Western-Massachusetts-native-turned-fake-judge John Hodgman always says, “Specificity is the soul of narrative.” In other words, the more precise a story is, or the more unique the subject matter, the better. Through specificity of content and approach, artists can present audiences with unique characters, stories, and experiences.

The same logic applies to film festivals and the cinema they celebrate. In addition to the dozens of big film fests across the region, film junkies and industry folks alike have privileged access to niche New England film festivals in every state. Movie lovers can see everything from queer romance to cinema written, produced, starring, and directed by folks with hearing impairment. Some of these festivals are right around the corner, while others are still accepting submissions. All reveal subjects that are unique and satisfyingly specific.

AIP Film Festival
April 2 – April 8
Cinestudio
Hartford, CT

Hartford’s beautifully designed 1930s-era movie theater continues its yearly film fest for Francophiles, April in Paris, which goes beyond the French New Wave and into the realm of contemporary cinema. Prospective moviegoers have nine opportunities to see French films produced from 1982 to 2016, all of which examine the exceedingly relevant, “effects of crossing borders, from the political to the personal.”

Wicked Queer Film Festival
March 30 – April 9
Various venues
Boston, MA

Laverne Cox in Free CeCe! | Director Jac Gares, 2016

The 33rd incarnation of Boston’s film festival revealing and unpacking the queer experience through documentary, comedy, and drama will feature internationally renowned voices of the queer community and emerging artists alike. Queer film enthusiasts of all kinds have dozens of chances to see films across the city in a new neighborhood each night.

Maine Deaf Film Festival
April 28 – 29
University of Southern Maine
Portland, ME

The 15th annual Maine Deaf Film Festival is the longest-running and perhaps the only film festival of its type in the nation. Programmed and planned in collaboration with students and boasting content exclusively created by deaf folks across the region, MDFF skillfully solves some of the problems of underrepresentation of people with hearing impairments both in front of and behind the camera.

SENE Film Festival
April 25 – 29
Various venues
Rhode Island

With dozens of films ranging from experimental shorts to feature-length animated dramas, SENE provides attendees nearly endless opportunities to pick their vast or small corner of the world to explore. The Wednesday night screenings of experimental films and documentary features is both a can’t-miss evening and an excellent example of the range and specificity of topics explored throughout the festival.

New Hampshire Film Festival
October
Various venues
Portsmouth, NH

Still from All The President’s Heads | Director Adam Roffman, 2016

With the time for submissions still open, we can’t say for sure what niches the New Hampshire Film Festival will investigate. However, if last year’s programming is any indication, cinephiles will delve into some strange and specific topics. For example, All the President’s Heads, a film about a history devotee who saves two dozen, massive presidential busts from destruction after being displaced by the building of an Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

Independent Television Festival
October 11 – 17
Various Venues
Manchester, VT

Okay. . .this isn’t technically a “film festival.” However, was True Detective (the charcoal dark, riveting serialized HBO murder mystery disguised as a police procedural) a television show or more of a seven-and-a-half-hour movie split into manageable 54-minute chunks? As the line between prestige television and film blurs more each day, so will our categorizations for the sake of this list. Anyway, ITVFest still counts because it’s a moving image festival celebrating a niche part of a hulking industry, a section of the industry that often gets ignored in cinema as well; the independents.

Global Roots Film Festival
April 7 – 9
Contois Auditorium
Burlington, VT

Still from Ladies & Gentlemen… Mr. Leonard Cohen |
Directors Donald Brittain & Don Owen, 1965 | Presented by VT PBS and RETN

This niche film festival is brought to us by the Vermont International Film Foundation which also presents the yearly Vermont International Film Festival. The Global Roots Film Festival endeavors to bring Vermonters, “great films from the countries of many of the New American communities. . .to foster a greater understanding of our diverse cultures.” This year, Global Roots turns the lens towards contemporary films coming from Quebec.

Top image, still from Signature Move | Director Jennifer Reeder (2017)

The post 7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss appeared first on Take Magazine.

This article originally ran on the Breakfast Lunch & Dinner blog on November 4, 2016. 

