Film presenters and festival coordinators are working to bring audiences together to explore the world and region through moving images.
That includes two nonprofit film venues readying to reel:
The Princeton Garden Theater
Downtown Princeton’s oldest movie theater is continuing its ever-changing schedule of specially selected first-run films as well as its classic Hollywood and foreign language film series; filmmaker appearances and lectures; Saturday kids’ matinees; and theatrically broadcast events such as those from the National Theatre in London.
Princeton Garden Theater, 160 Nassau Street, Princeton. www.princetongardentheatre.org.
ACME Screening Room
The old Acme supermarket turned into the Lambertville cinema center is hosting a live reopening event featuring nationally known folksinger Dar Williams, who will also talk about her book about touring small towns like Lambertville, “What I Found in a Thousand Towns.” Saturday, September 11.
In addition to its weekly rotation of independent and documentary films, Acme is planning its first Halloween Film Festival. It will feature guest speakers, SFX make-up demos, and the awarding of the Golden Pumpkin for the creepiest film. October 22 through 24.
The ACME Screening Room, 5 South Union Street, Lambertville. www.acmescreeningroom.org.
Hopewell Theater
Meanwhile, The downtown Hopewell Theater is running several series, including “Films That Make Music,” “Art of Living Well,” and an independent film series. Its fall season is as follows:
“365” uses 13 segments following members of the Hopewell-based Europium Dance Theater to explore the range of experiences human beings have during the 365 days that make a year. The premiere screening will be followed by a talk by the film’s director, Linda Erickson, a choreographer, past New York City Ballet manager assistant, and founder of New York Dance Theater. $20. Friday, September 24.
“Rockfield: The Studio On the Farm” is a documentary that tells the tale of how two young Welsh farmers turned their farm into a independent recording studio that attracted major rock bands and performers such as Black Sabbath, Queen, Robert Plant, Iggy Pop, Simple Minds, and others. $12.50. Friday, September 24, 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, September 25 and 26, 2 p.m.
“Save The Sourlands SoloFest” is a film and discussion on the ecologically and culturally important region of our area. The event is billed as “a musical and educational celebration of the beauty and importance of New Jersey’s Sourland Mountain region, a vital 90-square-mile natural area facing an invasive insect that will kill 1 million ash trees.”
Along with the film featuring musicians performing amidst the landscape, there will be a panel discussion led by conservancy director Laurie Cleveland, who joined the organization to fight the PennEast pipeline project. $20. Tuesday, September 28, 7 p.m.
“Sublet” is a feature film account of a New York travel writer who travels to Tel Aviv to write and grieve about his lost husband but has a life-altering encounter with the young film students who sublets him an apartment. $12.50. Thursday, October 7, 7 p.m.
“Hal” is a documentary on the life and work of Hal Ashby, the film director of the influential 1970s American films “Harold and Maude,” “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Coming Home,” and “Being There.” $20. Tuesday, October 12, 7 p.m.
“Jazz on a Summer’s Day” is the restored re-issue of New York fashion and celebrity photographer Bert Stern’s period film documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. It features the performances of some of America’s greatest music legends, including Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O’Day, Chuck Berry, Dinah Washington, and Mahalia Jackson. $12.50. Tuesday, October 19, 7 p.m.
“Fright Fest” is a series of Halloween-season offerings, including “Poltergeist,” “The Shining,” “The Witches,” and “Beetlejuice.” $12.50. Times vary. October 28 through 30.
“Who Will Start Another Fire” features nine films by emerging filmmakers from underrepresented communities around the world $20. Tuesday, November 2, 7 p.m. (with directors participating through a virtual Q&A), film only, Sunday, November 7, 2 p.m.
“He Dreams of Giants” is filmmaker and Monty Python Flying Circus member Terry Gilliam’s culminating documentary following his own 30-year Quixote-like quest to adapt the Spanish novel on the “Don Quixote de la Mancha.” The film has been called a meditation on creativity. $12.50. Tuesday, November 9, 7 p.m.
“Moby Doc” is a chronicle of the influential 1990 musician whose success put him on the path of self-destruction, self-confrontation, and self-rediscovery. $12.50. Tuesday, November 19, 8 p.m.
“Farming in the Millstone Valley: Past & Present” is a 35-minute video documentary made by the Millstone Valley Preservation Coalition of Rocky Hill, in association with the Van Harlingen Historical Society of Montgomery, that examines the region’s farming from the arrival of 18th century Dutch farmers to today’s business practices.
Following the screening, Brad Fay, the film’s writer, will lead a discussion with agriculturists on the future of regional farming. $20. Tuesday, November 23, 7 p.m.
“Precious Guru” is a feature documentary chronicling the life, times, and legacy of “the second Buddha,” Padmasambhava. An exuberant and earthy 8th-century Indian yogi who brought Buddhism to Tibet, he was given the name Guru Rinpoche or “Precious Guru.” The film was endorsed by the Dalai Lama. $12.50. Tuesday, November 30, 7 p.m.
Hopewell Theater, 5 South Greenwood Avenue, Hopewell. 609-466-1964 or www.hopewelltheater.com.
