By Al Nigrin

originally published: 05/27/2022

Here is the 2022 New Jersey International Film Festival Experimental Filmmaker Video Q+A with Emoticon Director Padrick Ritch, Love Forbids You Director Will Rittweger, Self Defense Director Joni Whitworth and Festival Director Al Nigrin:

Emoticon, Love Forbids You, and Self Defense will be screening as part of Shorts Program #1 on Saturday, June 4, 2022 – Online for 24 Hours and In Person at 5PM! For more info on this screening go here.

Emoticon – Padrick Ritch (Boston, Massachusetts) An experimental film examining the impact and influence of media. 2022; 2 min.

Love Forbids You…- Will Rittweger (Howell, New Jersey) Film noir meets a dream. While searching for a missing girl, the Seeker encounters a labyrinth of desperation, desire, and awakening. 2022; 8 min.

Self Defense - Joni Whitworth and Sam Tam Ham (Portland, Oregon) Self Defense is a short film documenting a poetic performance art piece. The piece explores my time navigating the world as a neurodivergent person. Neurodivergence refers to variations in the human mind — variations in sociability, learning, mood, sensory processing, and behavior. Many people are leaning towards the word "neurodivergent", and away from the word "autistic". I don't mind what term we use, so long as we can have a creative conversation about the label's implications. Against the violence and degradation of this year, marginalized creatives are tasked with generating an equal and opposite response. This piece is an attempt at such, knowing that queer and autistic writers have a lot to offer in terms of social and cultural feedback and constructive criticism. The work addresses several cultural issues, including how an autistic person can defend a Self moving through various categories of spaces and relationships. The words unfold as slowly, in juxtaposition to the most commonly known cultural narrative of autism, which is that of Rain Man or a weird or quirky man. Many other types of people are autistic; there are dozens of unexplored autistic elements, areas that may be not related to math or memorizing facts but details that are more generous, emotional, or sensual. 2021; 20 min.

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The 27^th annual Festival will be taking place on select Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays between June 3 -12. The Festival will be a hybrid one as we will be presenting it online as well as doing select in person screenings at Rutgers University. All the films will be available virtually via Video on Demand for 24 hours on their show date. Each ticket or Festival Pass purchased is good for both the virtual and the in person screenings. The in person screenings will be held in Voorhees Hall #105/Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick, NJ beginning at either 5PM or 7PM on their show date. Tickets: $15=Per Program; Festival All Access Pass=$100.

For more info go here: https://2022newjerseyinternationalfilmfestival.eventive.org/

Albert Gabriel Nigrin is an award-winning experimental media artist whose work has been screened throughout the world. He is also a Cinema Studies Lecturer at Rutgers University, and the Executive Director/Curator of the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center, Inc.

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