(HACKETTSTOWN, NJ) -- Centenary University will host a free screening for the 42nd Annual Thomas Edison Film Festival on Tuesday, March 21 at 6:30 pm in the Stinik Theatre of the Lackland Performing Arts Center located on the campus of Centenary University at 715 Grand Avenue, Hackettstown, NJ. The Thomas Edison Film Festival is free to attend and open to the public. Seating is limited and on a first-come-first-served basis. This event is made possible through the generous support from the Warren County Cultural & Heritage Commission.

This year the festival will include selected shorts including animation, experimental, documentary, narrative, and screen dance. More information about each of the short films being presented can be found online at CentenaryStageCo.org.

For over 40 years, the Thomas Edison Film Festival (formerly known as the Black Maria Film Festival) has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short form. The festival passionately embraces its mission to promote innovation and advocate for independent filmmakers through a juried international competition celebrating all genres and hybrids from filmmakers around the world. Thomas Edison Film Festival is a socially conscious, modern, fiercely independent traveling festival for short film. They reach out to diverse audiences with provocative, timely, edgy, and compelling new works by both accomplished and emerging filmmakers hybrids from filmmakers around the world.

The Thomas Edison Film Festival was founded in 1981 by John Columbus, an artist/filmmaker from West Orange, NJ. He felt that the roots of experimental film in the 1960s and 70s were in many ways linked to Edison’s early experimental films, and worthy of attention. The festival was originally named for Edison’s film studio in West Orange, NJ, the studio’s resemblance to the familiar black-box shaped police paddy wagons sparked the nickname “black maria”. The festival’s relationship to Edison’s invention of the motion camera and the kinetoscope and his experimentation with the short film is an essential part of the festival’s history and mission. All of Edison’s early films were short, he made 75 of them, each about a minute long. Today the Thomas Edison Film Festival continues to celebrate short films in their own right – not as a sidebar to feature length film, but as a poetic, unique and compelling art for all its own.

This Thomas Edison Film Festival screening will take place on Tuesday, March 21 at 6:30pm in the Sitnik Theatre of the Lackland Performing Arts Center at 715 Grand Avenue, Hackettstown, NJ. This event is free to attend, and seating is limited and on a first-come-first-served basis. For more information about this event, visit centenarystageco.org or call the Centenary Stage Company box office at (908) 979-0900.

  The Centenary Stage Company box office is open Monday through Friday from 1:00pm – 5:00pm and two hours prior to all performances.  The box office is located in the Lackland Performing Arts Center on the campus of Centenary University at 715 Grand Ave. Hackettstown, NJ.  Centenary Stage Company can also be found across social media platforms; Facebook, Tik Tok, Twitter and Instagram.  Like and follow to receive the latest in CSC news and special offers.

Centenary Stage Company remains committed to the health and safety of our community and adheres to all requirements set forth by the State of New Jersey.  For more information regarding CSC COVID-19 policies and policy updates, visit centenarystageco.org/faq.

The 2022-23 Season of Performing Arts events at the Centenary Stage Company is made possible through the generous support of the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Shubert Foundation, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the Sandra Kupperman Foundation, the John and Margaret Post Foundation, the CSC corporate sponsors, including Platinum Season Sponsor the House of the Good Shepherd, Silver Sponsors Hackettstown Medical Center Atlantic Health System, Heath Village, Visions Federal Credit Union, and Fulton Bank, and Centenary Stage Company members and supporters.