The 41st annual tour of the Thomas Edison Film Festival kicks off virtually with a premiere screening of several top award-winning films and a live awards ceremony and audience Q&A with filmmakers and Festival Director Jane Steuerwald on February 19.
Watch the Films On-Demand
Through February 26, you can view the films on-demand on Vimeo. The festival films will only be available from February 12-26, 2022.
Join the Live Premiere Event
Join the live festival premiere event on Zoom on Saturday, Feb. 19 at 7:30 PM (EST).
Presented by the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Program in Visual Arts and Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium.
About the Featured Films
Film still courtesy Lynn Tomlinson
Ten Degrees of Strange (Animation)
4 min. by Lynn Tomlinson, Owings Mills, MD, USA
“Ten Degrees of Strange” is a music video based on a song by Robert Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn, from their album Lost in the Cedar Wood. Taking inspiration from The Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient story written on clay tablets, and responding to the strangeness of the global pandemic, Tomlinson’s stunning animated film is a story of loss and hope in nature told through colorful, shifting, changing, morphing, clay on glass animation.
Film still courtesy Joe Quint
Hello Sunshine (Documentary)
13 min. by Joe Quint, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Roz Pichardo is more than a domestic violence and gun violence survivor, she’s a warrior. Despite being thrown off a bridge by an abusive ex-boyfriend, the unsolved murder of her brother, and the suicide of her identical twin sister, she channels her trauma into service by helping the often-forgotten people of North Philadelphia. Roz gives comfort to families of murder victims and has saved the lives of over 500 men and women in active opioid addiction. Roz knows that her healing and her survival depend upon healing others.
Film still courtesy Caleb Slain
“enough” (Experimental)
13 min. by Caleb Slain, Shoreline, WA, USA
A dream, a nightmare, a musical. Shot over 10 years, this surreal hip hop odyssey unpacks the stormy inner world of Nathan Nzanga, a Congolese American artist coming of age in a fractured nation. The film uses dream logic to sift through Nate’s most conflicted feelings about policing, love, and identity in a divided nation.
Film still courtesy Zillah Bowes
Allowed (Experimental)
4 min. by Zillah Bowes, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
Weeds aren’t just weeds. They’re like friends. During the first Covid-19 wave, plants and flowers were allowed to grow wild. Using 3D animated photos, this film lyrically re-examines our relationship with urban plant life in the urgent context of biodiversity loss and climate crisis.
Film still courtesy Lisa Fuchs
Rivage — The Shore (Narrative)
40 min. by Lisa Fuchs, Paris, France
Rivage (The Shore) speaks to the zone between dry land and water, without precise boundaries. The film depicts this in-between world, between life and death, where the borders are porous. A woman, Eva, is drawn to the sea and her body merges with the landscape. Even after Eva’s companion David dies accidentally at sea, the bond between them remains strong through their child Louis, that Eva is carrying. Eva stands between David and Louis — torn between the joy of giving life and the sorrow of her loss. At the end of her mourning process, she chooses life, sublimating her pain through dance.
Film still courtesy Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman
Digital Afterlives (Screen Dance)
5 min. by Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman, Surry Hills, New South Wales, Australia
A man in white-winged angel shoes in an infinite black space is awakened by the strains of Franz Liszt’s “Totentanz” (The Dance of the Dead). He is multiplied and manipulated through all the dimensions of infinite black. None of the incarnations of his body have free will as he is thrown, bounced, split, squelched, flopped, frozen, and slid through multitudinous geometries by an unknown force, finally to be returned to his original form and spat out onto the junk heap of history.
Film still courtesy David De La Fuente
Compositions for Understanding Relationships (Animation)
5 min. by David De La Fuente, New York, NY, USA
Compositions for Understanding Relationships takes the shape of a “love letter.” This concept is examined as various forms of relationships are brought on throughout the film. Taken in and out of the romantic context, the viewer gazes upon the dynamic play of color, form, balance, proportion, and unity. “…for the lover the letter has no tactical value: it is purely expressive…”
