Black Maria Film Festival

A matzo ball eating contest. Davy Crockett in outer space.

PHOTO COURTESY EDISON ESTATE George Eastman, left, and Thomas Edison introduce color motion pictures to the world from the Eastman estate in 1928. An elderly butcher in his 90s, still working in New York's Little Italy.

A Polar bears in their natural habitat, parents cavorting with cubs.

A diner where the juke box shape shifts, transporting an everyman protagonist into a Mobius strip.

These are just some of many worlds Southwest Floridians will experience during the 28th annual Black Maria Film & Video Festival.

The festival, now celebrating its third year in Southwest Florida, showcases independent and experimental film and video. In previous years, it's been shown at the Edison and Ford Winter Estates and Edison State College. This year, BIG ARTS in Sanibel has been added.

The Black Maria Film & Video Festival is unique in that it travels all around the country and is the only traveling film festival that presents individually curated programs.

"We tailor each show to work best with the given audience," says festival director and founder John Columbus. "For example, we have a show this weekend, one in Pittsburgh, and one in Manhattan at Millennium Film Workshop, and they're entirely different shows."

The three shows in Southwest Florida will have some overlap but will also feature different shorts.

"'Ice Bears of the Beaufort,' I think that might be shown at all three venues," he says, describing it as a work that picks up where "The March of the Penguins" left off. "It's a beautiful, beautiful piece."

"Nora," a 35-minute film by Alla Kovgen, tells the story of Nora Chipamire, a dancer who was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in New York City.

"It's a masterpiece in my opinion, just plain and simple," Mr. Columbus declares. "She used indigenous dancers that she choreographed, and worked with them. They interact together in beautiful dance expressions. It's varied; no section is more than a few seconds long. The setting is exquisite; it was shot in Mozambique. A poignant life story."

The festival also shows experimental, avant-garde shorts, and humorous ones, such as "Hold the Soup," a 12-minute film by Faye Lederman about a matzo ball eating contest held in the New York area.

"It's hilarious, and yet, kinda sweet," says Mr. Columbus. "It's a family business that makes homemade matzo balls and packages them. It's lots and lots of fun."

"Davy Crockett In Outer Space" and "7 Days of the Week" are two different music videos for the Grammy Award-winning band They Might Be Giants. The Brooklyn based, alternative rock band known for their quirky songs, writes music that appeals to both adults and children.

And "Yours Truly" a seven-minute film by Osbert Parker of London, England, incorporates images from noir cinema, combining animation and live action cutouts.

Mr. Columbus describes it as a work that reflects on its own medium.

"It's reflexive, playing off of film noir," he says. "It's almost like a scrapbook of these films, but it's not clips. It uses cutouts, it cuts out an image of an actor, and combines it with green screen footage, model animation. It's just amazing. And he makes up this fragmented story of a film noir woman who's writing a Dear John letter to herself. She's pretending she's the boyfriend, and she's murdered him. It's like a collage, just crazy with great music, wonderful music. It's a kind of crazy, fragmented mystery, and playful, all at once."

Mr. Columbus is kind of the Johnny Appleseed of independent and experimental film and video shorts, traveling around the country, showing each year's films. He estimates that he gives approximately 70 presentations at 65 or more colleges and museums.

After graduating from film school at Columbia Graduate School of the Arts in New York City, Mr. Columbus taught college in south Jersey, where he started a film festival. But when he had the opportunity to move back to the West Orange area where he grew up, he grabbed it.

He remembers visiting the Edison National Historic Site as a kid, and becoming interested in film when he saw a replica of the first motion picture film studio. Built at Thomas Edison's laboratory in 1892, it cost $637.67.

Mr. Columbus describes it as "a quirky little building, the size of a medium-sized house, covered in black tar paper. It reminded people of police paddy wagons (which were nicknamed Black Maria — pronounced ma- RYE-ah.) The roof opened so sunlight could come in, and it was on wheels, so it could be rotated on a track to follow the sun."

Mr. Columbus proposed a film festival to the Edison National Historic Site, and they helped him get his first year of funding. He received 100 submissions, and did three shows locally.

The next year, they received 200 submissions, and added a few more shows, including a show in Virginia at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and one at Cornell Cinema at Cornell University.

