FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:        

Chris Pendleton, President & CEO

Lisa Sbuttoni, PR Manager (239)334-7419

 

Estates and Edison College bring Black Maria Film Festival to Florida 

 

What:             Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival

When:            Friday, March 23, 6 PM, Edison & Ford Winter Estates

Saturday, March 24, 6 PM Edison College, Fort Myers Campus  

Who:              Film & art enthusiasts

 

FORT MYERS, FL (March 5, 2007 )- The Edison & Ford Winter Estates and Edison College have collaborated to bring the Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival to Florida for the first time since the Festival began its national tour in 1981.  The Festival has the added attraction of being shown outdoors in the gardens of the Estates as well as Edison College. 

 

The award winning festival will be held on March 23, 2007 at the Estates and March 24, 2007 at Edison College, Corbin Auditorium, in the Rush Library Building.  Doors open both nights at 6:00 PM.  Festival Director and Founder, John Columbus, will introduce the films and facilitate discussion afterwards. 

 

The Black Maria Film Festival, named after Thomas Edison’s first motion picture studio, honors Edison’s pioneering work in cinema.  The Festival is hosted by colleges and museums throughout the country and showcases independent and experimental film and video.  The films include a variety of contemporary works drawn from the annual collection of 50 award winning films and videos.  The Black Maria is recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as an Academy Awards qualifying festival for short films. 

 

Tickets may be bought in advance at the Estates, 2350 McGregor Blvd.  The cost is $5 per evening.  Estates Members and Edison College Students are FREE.  Seating is limited.  For more information call 239-334-7419 or visit the following websites: Edison & Ford Winter Estates at www.efwefla.org, Edison College at www.edison.edu and the Black Maria Film Festival at  www.blackmariafilmfestival.org.  The Black Maria Film Festival is sponsored by Chico’s Charities. 

 

On March 23rd the Estates will host the Festival along the Calhoosahatchee at the Royal Palm Alee at the historic Ford Estate.  Viewers can enjoy popcorn and beverages under the night skies at “The Mangoes,” the winter home of Henry and Clara Ford.  Films to be screened at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates include:

 

LOST AND FOUND           

(3 min. DVD by Jeff Scher, New York, NY)

Vibrant animated homage to the pioneers of American animation.  Lively piece looking back at iconic cartoon characters in vintage snippets colliding with each other in reverberating “psychadelichrome” color.

 

GAUDI

(2.5 min. DVD by Gary Adlestein, Fleetwood, PA)

An impressionistic study of Antoni Gaudi’s audacious La Sagrata Familia, the Spanish Catalans architect’s masterpiece which was started in the 1880’s and is still a work in progress.  Adlestein’s visual poem captures the wonder of the famed cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. 

 

BOWL DIGGER

(16 min. DVD by Kristy Higby, Mercersberg, PA)

A tender story of husband and wife octogenarians who are rural South Carolinians.  The couple creates wooden bowls and dough trays as durable as their relationship.  Their homespun strength of character comes through as they collaborate in responsible stewardship of the trees from which they find wood.

 

COPENHAGEN CYCLES

(6.5 min. DVD by Eric Dyer, Baltimore, MD)

A bicyclist travels through a fantastical, collaged reconstruction of Denmark’s capital city.  The piece beautifully integrates the Zoetrope (a pre-cinema children’s illusionistic toy) with high-definition digital video technology in a kinetic impressionistic portrait of Copenhagen. 

 

UNCLE HYMAN CLEANS UP

(6 min DVD by Neil Ira Neeleman, Katonah, NY)

Fresh out of the hospital, the filmmaker’s 90 year old uncle was told to rest and recuperate.  As the family visits him at home in Brooklyn, the dear uncle doggedly continues cleaning his spotless apartment.  In this tender portrait of an eccentric elder, all is well as he is happy and able to do his chores.

 

WAITING FOR ARIF

(10 min. DVD by Didem Yilmaz, Long Island City, NY)

A touching documentary about a couple who have spent their lives together in show business and the arts.  Latife Mardin is married to one of the busiest men in music, Arif Mardin, who is a 12 time Grammy winning producer for Atlantic Records.  He has been occupied for the last 45 years facilitating the careers of Aretha Franklin, and others.  Latife has spent much of her time waiting for him.  They have been married since 1957, now they enjoy their ritual cocktail hour reminiscing about how he was always late as he filled the walls with gold records.