Film Festivals
The New Jersey Film Festival at Rutgers University in New Brunswick is celebrating its 40th anniversary with Friday and Sunday presentations of international independent films between September 10 and October 10. All screenings sessions are $15 and include the following:
“The Dark Forest,” a nine-minute “transcendental fable” by New York City director Martin Del Carpio will be screened with Plainfield, New Jersey, director Willa Cofield’s “The Nine O’clock Whistle, a feature-length documentary about the North Carolina town of Enfield’s mid-1960s practice of sounding a whistle announcing a curfew for Americans of African descent and the struggle to end it and other practices of segregation. Friday, September 10.
“Spinal,” a six-minute experimental documentary on the Norwegian director’s muscle disease, will be shown with “Ailleurs Partout,” the feature-length French film of the journey of a young Iranian man’s quest for asylum recounted in digital and recorded messages. Sunday, September 12.
“Into Schrodinger’s Box” is a feature-length Canadian film following a middle-aged musician named Sofia’s COVID-related quarantine, her ensuing hallucinations, and the appearance of a beautiful woman named Lilith. Friday, September 17.
“Invention in C Major,” North Haledon, New Jersey, director Richard D. Lopez’s four-minute film of a music machine haunted by its music and an unexpected visitor, will be shown with three other works.
The first is the five-minute “Parenthesis,” a New York state/Washington, D.C., director’s impressionistic work that “liberates the inserted thought from its master.”
The Brooklyn produced “…Lucid Dreams” is a short focusing on the “altered state of consciousness in which a person is aware that he is dreaming and can control its content to some extent.”
The last is the 60-minute Austrian film “The New Blockheads as a private case,” which follows a member of a Russian creative group inspired by futurist poetry and modern philosophy and his ongoing art making as he travels through his adopted town of Vienna. Sunday, September 19.
“Zero Gravity” is the California-produced feature documentary about the San Jose middle school students who won an MIT competition to code satellites aboard the International Space Station. Friday, September 24.
“Painting Class” is an 11-minute Chinese film about a young girl who steals money to enroll in a painting class. It will be shown with “Swapna Kurup,” the United Arab Emirates-produced feature documentary on Montclair, New Jersey, artist Ela Shah, who emigrated from India in 1970 and whose social and cultural transition and personal stories have fueled four decades of work. Sunday, September 26.
“Jethro Tull: Aqualung” is the seven-minute English film marking the 50th anniversary of the band’s song about homelessness. Also on the program is the Georgia film “The Dirt Whisperer.” The feature length film examines a couple whose homestead farming and corporate career experiences put them on a search for crop health and sustainability and the health of soil. Friday, October 1.
“A Moment on Main Street” is Freehold, New Jersey, director Brianna Stimpson’s 18-minute look at the impact of COVID-19 on the businesses in a small New Jersey town. It’s paired with 60-minute “Last Call,” the film made in Queens examining COVID’s impact on the area’s hospitality businesses as they struggle to survive as the borough becomes a pandemic epicenter. Sunday, October 3.
“The Color of You,” a 14-minute film from Connecticut dealing with a young girl’s decision to find out about a unusual girl named Scarlett, is the first of four shorts programmed including: “Swim to Steven,” a California-made humorous short of a mother reliving awkward moments in the past during her son’s swim class.
“Lion on the Mat,” another California short, documents a young American working mother training for a jiujitsu match and how it has helped her assimilate and recover from traumatic experiences from emigrating from Vietnam and an abusive husband.
And “When The Music Changes,” a New York City director’s 47-minute film about a young Indian American filmmaker transformed by an incident occurring during her shooting a documentary and meeting with her long distance boyfriend in India. Friday, October 8.
Two Best of the Summer 2021 New Jersey International Film Festival screenings are available only online: Program 1: “S T O P,” a 14-minute Austrian experimental film that calls for a “slowdown from a state of sensory overload,” and “Full Circle, “ a feature documentary from Virginia that chronicles a woman’s successful 50-year quest to save to species of threatened seabirds.
Program 2: Philadelphia director Amy Lee Ketchum’s “First Light,” a nine-minute short using original art and music to show a grieving young woman’s encounter with the ghost of her sister, and “Bone Cage,” a feature film from Nova Scotia following a woods clearing worker who ends his shift by rescuing animals injured in the process and hopes to break free from a system that harms the environment and thwarts human potential. Sunday, October 10.
New Jersey Film Festival, Voorhees Hall, Hamilton Avenue, New Brunswick. www.njfilmfest.com.
Sneak Previews
The Princeton Environmental Film Festival at the Princeton Public Library is currently getting its program together for its annual festival, set this year from October 12 through 17. Stay updated at www.princetonlibrary.org/peff.
The Rutgers Jewish Film Festival — with showings at AMC New Brunswick, New Brunswick Performing Arts Center, and Princeton Garden Theater — is also in the process of setting its program for its 22nd anniversary season, set for November 7 through 21. bildnercenter.rutgers.edu/events/film.
And while the Princeton Independent Film Festival, www.prindiefest.com; Trenton Film Festival, trentonfilmsociety.org; and the Nassau Festival in Princeton, nassaufilmfestival.org, engage in pandemic-related planning, the New Hope Film Festival has already announced its next event: next July 22 through 31, 2022, www.newhopefilmfestival.com.
