By Kate Newell
The Trenton Film Society is getting back to basics with the return of its defining event, the Trenton Film Festival.
This celebration of independent films returns after a five-year hiatus and is schedule to run from Friday, June 19, through Sunday, June 22.
Submissions for the 2014 juried event included 30 local and international filmmakers working in narrative, documentary, and animation. An addition to the festival is the “new media” category which includes experimental, music video, and spoken word.
“Film technology has become much simpler, and lots of people have access to creating footage. So there is a lot of experimenting out there. We are looking to capture traditional film but also new, edgy, crazy stuff,” says Trenton Film Society president David Henderson.
Films are screened at the small city-owned Mill Hill Playhouse, a theater renovated from a 19th-century church in Mill Hill’s historic neighborhood.
Fueled by a small but highly energized team of volunteers, the Trenton Film Society launched a recent season that also included the Oscar Shorts Festival and the Trenton International Film Festival. The current festival concludes the series.
Since the Trenton Film Festival has an online submission platform, it attracts diverse submissions from around the world. Henderson says he was especially inspired to see two films submitted from Russia (“The Story of M” by Anna Arlanova and “Butterfly Fluttering” by Roman Kayumov) and one from Iran (Seyed Sajad Moosavi’s “Non-splendid Life”).
The festival’s films are selected by a nine-member team of adjudicators who represent a mix of area educators, filmmakers, and film lovers.
This year’s jurors are Alan Amtzis, director of the masters of education program in educational leadership at the College of New Jersey; John Anastasio, veteran area broadcaster and communications and broadcaster instructor at Hunterdon Central High School; Andrew Kienzle, media production professional and longtime TFS member; Katherine Ferguson, United States Bankruptcy Judge for the District of New Jersey and former TFS board president; Pat Thompson, a Trenton-based film lover; Travis Mauro, a senior at Rider University who twice screened his films at TFS student film festival; Jack Walz, former Montclair State film professor; Judy Singleton, film lover; and Ranjana Madhusuhdan, a TFS volunteer and film-lover.
Each submission is seen by three jurors and scored on a 1 to 10 scale to make the first cut.
Evaluation includes originality/creativity, direction and writing, cinematography, and production value. Performance and technical aspects are also considered.
The second round of reviewing is geared more to the overall lineup of the festival.
“The outcome is never thematic. There is no agenda or polemic. It’s more a commitment to screening quality films,” says Henderson. “Often these films are heavy on ideas and thought and light on financial resources. What’s ironic is that film has become a lot less expensive to make but distribution has become less available.” It’s now easier to see independent films online but far more difficult to see them in a traditional setting.
The Trenton Film Festival hopes participating filmmakers attend the screenings to see and hear the audience reaction and get feedback.
“What’s unique about this film festival is that you get very accomplished filmmakers and people who have never screened a film publicly before. They are all thrown in together and get feedback from the audiences. The filmmakers get to mingle and meet each other and the audience,” says Henderson.
In return, audiences get access to the filmmaking process through talk-backs with filmmakers after screenings and informal conversations.
Just like Trenton’s highly successful Art All Night community arts festival, the Trenton Film Festival looks to strengthen area arts offerings by taking the area’s underground film scene and bringing it above ground.
In addition to films from Poland, the United Kingdom, and India, the festival’s schedule includes the efforts of Garden State artists. On the program are Rocky Hill-based Janet Gardner’s “Lost Children” (about child soldiers in Cambodia), Princeton-native A. D. Pearson’s “Landfall: The Eyes of Sandy,” Hunterdon County filmmakers Dean and Nicole Greco’s “100 Signatures” (a study of an election campaign), and Hamilton-based filmmaker and production company owner Brad Shutack’s music video featuring the Trenton-area band Anomaly.
The program also features emerging filmmakers: TCNJ student Jeffrey Skomsky’s “The Trenaissance: A Better Way for the Capital,” Montclair State University’s Claire Fishman’s “Fat Ass and Hair Lockets,” and Rutgers University’s Jessica Dotson’s “Kyle Dotson vs. The Universe.”
In his day job as a developer, Henderson aims for the same effect on Trenton’s historical buildings as he does with his involvement with the film festival. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he met his life-partner, Trenton-based architect John Hatch, during graduate studies at the University of Virginia.
Although he worked with the noted Robert Stern Architects in New York City, Henderson — the son of an Andover, Massachusetts, construction company owner and an arts editor and publisher — decided to relocate to Trenton with Hatch. He, Hatch, and Michael Goldstein are partners in HHG Development Associates, which aims to restore Trenton’s neglected architecture and currently rehabilitating a section of the Roebling factory for mixed use development.
With the same enthusiasm he brings to his architectural work and other Trenton cultural projects, Henderson believes that it is important for film goers to see films in the appropriate viewing setting, rather than on a computer or television. It is not just the quality of sound and projection; it is the chance to see films with an audience.
Trenton Film Festival, 205 E. Front St. in Trenton, Friday, June 19, through Sunday, June 22, $25 for three day pass ($12 for students) and $5 individual screenings.
For more complete schedule of films and times, visit trentonfilmsociety.org or call (609) 331-9599.
Trenton Film Festival will offer a showing of the Canadian film “Desertion.”,
