solitary teen Alicia. The basement houses the town’s mummified dead, preserved through her forebears' formula, dating from the Homestead Act. Alone in this stark tomb, Alicia seeks to transfigure the irrevocable law of life and death while Haze's deadline hangs in the balance.
Director Biography - Erin Lane Harper
I make films about the High Plains of Colorado where I grew up. My first collaboration was with award-winning (and neighbor across county lines) Colorado author Gregory Hill. In development is EAST OF DENVER, my adaptation of his first novel. VERAL is a short based on one of Hill’s short stories.
These cinematic explorations have inspired my new original work, LAST CHANCE, an episodic fantasy-fable connecting a bloodline of women that spans 150 years within a blasted outpost town on the brutal High Plains. The roots trace back to Native women and ends in the future with their matriarchal revelations to sustain life through preservation on land that is depleted of all its water.
As a one-woman band, I make short observational films about women farmers across the country. I teach film workshops with a rural group of high school women, Las Estrellas, and am developing, with collaborator Erin Greenwell, a four-year cross-country film exchange for youth.
I recently co-directed and edited the feature documentary, MY WILD HEART, worked as a cinematographer with the acclaimed and late filmmaker Barbara Hammer and produced the award-winning Sundance Film, MY BEST DAY, in 2012.
Director Statement
I was always drawn to the young female character in the story of VERAL. I named her Alicia (depending on the geographic origin the name means “truth” or “noble”). Naturally, I compared my life experiences to hers and discovered there were little to no parallels. But I interpreted an attitude that she possessed and that I could relate to, or maybe envied.
When I grew up in Colorado, I remember the heaviness of tragedy that wove throughout local families’ lives, whether it was a horrible farm accident, total-yield-destroying storms, terminal illnesses, or suicide. But the day-to-day wasn’t dismal. Families seemed genuinely happy and functional. I imagine it was because we didn’t speak of these tragedies. Maybe it was a tactic for forgetting and/or for surviving.
I, too, was a happy kid most of the time. But restless. I would act out embellished fantasies of buried stories upon the never-ending stage of a dirt road to an audience of curious (probably uninterested) herds of cattle. Kicks, spins, loud singing, soliloquies – whatever it took to get them to single-file it and nose-up to the barbed wire. This grand theatrical display that expressed all truths to inconversant creatures was a benign way for me to purge my angst. And this front-row performance may have laid the foundation for the superpowers I longed for and would later transpose onto Alicia in her solitary world.
While building up Alicia’s grand-champion-caliber 4-H arts and crafts exhibit (her inherited “wax” museum), I also indulged her stretched reality with a grounded, relatable work ethic. I imagined that she might keep herself busy crafting phenomenal companions (preserving the townsfolk with a family recipe tanning formula)in order to cope with loneliness. She remains content with the world she creates because she has nothing to compare it to, but the darkness has to emerge eventually.
By the end, Alicia’s world, teeming with “life” as she has created it, is exploited by a cheap shot, a push of a shutter button. Haze breaks the rules of the museum by sneaking a photograph of Alicia’s prized collectible, her mother. The resulting bland photographic simulacrum of her tangible life’s work will likely be put on display in a section of a newspaper that will line a cat’s litter box.I conclude by coming back to Alicia, the female character. As one may guess, she does not descend into despair but unleashes a repressed internal state that transcends her creative capabilities.
8:08 Hidden Wounds Compassionate film on importance of mental health for patients & caregivers with CNN anchor Richard Lui, his mom, & others.
It is a film that shows us how mental health is not what we think it is. It is not only the polar extremes of what the movies or media have made it out to be. It often comes in shades of grey and in places we do not expect or notice.
In this raw and inspiring documentary filmed over the course of six years, three families find triumphs when tested challenges of the body and mind like never before.
Director Biography - Richard Lui
Richard Lui is an award-winning veteran network anchor (MSNBC, CNN). He’s produced investigative stories on human trafficking, civil rights, the military, and politics. Lui is an AARP Caregiving Champion, Alzheimer's Association Celebrity Champion, Hidden Heroes ambassador, and BrightFocus ambassador. He is a caregiver for his father.
Director Statement
Seven years ago, I learned my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. I knew I may have to leave the career I worked for and loved so much, journalism. But my company did the unexpected. I could work part-time so I could fly from New York to California weekly to care for my Dad.