For almost as long as cinema has existed, writers have chosen to eschew traditional narrative structures for the sake of originality. Many believe a film truly reaches its zenith when it takes that inventiveness and incorporates it into something meaningful. Every film isn’t supposed to end on a positive note, or tell a ‘feel good story’ or follow the same plot trajectory. Just like success, pain and obsession can be meandering, unexplainable and unexpected – but also fulfilling. And in most instances, we rarely see how strange and personal that journey can be, regardless of the outcome. For Joshua Jenkins and the Sticky Pages collective, For Now, Until My Last Dying Day doubles down on that belief and creates a film that rewards critical thinking and promotes awareness and conversation.

The film begins with Paige, played by Monique Antoinette, sitting with her therapist, Dr. Marcellus, played by Alex Szwed. After asking Paige if she knew the date – in which she responds correctly – Marcllus explains a theory that there’s “something about having the presence in mind constant with the present time.” He continues, saying that humans often find themselves referencing the past or anticipating moments, and those who answered his question about the date correctly have a direct interdependence between their virtues and vices, or as he puts it: ‘the things that make them tick, and the things that make them ill”. Hence, if one is unable to distinguish between the other, they become one.

As the two go back and forth, the viewer learns that Paige’s obsession is fire, and she explains how her infatuation has become cumulative and neurotically unrestrained. In a flashback scene, she talks about how she buys a box of matches from the store and leaves them on her apartment table in hopes to curb her impulsiveness and test her self-discipline. But she fails as she eventually lights every match in the box one by one, rekindling her compulsion. Antoinette is perfect in her role, delivering a phlegmatic performance that leaves the viewer questioning if Paige is empathetic towards her own struggles or has simply succumbed to becoming a slave of her own self.

For Now, Until My Last Dying Day (Dir. Joshua Jenkins, 2016) movie poster

The turning point comes in the following scene when Paige is in her apartment. She’s smoking marijuana, and after turning on her record player and lighting a few candles, she begins to dance in the middle of the floor. It’s a mesmerizing moment, one yielded in intimacy and warmth but also an inhibited vulnerability as Paige hugs her arms as he looks as if she falls into a mysterious hypnosis. That theory is feels justified in the following scene when Paige walks into the bathroom and stares into the mirror over the sink. After a few seconds, there’s a brief flash of diplopia and when she walks out of the bathroom back into the living room, candles are lit everywhere. It’s quite the transitional moment from good to bad; virtue to vice, and it leads perfectly into the big reveal where we learn about the etymology of Paige’s fixation as a child, played by Ameilia Brown.

Most of the nuisances in For Now are subtle enough that viewers will have to watch multiple times to catch them all, but a few are obvious enough that you don’t have to beat you over the head with metaphors. For example, when Paige is dancing to the music in the living room, she’s wearing a red sweater and black jeans. But when she leaves the bathroom, she’s wearing a black three-quarters shirt and black jeans. It’s a minor observance and one that would typically go unnoticed, but For Now has very few settings and gives no indication of time so the audience has little to no idea how long each moment has taken place between each ah-ha!moment. The musical selection is also very clever if you’re a diehard fan, as it uses different songs titled ‘Summertime’ from various artists such as Black Hole Sun, Janis Joplin, Studio Group and Big Brother & The Holding Company. The correlation between these songs and the central theme are undefined, but they add a significance to each scene and given that For Now was shot in film, both qualities give the piece a bluesy, methodical feel.

Still from From Now, Until My Last Dying Day (2015)

On the same token, For Now is broad enough where viewers can formulate its own opinions and speculate on the overall messages. Is fire a metaphor for evil? Does Paige’s clothing actually have any importance? What does the mirror represent? We don’t know, and chances are we won’t ever know, but maybe that’s the point: coming up with your own explanation of why something is what it is is more beneficial to the viewer’s imagination than directly presenting one possible serialized narrative and outcome. From my vantage point, the acting isn’t as preeminent here as the underlying message: it’s not only the good that makes us who we are; it’s also our degeneracies and temptations. There’s two sides to every individual; it’s all about which one you can and can’t control that builds your true identity. Jenkins has created a quirky, simple film that uses otherwise ludicrous themes such as fire to burrow into deeper, more convoluted issues.

For now, I’d say that’s quite a success.

All images courtesy Breakfast Lunch & Dinner

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