ALICE SEES THE LIGHT

(6.3 min. DVD by Ariana Gerstein, Barton, NY)

The experimental artist has created a contemplative work, which delves into the fact that too much artificial light is obscuring and changing the way we perceive the night.  The filmmaker employs elegant night photography throughout this provocative work.

 

HAKENSACK MOTET

(5 min. by Gregg Beirmann, Hackensack, NJ)

Recorded on Main Street in Hackensack, a small New Jersey city near Manhattan, animated with the same software used for 3D animated features such as “Shrek,” this video transforms an ordinary scene into a hypnotic kaleidoscopic attraction. 

 

THE INTERVIEW

(2 min. DVD by Irra Verbitsky, New York, NY)

This is an animated spoof utilizing clips from an interview with a film festival director whose fictional character is named Serge Bromberg.  The caricatured interviewee plays with simple animation principles in a deadpan response to questions from her clueless inquisitor. 

 

SENSORIUM

(5 min. video/DVD by Karen Aqua and Ken Field, Cambridge, MA)

A hand-drawn experimental animation exploring the relationship between music and visual forms inspired by gestures and movements found in nature.  This vibrant film achieves a sound/motion synthesis.  An alphabet of abstract animated and musical gestures combined in various configurations to create a lush imagistic rhythm.

 

INTERPLAY

(6.5 min. DVD by Robert Todd, Boston, MA)

Jury Choice

Robert Todd has an eye for subtle beauty in this ode to the summer:  a play in three acts, a dance in three forms, three versions of paradise.  A meadow, a child and mother, color, nature, air, the ethos of the season are all felt in this lyrical cinematic work.

 

THIS AND THIS

(10.5 min. DVD by Vincent Grenier, Ithaca, NY)

Flaherty Seminar Filmmaker

A digital/visual contemplation of place, where images of nature, the shore of a lake or pond with water lapping, and where youth make ripples by jumping on a floating dock, form an elegant visual portrait.  This piece allows time itself to assert a presence, a weight, as the cinematic poem may remind some viewers of Walden Pond. 

 

EDISON’S MUSICIANLESS BAND (14min.)

An animated film featuring a young “Tom” Edison and his young inventor ”muckers” inventing the phonograph. 

On March 24th in the Rush Library Building, Corbin Auditorium at Edison College, a one day exhibit will be on display, “Edison and Film” on loan from the Edison & Ford Winter Estates.  The exhibit features artifacts and images including movie cameras, a kinetoscope and an early projector. After the viewing the College will host a outdoor reception in the Mary Jo Sanders Garden of Inspiration catered by Blue Pepper.  Films to be screened at Edison College include:

 

TINY DANCER

(12 min. DVD by Ford Austin, Toluca Lake, CA)

Director’s Citation

This poignant and uplifting short tells the story of a gifted ballerina who bravely endures the slings and arrows of life but whose spirit soars so brightly that she inspires even a crew of hooligans to change their ways.  A wonderful family film with artful dancing by an accomplished performer. 

 

DADDY I’M SCARED

(3 min. DVD by Tijmen Hauer, Amsterdam, the Netherlands)

An iconoclastic video pastiche consisting of thirteen different children’s cartoons layered over each other so as to be nearly unrecognizable.  This intense, sardonic and mesmerizing film is an inferno of image and sound.

 

LIFE & TIMES OF ROBERT KENNEDY STARRING GARY COOPER

(8 min. DVD by Aaron Valdez, Iowa City, Iowa)

The video maker compares the real-life saga of Robert Kennedy to the Hollywood hero Gary Cooper and the gunplay in his film “High Noon”. Using “recycled” footage, the filmmaker creates a dramatic montage that is both imaginative, thought provoking and acts as a commentary on a culture of violence. 