I am one in three Americans who is touched by caring for an ailing loved one. And I’m part of the half a trillion annual dollars in work me and 53 million others do for loved ones. I'm proud to do it — and I'm proud to share the stories of others doing it, too.
9:45 The Adventures of Saul Bellow Celebrated novelist turns life into art. Features his wives, offspring, Phillip Roth, Salman Rushdie, & other writers.
The film traces Bellow's rise to eminence and examines his many identities: reluctant public intellectual, 'serial husband', father, Chicagoan, Jew and American. Interviews with the novelist's family and friends will shed new light on Bellow's personality and the way he turned life into art.
Director Biography - Asaf Galay
The film's director, Asaf Galay, uses the documentary medium to rethink Jewish and Israeli relationships with modern culture. His recent films include Army Of Lovers in the Holy Land, which follows a Swedish pop singer from his sexually provocative art to his decision to move to Israel; The Hebrew Superhero, which examined the development of comic-books in Israel, and The Muses of Bashevis Singer, his documentary about the female translators who transformed the career of Nobel prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, and which was chosen to open the 2015 New York Jewish Film Festival. Galay also has a film currently in production: Cartooning America, about the Jewish cartoonists who brought us Betty Boop.
Director Statement
I was born in Chicago in 1978. Like Saul Bellow, I too can say, “I am an American, Chicago born.” For me, as for Bellow, that claim would be both the truth and a lie. My family came from Israel to the United States only for a short period of time, while my father completed a PhD at the University of Chicago. Growing up in Israel and moving back to the U.S. in my late thirties, I have always felt both fascinated and alienated by American culture—a contradiction that Bellow vividly explores in his work.
I realized I had to make a film about Bellow while working on my last project, The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer. That film told the story of how Singer used English language translation to transform his Yiddish writing into an American voice. As Singer’s first translator, Bellow was the bridge between the world of Jewish particularity and American, Anglophone universalism. I began to look for the ingredients in Bellow’s work that allowed him to become the missing link between these two worlds.
My affinity for the writer has deepened and developed over the years, stretching beyond questions of Jewish and American identity. I have come to admire the author’s bold insistence on humanism, how he cleaves to unfashionable notions like ‘culture’ and ‘personality.’ At the same time, I am troubled by Bellow’s racist and sexist imagery. I believe that these qualities make his work difficult to teach and study today. In my film, I am determined to let both of these sides of the author come to life. I seek a cinematic language that can bring out all the layers of his work for a new generation—the humorous, the spiritual, the profound, the American, the Jewish, the lowbrow, the highbrow, the just, and the unjust.
SEPT 4 - SUNDAY
7PM East Belfast Boy Street-sharp poet pumps techno and pulverizing moments into cliché-free zone. Meet Davy. The things he sees. His streets, His mates, His girl and...The Boys.
Director Biography - Emma Jordan
Prime Cut’s Artistic Director has directed a strong body of critically acclaimed plays for the company, most recently Fionnuala Kennedy’s Removed (Young At Art Belfast Children’s Festival, Dublin Theatre Festival, Baboro Children’s Festival and IPAY, Philadelphia. Winner Best Theatre Script- Irish Writers Guild Awards and Allianz Arts & Business Creative Communities Award, ), Fintan Brady’s East Belfast Boy (The MAC, Edinburgh Fringe and Island of Ireland Tour 2018-19), Red by John Logan a Prime Cut-Lyric co-production (Winner of 4 Awards at the 2017 Irish Times Theatre Awards including Best Director and Best Production. Nominated for Best Director 2017 UK Theatre Awards), Stacey Gregg’s Scorch (winner of 7 international awards including a Scotsman Fringe First, Adelaide Fringe Best Theatre Award and the 2015 Irish Times Theatre Award for Best New Play) Belfast, island of Ireland and UK Tour, the Adelaide and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, Sweden and Germany tours. Directing credits also include After Miss Julie (Patrick Marber), God Of Carnage (Yasmina Reza), The Conquest of Happiness (Co-created & directed with Haris Pasovic) I Am My Own Wife [Doug Wright], Blackbird (David Harrower), Shoot The Crow (Owen McCafferty), Scarborough (Fiona Evans), Woman and Scarecrow (Marina Carr), After The End (Denis Kelly).
