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Dystopian Feature Dead Community Guild screens at the New Jersey Film Festival on Saturday, January 25!

by Anran Li
published 2025-01-16

Three minutes into this film, I paused and texted my boyfriend, a huge enthusiast of creative thrillers, stunts, and cool fight scenes: “I think this is totally your thing.” While Texas Chainsaw Massacre is almost THE horror film that would trigger the “You’ve NEVER seen this?” response, following its steps is hardly a child’s play. I will not say Dead Community Guild is a textbook demonstration, yet it is rather straightforward and concise in what it conveys: a dystopia premise with the end-day desperation on the scorching Texas road. The opening scene well establishes how the worldview is built with a crisp and somewhat comedic confrontation. Just as such, we are informed of how, in the film, the human conflict is extremely exacerbated by the scarcity of resources that laws, civilization, and the goodness of human nature all cave in to the minimal animal instinct and the drive to survive. The radio broadcasting of the “welcoming” messages for survivors to join the community, despite the endearing tone, recurs in the film so often that it becomes creepy as a threat that we cannot help but assume the so-called community might be the climate of a bloodbath, just like the dawn of the Hunger Games.




 

New Release Review - "Maria"

by Eric Hillis, TheMovieWaffler.com
published 2025-01-15

Artists rarely engage with their own art once the creative process has been completed (save for Quentin Tarantino, who seems all too happy to watch a triple bill of his own movies). A musician won't listen to their records; a filmmaker will refuse to watch their movies; a painter will sell a painting and never set eyes upon it again. The artist will tell you it's because they only see the mistakes in their work, and it's now too late to correct them (George Lucas aside).



The Drew Forum at MPAC presents Al Franken

(MORRISTOWN, NJ) -- Former U.S. Senator Al Franken will be the second speaker in Drew University's 2024-2025 Drew Forum series at Mayo Performing Arts Center. Senator Franken will speak at MPAC on Monday, February 3, 2025 at 7:30pm. Charles Stile, political columnist and former New Jersey statehouse political reporter for The Bergen Record, will serve as moderator.



New Jersey Stage: Daily Edition 01-15-25

Here is the morning update from New Jersey's arts newswire. We regularly publish between 8-15 new articles and news reports each day. Nobody covers the Arts throughout the Garden State like New Jersey Stage!





It’s A to Z: The Art of Arleen Schloss gets its Statewide Premiere at the New Jersey Film Festival

by Morgan Kalmbach
published 2025-01-15

Documentary filmmaking is incredibly unique in that it immerses not only the audience in its subject matter but also its filmmaker in the process of creating the film. From spending countless hours researching, compiling, and shooting interviews and creating an overall storyline, every step of the way, the filmmaker is involved and learning as the progression ensues. The challenge then becomes how much this filmmaker can include of their newly learned knowledge about the subject and what the best way to shed light on this subject that they have studied is. Stuart Ginsberg’s It’s A to Z: The Art of Arleen Schloss exemplifies this challenge and is greatly successful in how it was overcome. Although the film only runs for an hour, it encompasses decades of information surrounding Arleen Schloss, a notable multimedia artist in the New York City underground art scene in the 70s through the 90s.