NJ Film Festival offers these films on demand for 24 hours starting at midnight with an in-person screening at Rutgers at 7:00pm.
Hole in the Head – Dean Kavanaugh (Wicklow, Ireland). Part-time projectionist and amateur filmmaker, John Kline Jnr, is mute and suffers from missing time. He hires local actors to play his parents in a series of recreated home movies in order to investigate their unsolved disappearance 25 years earlier. Hole in the Head is an independent feature film in which the protagonist re-stages his family’s home movies in order to recall a traumatic event. Melding new with old technologies and a film-within-a-film structure, this feature film proposes a hauntological discourse on autofiction, trauma and private ritual. 2023; 90 min.
Out of Frame – Evan Bode (Colorado). Trapped in their frames and monitored by a menacing curator, two paintings long to escape from the art gallery's white walls. As the paintings lock eyes across the room, an unspoken connection forms between them that sets the stage for revolution. With a distinctive blend of live-action and animation, this short film by Evan Bode employs surreal metaphor to explore ideas about power, resistance, queer identity, visibility, and liberation from constructed borders. 2023; 9 min.
June – Lauren Stevens (Los Angeles, California). June is a gas-station attendant, withered by the mundaneness of her central-valley life. She has recently come out as bisexual, much to the confusion of her manager Claudia who wants the best for her favorite (and only) employee. When June’s childhood best friend, Nia, wanders into the gas station unexpectedly, they recall a memory of a moment that changed the course of their lives – for better and for worse. Through reconnecting with Nia, June realizes that her actions, words, and emotions do have an impact. This discovery hurdles June into a long awaited late-bloomed coming of age. 2023; 13 min.
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