 

ONE RAT SHORT

(10 min. DVD (also in 35 mm film) by Alex Weil, New York, NY)

A touching and hyper realistic, digital sci-fi animation about two rodents who fall in love.  The action takes place in a robotic science lab where animal testing is inflicted by emotionless machines.  In this cleaver work, the robots go haywire and love triumphs, at least for a time. 

 

PHANTOM CANYON

(10 min. DVD (also in 35 mm) by Stacey Steers, Boulder, CO)

Jury Choice

This is truly an extraordinary collage animation in which phantasmagoric Victorian era cutouts of cherubs, gargoyles and women in petticoats, trip across the screen in a symphony of mythological images.  This is a masterful, symbolic depiction of the travails and triumphs in the life of women, who is freed by the spirit of a star child.

 

I WANT TO BE A PILOT

(11.5 min. DVD (also in 35 mm film) by Diego Quemanda-Diez, Los Angeles, CA)

The heart-wrenching work is the story of a 12 year old orphan who wanders the muddy back lanes of a ramshackle East Africa slum in search of food and human warmth.  Made in the tradition of Italian Neo-Realist filmmakers, “I Want to be a Pilot” employs a street kid to represent the true life experiences and testimonies of 50 orphans in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

A PAINFUL GLIMPSE INTO MY WRITING PROCESS

(1.5 min. DVD (also in 35 mm) by Chel White, Portland, OR)

This playful portrait of a filmmaker’s creative process smartly plays off of Raymond Chandler detective novels.  The piece is accelerated by a crazed, stream of consciousness voice-over that nearly overtakes the rush of images.

 

AFRAID SO

(3 min. DVD by Jay Rosenblatt, San Francisco, CA)

Jury Citation and Flaherty Seminar Filmmaker

This work features a narration by the radio legend Garrison Keillor.  “Afraid So” is about fear and anxiety and is based on a poem where each line forms a question with the implied response “afraid so.”  Keillor’s dulcet voice wafts through an assemblage of vintage film clips which capture a dream like sense of universal angst and impending doom. 

 

BRIDGES-GO-ROUND

(10min. DVD)

Special tribute film to the great woman filmmaker, Shirley Clarke.  Artfully made, semi-abstract but visually beautiful boat ride around Manhattan Island capturing images of the Brooklyn Bridge, Queensboro bridge, Manhattan Bridge and George Washington Bridge.  Made in 1954, the film is a must see.  

 

GLASS CROW

(6.3 min. DVD by Steven Subotnick, Providence, RI)

This noted animation artist has created a compelling visual meditation on the spark that began the Thirty Years War.  Richly layered, hand rendered images explore the worlds of nature, humanity, and heaven during this moment in history. 

 

HIRO

(19 min. DVD (also in 35 mm) by Matthew Swanson, Toronto, Ontario)

In this offbeat narrative the awkward protagonist is obsessed with his collection of rare beetles.  After a chance encounter at a sushi bar, where the chef is very strangely attired, the shy Japanese insect collector finds himself thrust into a surreal chase to recover a young woman from the sushi bar and the beetle he has just paid to acquire.

 

HALLUCII

(4 min. DVD by Goo-Shun Wang, New York, NY)

This illusionistic animation emulates the work of M.C. Escher. A cartoon character, perhaps in a dream, stumbles up a long precarious staircase.  He gathers himself and searches for an exit.  The protagonist seems to be trapped in an infinite mobius strip nightmare that wraps back on itself with no beginning and no end. 

 

IRAQI KURDISTAN

(12 min. DVD by Ed Kashi, Montclair, NJ)

“Iraqi Kurdistan” is a gripping portrait of life in Kurdistan synchronized to strains of indigenous music.  Pixellated still images contrast scenes of war, peace, family celebrations, weddings, farming as life under siege perseveres.  The piece provides and elegant and powerful insight into the stark contrasts and vitality found in this part of the Middle East.

 

In 1892 the world’s first motion picture studio was built by Thomas Edison and nicknamed the Black Maria.  The studio has become an emblem of the exploratory spirit in film which the Festival celebrates.  The Black Maria Film Festival is a joint project of the Edison & Ford Winter Estates and Edison College celebrating Edison’s pioneering contributions to the film industry.