New Jersey Film Festival

The 29th Annual New Jersey International Film Festival competition will be taking place on the Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays

Schedule:

Sunday - Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 5PM!

Shorts Program #1

STUCK - Giselle Bomilla (Los Angeles, California)

A man gets stuck in a sex doll who has become attached to him romantically. 2023; 3 min.

Tlaloc (Lines Drawn in Water) - Abinadi Meza (Austin, Texas)

Tlaloc (Lines Drawn in Water) is a hand-painted cameraless 16mm film - an enigmatic otherworld where hues of water evolve into prismatic blooms. Tlaloc is the deity of waters, rain, lightning, and growth in the Aztec pantheon; he is the lord of the drowned. This film explores the membrane of film itself - a moving skin marked by fluid, punctured by light. The soundtrack was entirely made with contact microphones to capture handmade surface markings and gestures. 2023; 5 min.

Judy’s Garden - Evie Metz (Richmond, Virginia)

In Judy’s Garden, a woman is confronted by death and taken on a journey through her past. The garden is shown as a cosmic arena of continuous death and renewal, one which all living things, including the gardener herself, are a part of. The film is an ode to these cycles in the natural world and a meditation on what it means to be alive. 2024; 7 min.

Tennis, Oranges - Sean Pecknold (Los Angeles, California)

A robotic vacuum suffering from burnout quits its job at a hospital and sets out to find community and a greater purpose on a quiet street where two lonely rabbits are stuck in perpetual loops. 2023; 11 min.

Use Your Words - Michelle Tattenbaum (Maplewood, New Jersey)

A new friendship between two lonely mothers is plunged into jeopardy when they discover that a painful event from one's past lives on in the other’s present. Use Your Words is a story of the healing power of friendship. 2023; 14 min.

The Double Room - Martin Del Carpio (New York, New York)

Honor, both an artist and dreamer, finds himself in a dystopian reality of the corporate world. Having to face himself, his choice remains in whether to give in for the sake of survival or exist independently from what our culture has conditioned us to accept. 2024; 15 min.

Brain Freeze - Kelsey Comeau (Brooklyn, New York)

A snapshot of lifelong friends Carrie (Sofia Hublitz, Ozark) and Madison Hu (Brother's Son, Boogeyman) as their relationship crumbles at the seams. In their safe bubble of Northern New Jersey, the friends have hit their breaking point on Rae’s eighteenth birthday. Crossing paths years later, in a queer abyss that is Fire Island Pines, the friends are no longer. Dealing with themes of adulthood, queer identity, female friendship and mortality, Brain Freeze tackles two formative moments in adolescence otherwise overlooked: the friends who fade away. 2024; 15 min.

Along The Rail - Jonathan Harkel (New Jersey)

After moving on from a career of shooting medium format film for celebrities and high-end clients, a photographer begins capturing graffiti with his cell phone from the window of a commuter train, then builds a device to develop cyanotype prints at home. "I found it fascinating that there were people out there in the middle of the night making art on the side of these train tracks," he says. "It became an experiment of documenting the graffiti. Since I had very little time to make my own art, placing my cell phone on the windows of these trains and trying to capture these pieces of graffiti felt like it was at least celebrating this form of art. On these incredible old walls along the Montclair-Boonton line, there are people making beautiful art along the rail." 2023; 21 min.

Sunday - Online for 24 Hours and In-Person at 7PM!

I Still Love You - Diane Pontius (New York, New York)

Bob Pontius operates on children with heart defects, and in the 1960’s helps bring pediatric heart surgery to Bergamo, Italy. Then his life is radically altered. He has a mental health crisis. In this short documentary, his photographer daughter turns her camera on him to reveal his ferocious desire for independence, commitment to an existential philosophy, and reluctance to accept medical treatment. Using family photos, her father’s 16mm surgical films, and iPhone video, she constructs an intimate narrative about the human mind. 2024; 15 min.

Crossing The River - Allan Novick (New York, New York)

If there is such a thing as a heartwarming Holocaust film, this is it. Crossing the River is the story of the world's oldest living Holocaust survivor siblings and captures more than 100 years of one family's history in approximately 30 minutes. Along the way, we learn about their unlikely savior, Joseph Stalin, and a lesser-known World War II narrative. Now 101, 100, 98 and 96, inseparable, informed and unfailingly optimistic, the Fink siblings have outlived spouses, offspring, hundreds of friends and relatives and arguably the most horrific genocide in human history. What is the secret to their longevity? How have they defied all odds? With unparalleled access to the subjects and their archives, filmmaker Allan Novak has been filming his family for the past 40 years and uses the occasion of their newfound celebrity as an opportunity to look back and fill in the missing pieces of their past. Along the way, the film reveals how this seemingly ordinary family is actually quite extraordinary. 2023; 30 min.

FIRE TOWER - Tova Krentzman - Whitehorse, YT. Canada)

FIRE TOWER is a character driven documentary with dramatic landscapes, intense conditions and far-out stories - akin to astronauts and lighthouse keepers. Perched in the Rocky Mountains above empty expanses across northern Canada, we meet the people behind the binoculars. Fire tower “lookouts” all experience the rush of spotting smoke and pre-empting evacuations. They all take pride in protecting the land and its people. They have all been struck by lightning. For more than a century, lookouts have been the dedicated “eyes in the sky”, a critical first-line of defense. In this documentary, the cast of lookouts remind us that climate change and technology are encroaching on all our lives and livelihoods. Today, despite the unprecedented number of wildfires, there are only four Canadian provinces that continue to employ human radar. How can they compete with fleets of drones, satellites, and cell phones? The best way to stop a fire is to spot it early - lookouts are still critical anchors in our fire safety networks. When lightning strikes, they can spot a wisp of smoke 60 miles away and interpret its intensity in shades of grey, ahead of infrared imagery. Within minutes, they radio other responders to mobilize their planes, helicopters and equipment before forests and communities are devastated. Beyond the action, gazing out from their towers also grants the lookouts telling moments of introspection. In our hyper-connected, multi-tasking world, Fire Tower invites us to contemplate how solitude can inspire a different kind of connection with nature, community and our own creativity. 2024; 47 min.

General Admission

Ticket=$15 Per Program

Festival All Access Pass=$120;

In-Person Only Student Ticket=$10 Per Program.

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