The Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival will kick off its 39th annual season with two special screening events on consecutive evenings before launching its international tour.
On Friday night, February 7, filmmakers Su Friedrich, Edith Goldenhar, Emily Hubley, and Lynne Sachs will screen and discuss their work and participate in an audience Q&A with Festival Director Jane Steuerwald in an evening of “Women in Film.”
Saturday night, February 8 will be the Festival’s 2020 premiere with a screening of five top prize-winning films with filmmaker/photographer/author Eugene Richards, winner of the Festival’s Stellar Award for Documentary, present to discuss his work and participate in an audience Q&A with Steuerwald.
A pre-screening reception on Feb. 8 starts at 7:00 p.m. at 185 Nassau Street. Both the reception and screening are free and open to the public; no tickets required. Free parking is available behind 185 Nassau Street in Lot #10 on Williams Street in Princeton.
FEATURED FILMS IN BLACK MARIA FESTIVAL PROGRAM:
THE GIRL WITH THE RIVET GUN
Documentary, 15 min.
by ANNE DE MARE and KIRSTEN KELLY (New York, NY)
Winner of 2020 Jury’s Stellar Award
An animated documentary based on the adventures of three real-life “Rosie the Riveters,” Esther Horne, Susan Taylor King, and Mildred Crow Sargent. From vastly different backgrounds, these three women came of age in an America united by war but struggling with divisions of gender, economics and race.
FREEZE FRAME
Animation, 5 min.
by SOETKIN VERSTEGEN (Brussels, Belgium)
Winner of 2020 Jury’s Stellar Award
A stop-motion film in which identical figures perform the hopeless task of preserving blocks of ice, as if they were archivists. Their repetitive movements re-animate the animals captured inside.
THE RAIN WILL FOLLOW
Documentary, 15 min.
by EUGENE RICHARDS (Brooklyn, NY)
Winner of 2020 Jury’s Stellar Award
This film tells the story of 90-year-old Melvin Wisdahl, who, though confined to a nursing home, lives an interior life filled with images of the war he fought in, the struggles of the early Norwegian settlers of North Dakota, his ghost town of a home, and his love of the ever-evolving and threatened land.
THE DIVINE WAY
Experimental, 15 min.
by ILARIA DI CARLO (Berlin, Germany)
Winner of 2020 Jury’s Stellar Award
This experimental film loosely based on Dante’s Divine Comedy takes the viewer into a woman’s epic descent through an endless labyrinth of staircases. As her journey takes her deeper and deeper, the staircases transform, and she becomes trapped and pulled into this dangerous landscape.
COLD STORAGE
Narrative, 9 min.
by THOMAS FREUNDLICH (Helsinki, Finland)
Winner of 2020 Jury’s Stellar Award
A narrative film that takes place on a desolate arctic shore where a lonely fisherman discovers his prehistoric counterpart frozen in the ice and thaws him out as his newfound soul brother. The film pays homage to the virtuosic physical performances and melancholy comedy of the classic silent screen.