In 2020-21 in response the ongoing theatre lockdown Emma has directed a series of digital productions for Prime Cut including East Belfast Boy (Edinburgh Fringe and Eastside Arts Festival), Father The Father (The MAC) and Removed (Traverse 3 Online: Edinburgh Festival, SEODA Culture Ireland Showcase and Imaginate Festival 2021). Other digital work includes Wake Cake by Stacey Gregg BBC, and Modern Myths by Clare Dwyer Hogg for the MAC.
Emma has also directed One Good Turn by Una McKevitt for the Abbey Theatre, Dublin as well as Educating Rita, Lovers and A Streetcar Named Desire for the Lyric Theatre Belfast and Lord of The Flies for Sherman Theatre Cardiff and Theatr Clwyd.
In 2014 Emma was the recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Cultural Entrepreneurship Breakthrough Award and the Spirit of Festival Award at the Belfast International Arts Festival 2015. She won the Best Director Award for Red at the 2017 Irish Times Irish Theatre Award and has been nominated consecutively for Best Director at the UK Theatre Awards for Red and Lovers (2017-18) She was nominated for Best Director at the 2020 Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards for Removed and A Streetcar Named Desire.
Director Statement
East Belfast Boy in its original conception as a stage show was a story that was very close to my heart, I loved the visceral experience of the pumping techno and the open-ended nature of the brilliant script by Fintan Brady. The script invited a choreographic language, multiple ways of exploring Davy’s world through word, movement and music. When the pandemic hit Prime Cut had to put on hold all theatrical endeavours, the live aspect of our work needed to be reassessed and it gave pause to consider what might we make that would be true to our companies ethos but which could reach new audiences. It seemed to me that of all our 30 year catalogue of plays that East Belfast Boy provided the best opportunity to explore what was for us a new medium. It is an experiment - a transference of theatrical aesthetics in digital form - an exploration of movement on camera complemented by voice-over. We learned a tremendous amount, our learning curve was steep with both Ciaran Bagnal and myself experienced theatre-makers but pure rookies in the film making process.We trusted our instincts and with the skill of a great editor Conor Maguire and talented composer Phil Kieron we got East Belfast Boy over the line.
7:30 Over My Dead Body Jewish Persian-American woman and muslim fiancé conflict with parents.
Director Biography - Meital Cohen Navarro
Meital Cohen Navarro is an award-winning filmmaker, whose films often feature notable moments of womanhood from unique and unexpected perspectives.
Her most recent short film, the critically acclaimed Over My Dead Body, which she wrote, directed, produced, and edited, has screened at numerous film festivals in 2021. The film, a devastating drama about a family at war over love versus religious tradition, has been nominated for best-scripted series for the CTA at the Television Academy and nominated at the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival. As well, won Best Narrative Short at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival, The Grand Jury Prize at the Richmond International Film Festival, Best Short Film at the Valley Film Festival, the Audience Award at Pittsburgh Shorts, and an Honorable Mention at Dances With Films and many more. as well as receiving nominations at the Atlanta Jewish FF, Cordillera International FF, Julien Dubuque International FF, and the UK Jewish FF.
The prolific Cohen-Navarro is currently filming and in post-production on three new documentaries, with planned debut in late 2023, as well as being in pre-production on a narrative feature film and two new short film projects. Elizabeth’s Survival Story follows Holocaust survivor and artist, Elizabeth Mann, as she is completing her final painting at 95 years old. Elizabeth paints the images and faces she can never forget from what she endured in the concentration camps. The film incorporates Elisabeth’s stories from her time as a teenager in Auschwitz and explores her thoughts on her final painting and how it reflects on the life she lived and the hardships she survived. Cohen-Navarro is currently filming a documentary in The Democratic Republic Of Congo, a story of the African leader who defied all odds by becoming one of the most influential businessmen in Africa, and a beloved politician that changed the face of the Congolese political map with only one goal in mind - to better the lives of his people.
Her past two shorts from 2019 films were, The Cake is about a woman who discovers a 40-year-old secret about her husband and best friend and what happens when she confronts that friend, and In It Together is about two immigrants struggling to maintain their relationship while at the breaking point in their efforts to support themselves.
Cohen-Navarro previously worked at the Israel Broadcasting Authority on documentary TV and feature films and the renowned weekly investigative documentary show “Mabbat-Sheni". Her passion for diverse cultures led her to live in Africa, where she wrote and reported for the Israeli newspaper Maariv. Her stories depicted social conflict, and daily life in countries like DR-Congo, Mozambique and South Africa. Her background in documentaries and journalism imbues her narrative filmmaking with a detail-oriented realism. Her films tell stories of ordinary people and life’s unassuming moments that contain a deeper resonance with a specific focus on the unique challenges that women face in their daily lives.
