Gold Coast Int'l Film Festival Debuts in Long Island

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 04 October 2011 14:01

Written by Laura Blum

Long Island´s Gold Coast, where F. Scott Fitzgerald set his Great American Novel The Great Gatsby, is now home to a movie bash aspiring to be the Great American Film Festival. Can the Gold Coast International Film Festival also beat the lingering blas of the Great Recession?

One and a half million dollars say it can. That's the budget of the Festival, which launches June 1-5, 2011, in such North Shore towns as Roslyn, Manhasset and Great Neck (aka East and West Egg). Hatched by Great Neck Arts Center founder Regina Gil, GCIFF is meant to revitalize local business, still bedraggled by the late-2000s financial downturn.

Burnishing the cultural life of the Gold Coast is a twin Festival goal. To trumpet that point,  the organizers threw an artsy evening with Isabella Rossellini at the NYIT Theater in Manhattan on May 9th. The actor-turned-director-writer-and-animal-devotée showed her whimsical My Father is 100 Years Old, selections from Green Porno and Animals Distract Me.

David Schwartz, chief curator of the Museum of the Moving Image, led a post-screening chat with Rossellini. If the event was any indication, festival-goers are in for an engaging, ship-shape affair along the Gold Coast.  

With literally hundreds of film festivals a train hop away -- Tribeca, the New York Film Festival and the Hamptons FF, to name but three -- do the Manhattan suburbs really need another one?

“There are too many film festivals!,” concedes FCIFF senior programmer Sean McPhillips, a former Miramax acquisitions executive who curates the Great Neck Arts Center's Furman Film Series. “But there´s another perspective that says, If there´s no film festival in this place, there should be.”

And the Gold Coast fest boasts a few assets its rivals can only envy. Just imagine the parties to light up its sprawling mansions. Australian director Baz Luhrmann is surely doing just that as he pre-preps his screen adaptation of Gatsby. 

Something of the literary spirit also possesses the Festival. Taking the cue from Nassau County's most celebrated novel, it has selected a program of films adapted from books.

Other categories include:

• comedy
• documentary
• horror
• family
• works from Southeast Asia
• works from Israel -- whose immigrant communities dot the region

The 40,000 expected revelers will have 40 or so films to choose from during the five-day bash, which kicks off the first of June. Highlights include two documentaries:

Chris Paine´s Who Killed the Electric Car?, accompanied by electric car fanfare off-screen, and the New York premiere of Jeff Prosserman´s Chasing Madoff, about the infamous Ponzi schemer (who had a Long Island beach house).

In comedy, there´s Gil Cates Jr.´s Lucky, with Colin Hanks, and The Best and the Brightest, directed by Josh Shelov and featuring Neil Patrick Harris and Amy Sedaris.

As McPhillips knows, snagging buzz-worthy titles for a first-time festival can be quite a challenge. The ultimate gold star for the Gold Coast will be getting new films from the likes of native daughter Natalie Portman -- and a certain Baz Luhrmann production.

Gold Coast International Film Festival
June 1-5, 2011

the GCIFF Information Hub
292 Plandome Road, Manahasset, NY

(across from the LIRR train station)


Hours of the Hub will be posted shortly

Screenings venues include:

Clearview Cinemas
Great Neck – Squire Cinemas

115 Middle Neck Road

Great Neck, NY 11021

New Hyde Park Cinemas – Herricks Cinema
4
3324 Hillside Avenue

New Hyde Park, NY 11040

Manhasset Cinemas

430 Plandome Road

Manhasset, NY 11030

Port Washington Cinemas

116 Main Street

Port Washington, NY 11050

Roslyn Cinemas

20 Tower Place

Roslyn, NY 11577

Special event venues include:

The Great Neck Arts Center

113 Middle Neck Road

Great Neck, NY 11021


Landmark on Main Street

232 Main Street

Port Washington, NY 11050
www.landmarkonmainstreet.org
516-767-6444

Nassau County Museum of Art

One Museum Drive

Roslyn Harbor, NY 11576

NYIT DeSeversky Mansion

Northern Boulevard

Old Westbury, NY 11568

Louie’s Oyster Bar and Grille

395 Main Street

Port Washington, NY 11050

www.louiesoysterbarandgrille.com

Manhasset Public Library

30 Onderdonk Avenue

Manhasset, NY 11030
http://manhassetlibrary.org

North Hempstead Beach Park

175 West Shore Road
Port Washington 11050

Port Washington Public Library

One Library Drive

Port Washington, NY 11050

www.pwpl.org

thyme – restaurant & café bar

8 Tower Place

Roslyn, NY 11576
http://thymenewyork.com

United States Merchant Marine Academy

300 Steamboat Road

Kings Point, NY 11024
http://usmma.edu/

Mansion at The Village Club of Sands Point

Thayer Lane

Sands Point, NY 11050
http://www.villageclub.org

www.goldcoastfilmfestival.org
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(516) 444-FILM

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