New Jersey’s film festivals offer moviegoers something different.
By:
New Jersey’s film festivals and programs feature everything from rarely seen shorts to the opportunity to experience some of the year’s most anticipated movies, while also meeting the filmmakers.
The Last Picture Show 2006 Film Festival will feature screenings of award-winning shorts from all over the world and appearances from filmmakers. Craig MacNeil and Clay Mcleod Chapman will be on hand to discuss their film Late Bloomer, as will Yon Motskin, director of The Cutman. Also appearing on the panel will be Oscar-nominated screenwriter Robert Festinger (In the Bedroom) and editor Joe Bini (Grizzly Man). Other titles being shown include Six Shooter, which won this year’s Academy Award for Best Live Action Short, and More, which received a Best Animated Short Oscar nomination in 2003. The festival will take place at The Forum Theatre, 314 Main St., Metuchen, Sept 16, 7:30-11 p.m. Admission costs $15, $10 seniors/students/artists. For information, call (732) 906-0009.
Filmmakers Symposium offers screenings of movies at the Multiplex Cinemas at Town Center Plaza in East Windsor (as well as AMC Loews in Mountainside and in New York at Anthology Film Archives). The movies are followed with question-and-answer sessions with filmmakers. Titles under consideration include All the King’s Men starring Sean Penn and Jude Law, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed and Christopher Guest’s latest "mockumentary" For Your Consideration. Subscription costs $166 for six weeks, $299 for 12 weeks. For information, call (800) 531-9416. On the Web: www.privatescreenings.org
The 2006-2007 West Windsor Film series kicks off with Machuca Oct. 21 at 7:30 p.m. in the community room of the West Windsor Branch of the Mercer County Library System, 333 North Post Road, West Windsor. The 2004 film by internationally acclaimed director Andres Woods explores the intriguing friendship between two boys (one "have" and one "have-not") and that cataclysm in Chile as it hurled from populist leadership to dictatorship. The guest speaker for this showing is Carlo Momo, a Princeton-based restaurateur who lived in Chile in 1975 right after the coup. The evening will include refreshments and discussion. Free admission. As seating is limited, early arrival is suggested. For information, call (609) 919-1982. On the Web: www.westwindsorarts.org