SoHo International Film Festival Boosts the 'Hood

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Wednesday, 17 February 2010 22:11

Written by Laura Blum

First came TriBeca. Then the Lower East Side Film Festival cropped up. And next, Nolita. It was just a matter time before SoHo would get its own cinema groove on.
 
The SoHo International Film Festival has its inaugural run (February 18-21, 2010) in New York's artsy downtown, south — needless to say — of Houston Street.
 
The city's newest display of neighborhood boosterism pays tribute to digital filmmaking through a lineup of 32 shorts and features. Yet beyond their whizzy technology, films that passed the admissions test of co-founders Jorge Ballos, Noli Parumog and Luis Pedron did so on their storytelling merits, per Pedron. 

A highlight of the Festival is Filipino Film Night, presented on Saturday, February 20. Titles include Gil Portes' crime thriller Pitik Bulag, followed by a Q&A with actor and former basketball star Marco Alcaraz, and Walang Hanggang Paalam, by Ellen Ramos and Paolo Villaluna, with actor/producer Jacky Woo and star Lovi Poe in tow.

Crime dramas are well represented at SIFFNYC, while comedies get shorter shrift. One nod to humor is a mockumentary by veteran director Todd M. Jones called Throws of Passion. An attitudinal colleague of The Office, it uses found footage to memorialize a defunct sports cable championship.

The Festival's three other feature-length documentaries include Autism: Made in the USA, from celebrity nutritionist Gary Null, and Jeremy Taylor's tough expose of Burmese life under military dictatorship, Burma: An Indictment -- which screens Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, at 4:30 pm.

Filmmakers and talent ranging from Franky G to Gary Null and Australian TV star Peter Astridge will be on hand for other screenings and events, notably an after-party sponsored by G Productions. Panels, workshops and parties shore up the four-day program, which is expected to attract local industry insiders and film enthusiasts.

SIFFNYC goes out with a virtual bang via the world premiere of Rolfe Kanefsky’s neo-noir, One in the Gun.

For more info go to: www.siffnyc.com

Soho International Film Festival NYC 2010
394 Broadway, 4th floor
New York, NY 10013

 

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