Cohen-Navarro earned an MFA in Filmmaking from the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles and holds Bachelor’s degrees in Business Management and Communication from the Open University of Israel. She currently resides in Los Angeles.
Director Statement
“Over My Dead Body”
Director’s Statement
I am a grandchild of Yemenite and Moroccan immigrants who moved to Israel in the early 50’s. As a youth, I felt the clash between the two different worlds, the traditionally conservative world and the modern liberal world. I did not understand the reasons or dynamics or implications of this gap. I simply rebelled against all the traditions and values that informed my parents’ lives. Filmmaking has allowed me to explore the clash between the tradition and the contemporary, the values of each world, and how to demonstrate their effects on individuals.
The move to Los Angeles introduced me, an Israeli Jew, to the Persian Jewish community. Their kindness, warmth, support, and, of course, rich cuisine and hospitality reminded me of where I grew up. The more I associated with the Persian Jewish community, the more I began to ask questions: “Why does the younger generation tend to get married to people within their community, when we’re in such diverse city?”; “Since Jews can marry Jews from any culture, why do most of the younger people within the Los Angeles’ Persian Jewish community tend to marry within their community?” I subsequently learned that the community endeavors to maintains its identity, values, and language through traditional marital practices.
In creating “Over My Dead Body,” I was eager to examine the familiar and often complex elements of my own culture. I decided to go on a journey exploring more details by interviewing members of the Los Angeles Persian Jewish community. I focused on what was considered as socially and religiously taboo and why the younger generations find themselves marrying within their community. My research revealed to me their attitudes toward marriage, tradition, and the meaning of family.
At a certain stage during my many interviews, I did not believe what I was hearing when modern and successful young people who were born here explained why marrying within the community made sense to them. At first, I thought their decisions were arrogant or even racially motivated. As I interviewed more people, however, I began to look at it from a different perspective. The reason for their choices in marriage were rooted in something deeper than I had originally thought, and this revelation touched me profoundly. It also made me understand their worldview. My interviews helped me formulate an authentic Persian Jewish family drama and helped me establish a protagonist based on the personalities I met on my journey and my personal experience.
In this film, I wanted to represent a younger generation trapped within the conservative traditions that the community maintained in its transition to the United States, a country of more freedom and diversity. When I started writing, it was an easy choice for me to present the parents and the family in a rigid manner and make them look like the bad guys and the protagonist as the one who needs to be saved. But as I researched and developed the characters, I began to feel the disappointment of the parents, the brother's desire to protect them, and the pain of the sister who chose the conservative path of her parents rather than to follow her heart. Each member of the family had his or her own reason for why the protagonist should give up her choice. From their point of view, they were trying to protect her and protect the supreme value in Persian Jewish culture: family.
The protagonist, Isfahan, thinks that her parents have softened over the years and that living in the United States might have changed them. She hopes she can live within an American cultural identity, but she finds herself struggling between choosing to please her family and living her own life.
Isfahan, 31, falls in love with a Persian who is Muslim. This is the greatest and most unforgivable taboo in Judaism, especially within the Persian Jewish community.
Even though this story focuses on a Persian Jewish family, the narrative of Isfahan and her family can be considered a universal story that people from different cultural backgrounds can identify with and relate to their own potential personal and/or political conflicts.
The principles and beliefs behind these conflicts are set in stone, but the ending remains open. Should Isfahan go with the love of her life? Or should she choose her family’s traditional values? I needed to represent both sides fairly and sympathetically. My goal was for viewers to understand the parents' point of view but also identify with and understand the difficulty of Isfahan’s dilemma.
I hope the film will help families with generational rifts to understand the other side of their own stories: the parents will see the toll it has on their children through Isfahan’s devastation, and the younger generation will see the parents’ equally heartbreaking cultural challenges.
8:02 Pessoas Photographer & daughter seek unknown woman whose picture he captured in a parade after the death of Fidel Castro.
Arturo travels to Santiago de Cuba just after the death of Fidel Castro to find an unknown woman whom he photographed in the parade on May 1 10 years ago. He is accompanied by his daughter Greta, from whom he has been estranged for some time.
