By: Jim Boyle
As usual, Al Nigrin has worked doggedly behind the scenes to assemble the summer edition of the New Jersey International Film Festival in New Brunswick. This time, however, he has decided to screen his own work for the paying public. His short experimental film, The Furies, about female phantoms haunting the Raritan River, will be shown July 8 with a special appearance by Mr. Nigrin.
The festivities kick off June 4 to 6 with the screenings of documentaries Wildwood Days and Divan. Filmed by Carolyn Travis around New Jersey’s beachtown, Wildwood Days examines the city’s rise, fall and revival with comments from Bruce Willis, Dick Clark and others. Divan shows filmmaker Pearl Gluck’s struggle to retrieve a family heirloom in Hungary so she can re-enter her Orthodox Jewish family’s good graces. Both directors will attend the screenings. Other documentaries featured on the schedule include the 12-minute Branson: Musicland USA (June 25 to 27), Between the White Lines (July 18), chronicling a year in the life of the UCLA women’s softball team, and People Say I’m Crazy (July 23), about director John Cadigan’s struggle with schizophrenia.
Mr. Nigrin habitually likes to present one or two films from influential directors, and this summer is no different with screenings of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (June 10) and The Magnificent Ambersons (June 17). There are also two films by modern master David Lynch, including an analysis of Eraserhead July 15 led by Mr. Nigrin and a screening of Lost Highway July 22. Perhaps the most controversial weekend will not be the June 11 to 13 screening of Bernardo Bertolucci’s sexually charged The Dreamers, but the weekend of July 16 to 17. Two short films start the program, including the 15-minute The Adventures of Supernigger, a satiric tale of a black superhero, and the 22-minute Exit 8A, about a New Brunswick immigrant waitress who has to tell her skinhead boyfriend she is pregnant. The screening concludes with the feature-length Jihad!, about an Arab pet-shop worker in pre-9/11 New York City interacting with a pot-smoking theology professor, a yoga-obsessed adulteress and a secret genie.
The schedule wraps up with the 4th Annual City Market’s Dinner & a Movie Series with screenings of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (July 29), National Lampoon’s Animal House (Aug. 5), Creature From the Black Lagoon (Aug. 12) and Mona Lisa Smile (Aug. 19) at Crossroads Theatre.
All Rutgers University programs begin at 7 p.m., Crossroads Theatre screenings begin at 6:30 p.m. Screening locations vary for each presentation. Admission costs $6, $5 seniors/students. Admission to Crossroads costs $7. For the full schedule, screening locations and other information, call (732) 932-8482. On the Web: www.njfilmfest.com
