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Now in its tenth year, the Nyack Film Festival returns with five nights of cinematic goodness August 14th to the 18th. Held at Hotel Nyack the festival features 64 films from artists around the world. Films include This Too Shall Pass, a short contemplating the fraught emotions and isolation caused by the pandemic. Inspired by true events, The Recess explores gender oppression in Iranian society as a young girl is caught trying to disguise herself as a man in order to see a soccer game. The Brink Of is a musical romance film about an indie pop duo, navigating their tumultuous relationship as partners on the brink of mainstream success. Glooscap And Noogami is an animated short loosely based on the Wabanaki creation story. Marijuana Minutes follows an unambitious stoner as she finds her easy-going life turned upside down thanks to a vape pen that allows her to travel through time.
After the festival closes there will be a free outdoor film screening of VIRGIN BLACKTOP: A New York Skate Odyssey in Nyack Memorial Park, next to the river and under the stars, on Friday, August 19, starting at 8pm.
To learn more, go to: https://nyackfilmfestival.com/
10th Annual Nyack Film Festival 2022
August 14 - 18, 2022
Hotel Nyack JdV by Hyatt
400 High Ave
Nyack, NY 10960
Brainstorm
Movies feel truly larger than life on the big screen, and in 70mm they feel even bigger. The Museum of the Moving Image (36-01 35th Ave, Queens, NY) presents See It Big: 70MM, a special series of classic and contemporary films. The films will be shown at MoMI’s Sumner M. Redstone Theater from August 5 to September 4th.
Among the highlights this year are two titles from Disney long unavailable in 70mm: Sleeping Beauty (1959), the first feature animation to be released in the Super Technirama 70 format, and Tron (1982), the groundbreaking sci-fi thriller featuring innovative early CGI, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. The series also includes Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (2021) and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)—two retro Hollywood works by filmmakers who continue to shoot on celluloid. The series opens with Brainstorm (1983), one of only two films directed by the brilliant visual-effects master Douglas Trumbull, who died earlier this year, and closes with Top Gun (1986).
The Saturday, August 20 screening of Sleeping Beauty will be introduced by John Canemaker, the Academy Award–, Emmy Award–, and Peabody Award–winning animation filmmaker, historian, and NYU professor. He has authored twelve books on film animation history—with subjects including Winsor McCay, Felix the Cat, Tex Avery, and numerous Disney artists. He is professor emeritus of Animation Studies at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, where he headed the animation program from 1988–2022.
To learn more, go to: https://movingimage.us/series/see-it-big-70mm-6/
See It Big: 70MM!
August 5–September 4, 2022
Museum of the Moving Image
36-01 35th Ave
Queens, NY 11106
Angry Son, Photo: © LesPros entertainment
Kaiju, drama, horror, romance, and more are in store for you at the 2022 New York Asian Film Festival. Running July 15 to the 31st at venues across NYC, the NYAFF is committed to increasing exposure of Asian representation on screen and providing opportunities for audiences of all communities to experience the diversity and brilliance of Asian and Asian American cinema. New films from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and throughout South East Asia will delight, inspire and terrify audiences.
Films include the US premiere of Shin Ultraman, from director Shinji Higuchi and writer/producer Hideaki Anno, the duo behind Shin Godzilla, as they reinvent another classic icon of Japanese tokusatsu cinema. In the Hong Kong thriller Overheard, Sean Lau Ching Wan, Louis Koo and Daniel Wu star as high-tech criminal intelligence officers investigating a devious executive suspected of monumental insider trading. When two of the cops get wind of an extremely lucrative secret, they go turncoat and try to cash in. Their altruistic boss intervenes but it proves too late, corruption spins the once-straight path to justice into violent chaos, with devastating repercussions for all. The Japanese film Angry Son, follows Jungo, a gay, biracial high schooler who was raised by his feisty single mom, a Filipina bar hostess, Enduring rampant xenophobia, homophobia bullying, and parental abandonment Jungo finds sollace in his loving boyfriend. The closing film of the fest, Alienoid, is a Korean sci-fi fantasy romp where rogue aliens have been trapped as prisoners inside human brains for years and when they try to break free, a lone keeper of intergalactic peace known as “the guard” (Kim Woo-bin) opens a rift in time to prevent them from escaping. This is but a small sampling of the cinematic onslaught on display at NYAFF.
The festival will also feature masterclasses and talks from actors, producers, and directors such as Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge), Doris Yeung (founder of CinemAsia Film Festival in the Netherlands), Dennis Liu (creator of the Netflix series Raising Dion), and Josie Ho (Dream Home), among others.
To learn more, go to: https://www.nyaff.org/
New York Asian Film Festival 2022
July 15 - 31, 2022
Various Locations
To help foster diverse voices in cinema, the Urbanite Arts & Film Festival is looking to promote young and underrepresented filmmakers. Running June 24th to the 26 at the Bedford Playhouse (633 Old Post Road, Bedford NY), the debut festival features short films, photographs, short films and spoken word from young artists around the world.
The mission of the Urbanites Arts & Film Festival is stated as…
…to foster the next generation of filmmakers that are underrepresented in the film industry. Launching its inaugural festival in June 2022, Urbanite Arts & Film Festival will highlight underrepresented voices including, but not limited to, young women, BIPOC, LatinX, LGBTQIA, people with disabilities, and the neuro-diverse communities. Through exhibition of their art, we create a platform for a diverse range of young artists to express themselves creatively and launch creative careers.
The festival opens with a ticketed Red Carpet event on Friday, June 24th. Films will be screened on June 25th, with the Award Ceremony & Artist Presentation on June 26th. The Urbanite Arts & Film Festival was founded by Alex Armando Torres, a self-taught filmmaker and photographer, seeking to lift up diverse under represented voices in cinema and art.
To learn more, go to: https://www.urbanitefest.org
Urbanite Arts & Film Festival
June 24 - 26, 2022
Bedford Playhouse
633 Old Post Road
Bedford, NY 10506