The 43rd season of the renowned Thomas Edison Film Festival (TEFF) will premiere with an in-person screening, a virtual live-streamed discussion with filmmakers, and seven films available to view on-demand through the ongoing collaboration with the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University. On February 16 at 6:30 p.m. a reception at the James Stewart Film Theater kicks off prior to the 7:00 p.m. screening of seven films at 185 Nassau Street on the Princeton campus, followed by a Q&A with festival artists including filmmaker James Hollenbaugh, poet and performer Bimpé Fageyinbo, lighting director Gabriel Kurzlop, filmmaker Chehade Boulos, and producer Julia Anderson. On February 17 the live-streamed discussion with the filmmakers will begin at 4:00 p.m. (ET), hosted by Festival Director Jane Steuerwald, Festival Associate and juror Henry Baker, and Curator, Emerita, of the National Gallery of Art Margaret Parsons. From February 16 through 23 the seven films will be available to view on-demand. All activities are free and open to the public with no tickets or advance registration required. The Film Theater is an accessible venue.
The Thomas Edison Film Festival is an international juried competition celebrating all genres and independent filmmakers across the globe. For more than 40 years, the festival has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short film by celebrating stories that shine a light on issues and struggles within contemporary society. The festival was founded in 1981 as Black Maria Film Festival and originally named for Thomas Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey, film studio dubbed the “Black Maria” because of its resemblance to the black-box police paddy wagons of the same name. Renamed in 2021, the festival’s relationship to Thomas Edison’s invention of the motion camera and the kinetoscope and his experimentation with the short film is at the core of the festival.
The Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium also showcases the New Jersey Young Filmmakers Festival and the Global Insights Collection, an archive of films focusing on the environment, LGBTQ+ subjects, people with disabilities, international issues, race and class, and films with themes of social justice.
This is the sixth year the Lewis Center has collaborated with the Consortium to host the festival premiere. In addition to premiering the season, the Consortium programs other screenings for Princeton audiences and brings Festival filmmakers together with Princeton students and faculty.
The festival received 617 submissions for the 2024 season from every continent except Antarctica. Following an extensive pre-screening process by experts in the field of film curation, media studies and production, the highly regarded festival jurors Margaret Parsons, curator emerita of film at the National Gallery of Art, and Henry Baker, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and former director of Synapse Video Center, chose 110 films for the 2024 collection and awarded the top prizes. Following the premiere at Princeton, these films will be made available for screenings in the U.S. and abroad.
About the Films
The seven films being screened on February 16 are:
A Tiny Man, a Stellar Award-winning animated film by Aude David and Mikaël Gaudin of Montpellier, France, depicts a man who—displeased with his wife’s body—sneakily administers a mysterious serum that is supposed to make her lose weight quickly. But following a sleight of hand reversal by his wife, it is he who swallows the beverage and starts to shrink.
Tracing Imperfection by Chehade Boulos of Pompano Beach, Florida, is a winner of the Stellar Award for documentary. As master conservator Naoko Fukumaru demonstrates kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing pottery using gold, she recalls how learning the practice has taught her to embrace her own imperfections and mend her own life.
A still from Between Earth and Sky, a documentary film by Andrew Nadkarni that was also shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards, one of the works to be screened at the 43rd Annual Thomas Edison Film Festival’s in-person premiere at Princeton University on February 16, followed by a virtual discussion with the filmmakers on February 17. Photo credit: Courtesy of Andrew Nadkarni
Impossible Image, a Stellar Award-winning film in the genre of screen dance by Karen Pearlman and Richard James Allen of New South Wales, Australia, remixes the anarchy and gender play of women of the 1920s, with the fury, irony, and sly humor of women dancing in the 2020s. Cutting together contemporary action and archival footage, Pearlman creates a montage of rage, hilarity and feminist protest echoing across 100 years.
Between Earth and Sky, by Andrew Nadkarni of Brooklyn, New York, is a Global Insights Stellar Award winner and was shortlisted for the 2024 Academy Awards in the Best Documentary Short category. In the film, renowned ecologist Nalini Nadkarni studies “what grows back” after a disturbance in the rainforest canopy. After surviving a life-threatening fall from a tree, she must turn her research question onto herself to explore the effects of disturbance and recovery throughout her own life.
A Life Like This by James Hollenbaugh of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is a documentary portrait highlighting the lived experiences and creative work of four outsider artists working and living with disability in Central Pennsylvania. Hollenbaugh notes that artists with disabilities, both mental and physical, consistently face discrimination, inequity, and underexposure at local and national levels. A Life Like This aims to de-stigmatize an underrepresented demographic of artists in telling the four unique stories of Malcolm Corley, Adam Musser, Sybil Roe Thompson, and David Nolt — artists who create as a means of communication and express how art shapes and impacts their lives. The film is winner of the festival’s Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion Award (DEAI) Stellar Award, and an excerpt of the full film will be shown at the premiere.
A still from A Life Like This, a documentary by James Hollenbaugh that won the festival’s Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion (DEAI) Stellar Award, one of the seven films to be screened in-person at the premiere in the James Stewart Film Theater at Princeton University on February 16 and will also be available on-demand February 16-23 as part of the 43rd Annual Thomas Edison Film Festival. Photo credit: Courtesy James Hollenbaugh
250km is a narrative film by Hasmik Movsisyan of Yeravan, Armenia. When a war suddenly breaks out, a 14-year-old boy finds himself faced with a decision that could save his family. With no time to think, he embarks on a treacherous 250-kilometer journey to safety.
In Freedom for Freedom, an experimental film by Yuri Alves of Newark, New Jersey, poet Bimpé Fageyinbo delivers a powerful ode to the memory and spirit of Harriet Tubman while evoking the urgency of real freedom for Black people, then and now.
To view all seven films on-demand from February 16 through 23, go to the Thomas Edison Film Festival website and click on “Watch the premiere on-demand.”
To join the livestreamed discussion with the filmmakers on February 17, visit the Lewis Center event page for the Zoom link; no advance registration is required.
Venues interested in scheduling a screening should contact Festival Director Jane Steuerwald at Jane@TEFilmFestival.org. The festival offers programming options ranging from a custom-curated program to an online film presentation by the festival director, including a Q&A and dialog with the audience.
In addition to the support provided for the 2024 season by the Lewis Center for the Arts, the Thomas Edison Film Festival receives support from New Jersey State Council on the Arts; the Charles Edison Fund – Edison Innovation Foundation; the Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs and Tourism; the Hoboken Historical Museum; Big Sky Edit; Sonic Union; the Puffin Foundation; Lowenstein Sandler, LLP; the NBA; Fairleigh Dickinson University; University of Delaware; NJ Motion Picture and Television Commission; East Brunswick Tech School of the Arts, Adobe Systems, Inc.; and Microsoft through TechSoup.org.
Visit the Thomas Edison Film Festival website to learn more about the festival and Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium. To learn more about the Lewis Center for the Arts, the premiere screening, and the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures presented each year, most of them free, visit the Lewis Center website.