Director Biography - Arturo Dueñas Herrero
Arturo Dueñas (Esguevillas de Esgueva, Valladolid, Spain, 1962). Bachelor of Arts, Qualified in Cinematography and Filmmaking Course at the New York Film Academy. Full member of the Academy of Arts and Cinematographic Sciences of Spain. Actor, director, producer, editor and scriptwriter in several short films, he has produced and directed the feature films Amateurs (Aficionados, 2011), selected and awarded in over 30 international festivals, Corsairs (Corsarios, 2015), Mission: Sahara (Misión: Sáhara, 2016), Built lands (Tierras construidas, 2019) and Pessoas (Pessoas, 2020).
9:23 Taste of the Indigenous Discover the history, tradition, and culture of the Indigenous Native Americans through their food.
Director - Josephine Lilla Bono
9:45 The Coronation In this wordless, experimental film, a powerful goddess meets her match. For mature audience.
Director Biography - Emily Penick
Emily is a writer / director with a background in directing and choreographing stage plays. In NYC, she has worked at Playwrights Horizons, 2nd Stage, New Dramatists, The Tank, and elsewhere, developing new works for both stage and film. Before Covid, Emily was also a member of Frost Productions, responsible for producing large-scale events like the MET Gala, Tonys red carpet, and film premieres. In addition to her own projects, Emily assists Tony-award-winning director and MacAurthur Fellow, David Cromer.
Emily is passionate about creating community, fostering positive change, and sharing career-development resources with young artists. During her time as Literary & Artistic Manager at ACT – A Contemporary Theatre, Emily lead the charge to make the institution a Deaf-friendly space, managing artistic programming, inclusive casting, meaningful community partnerships, and capital improvements which included the implementation of closed captioning in both main stage spaces. Also at ACT, Emily founded and managed the Kenan Directing Fellowship, which generously supported emerging directors with mentorship and financial resources.
Through her efforts with RED STAGE, which she founded, Emily has produced the world premiere Worse Than Tigers, and commissioned emerging female playwrights. RED STAGE also shares funding and career development opportunities with artists across disciplines, through their resource library at redstage.org.
With over a decade of experience in clown, nouveau vaudeville, and physical theatre, Emily is passionate about stories which showcase either subtlety or overtly, the modern clown. Two of her upcoming short film projects, The Coronation and Cuffing Season, showcase such work. As an educator, Emily has adjudicated new play festivals at universities, taught play submission workshops, taught graduate courses in directing, acting, and movement technique, and guest-directed and choreographed university productions.
Recent directing credits include AN ILIAD (Brick Monkey Theater Company), THE WOLVES (Bucknell University), CORIOLANUS: Fight Like a Bitch (Rebel Kat Productions), A Christmas Carol (ACT- A Contemporary Theatre), the world premiere of Worse Than Tigers (RED STAGE), Gregory Award-winning Romeo & Juliet (Seattle Immersive Theatre), Pilgrims (Forward Flux), Snowglobed (Playing in Progress) and Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s The Other Woman, Wandering and their world premiere of the devised play Pot of Gold. Emily has choreographed at Book-It Repertory Theatre (Slaughterhouse Five), Café Nordo (Don Nordo Del Midwest), ACT Theatre (A Christmas Carol), and for the UMO Ensemble's Resistance Cabaret - Resistance is Fertile!
Emily was born in California, raised in New Jersey, attended Bucknell University, and earned her MFA in Directing from Ohio University.
Director Statement
Emily is a writer / director with a background in directing and choreographing stage plays. Also an intimacy and fight choreographer for both stage and film, Emily believes in the power of physical relationship and non-verbal story-telling. She enjoys deeply collaborative projects which explore the absurdity of the human experience, with all of its humorous, loving, and disturbing connotations. Monty Python meets Pina Bausch.
10PM The 2nd Act A drama based on a true story about a young actor who was sexually assaulted by a talent agent. For mature audience. Q&A
A short film based on a true story about a young actor who is harassed by a talent agent and decides to take matters into his own hands.
Director Biography - Victor Fontoura
VICTOR FONTOURA is a Brazilian queer director, writer, actor and producer based in NYC. He graduated in Theatre Directing from the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. He studied film at SVA - School of Visual Arts, MNN - Manhattan Neighborhood Network and AIC - Academia Internacional de Cinema. He is an artvist for Human Rights and LGBTQ+ community. "The 2nd Act" is his first film as a director and screenwriter.