The New Jersey Film Festival begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 25 and will continue on select Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings until Friday Feb. 28. The festival will be located at Rutgers University’s Voorhees Hall, Room 105, on 71 Hamilton St., New Brunswick.
Executive director and founder of The New Jersey Film Festival, Albert Nigrin, said the festival is presented by the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, in association with the Rutgers University Program in Cinema Studies.
Nigrin said the festival will be showcasing new international films, American independent features, experimental and short subjects, animation films, classic revivals, and cutting-edge documentaries. 27 films were selected from over 611 works submitted by filmmakers from around the world. Q+A sessions with featured filmmakers will take place after select showings.
The film festival has been active since 1982, and began with an eager Nigrin who wanted to build a community catered toward film lovers. He set up free showings in Rutgers’ Campbell Hall on Monday nights, borrowed projectors from the media library, and used his meager Teacher’s Assistant salary to rent movies that the library did not own. 38 years later, the New Jersey Film Festival has developed into a creative hub for independent filmmakers and filmgoers alike.
“The festival has been going strong, but it has changed. In the 80’s it was revival, in the 90’s we did first-run and second-run Art House movies. Now we get submissions from around the world and we show the best of what we get,” Nigrin said. “I had always wanted to champion independent films, so since the turn of the millennium, we’ve been mostly an independent film festival.”
Nigrin is especially excited for the 2020 United States Super 8mm and Digital Video Festival, which is a smaller festival within the larger one. It takes place on Saturday Feb. 22 and Sunday Feb. 23.
He said, “The Super 8mm festival is where we show movies that are in the old home movie format. Super 8mm film was the kind of amateur format in the 60s, 70s, and into the 80s, until digital came out. It was a cheap and accessible way to shoot on film, and eventually people like Steven Spielberg would learn how to make movies on it. So, Super 8mm served as an entrée for many of the directors that we love today.
“There are many amazing films being featured in the New Jersey Film Festival this season. One of the films I really like is ‘Pacarrete’, which was shot in Brazil. It’s a feature film about an aging dancer who wants to put on one final performance. It’s a little bit of a kooky film, but it’s really quite wonderful.”
Quinn Turon, a third-semester New Jersey Film Festival intern, is one of the filmmakers featured in the festival. His film is titled Greene Dreams. Turon said, “It’s a short film about a girl in her small town, home from college, experiencing weird coincidences that drive her to playing detective. I would describe it as an experimental mystery.”
“My advice for students who want to make films and enter them into festivals is that it doesn’t matter what equipment you have. When we were making this film, we only used a Canon photography camera and some iPhone footage. We didn’t have studio lighting or even a professional editing software. We just used what was available to us at the time. I would say that the story is more important than anything else,” Turon said.
“All the works that we are screening, with the exception of four programs, are part of the New Jersey Film Festival Competition and were selected by a panel of judges including media professionals, journalists, students, and academics,” Nigrin said. “In addition, the judges will choose the Prize Winners in conjunction with the Festival Director. Prize winners will be announced after the screenings on Sunday, February 16, 2020.”
Each year, the film festival partners with The Confucius Institute to provide free programming for audiences on a select number of nights. These screenings are typically shown in Mandarin.
The cost of attendance is $14 in advance, $12 for general admission, $10 for students and seniors, and $9 for Rutgers Film Co-Op/New Jersey Media Arts Center Friends. The screenings on Feb. 21 and Feb. 28 are free. The complete festival schedule can be accessed at www.njfilmfest.com.
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