"Each year, we receive up to 700 submissions," Mr. Columbus says. "We're juried, and each year we've added more shows. This year, we added a show in Virginia, over and above the two in the past, and in Florida this year, we've added one in Sanibel and another at the University of Tampa."

The Black Maria is recognized by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences as an Academy Awards qualifying festival for short films.

Three judges picked the top third of the festival's winners.

"The judges have great credentials," Mr. Columbus says. "Their criteria and interests are different than what a general audience looks for. I pick director's choice; what I'm looking for can complement and sometimes be different than what the judges are looking for."

Scott MacDonald is the author of four books on avant-garde film.

"He's highly respected and an expert scholar on avant garde or experimental film," Mr. Columbus says. He teaches at Harvard University and Hamilton College in New York State.

Another juror, Patricia Zimmermann, Ph.D., is on the faculty at Ithaca College in New York. She's also authored three books and is the co-editor of others. She's the codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival and a board member of the Robert Flaherty Film Festival.

And juror Jenny He is with the film department of the Museum of Modern Art.

"She has eclectic interests, very polished and sophisticated," Mr. Columbus says.

He also juries the films, and admits that his selection differs.

"I look for work that can work with different audiences, maybe more specifically than the jury does," he says. "I like to find some work about our elders, whether it's a pure documentary or a fictional work: 'Bob's Knee,' 'Old Days.' To be blatantly honest, I look for something dealing with various cultural experiences, whether Jewish or African-American, the elderly, people with disabilities, that are not just instructional, but have an artfulness to them, and are meaningful and fun.

"As an independent filmmaker myself, most festivals weren't featuring the short form as a centerpiece. I was never interested in making long-form films. The short form is just as legitimate as the long form. Short forms deserve recognition, so it's a mission, because the work can be so wonderful. And you can get so much diversity and learn different things, be illuminated in different ways in a two-hour show in a way that's exceptional, when you show short films. I always loved it. Always did."

And what might Thomas Edison have thought about this festival?

"I think Edison would've liked it," he says. "You're pushing the envelope and using the medium in a way it's meant to be used. It's informative. He saw (film as being) informative and educational."

If you go

>>What: The 28th Black Maria Film & Video Festival takes place on three different days in three Southwest Florida venues. Festival director and founder John Columbus will introduce the films and lead a discussion afterwards. Tickets may be purchased in advance at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates, Edison State College or BIG ARTS. For more information, call 334-7419 or visit www. efwefla.org, www.edison.edu, www.bigarts.com or www.blackmariafilmfestival.org. >>When: Friday, April 3 - Edison & Ford Winter Estates, Fort Myers, 7:30 p.m. Held outside on the Ford Estate Lawn. Cost: $7, $5 for Edison State College students with I.D., free to Estates members. Saturday, April 4 - Edison State College, Fort Myers, 7:30 p.m. Held in the Auditorium of the Richard H. Rush Library. Cost: $7, Edison State students free.

Monday, April 6 - BIG Arts, Sanibel, 7 p.m. Held in the Schein Performance Hall. Cost: $7, $5 for Edison State College students.

.. April 3 at the Edison & Ford Winter Estates

>> Ichthyopolis - 9 min. by André Silva, Wilmington, N.C. Creative wizard André Silver has created a techno-animation wonderfully populated with a singing gold fish, an opera diva, Claymation characters and watercolor washes in this digitally triumphant work.

>>Ice Bears of the Beaufort - 9 min. by Arthur C. Smith, Kaktovik, Alaska Magnificent scenery and cinematography capture the lives of endearing and beautiful Polar Bears, parent and cubs in their natural habitat. >>Les Chaises - 9 min. by Vincent Grenier, Ithaca, N.Y. Sunlight is projected through wind swept leaves on red vinyl-padded folding chairs, a sleepy day in the country in upstate New York.

>>7 Days of the Week - 2.5 min. by Sean McBride and David Cowles, Brooklyn, Rochester, N.Y. This wacky animation/music video employs inventive strategies to accompany music by They Might Be Giants, the Grammy Awardwinning alternative rock band, also known for their childrens' music. >>Bob's Knee - 4 min by Michael Attie, Menlo Park, Calif. "How do we walk?"- Frustrated by the fallibility of his joints, a home garage inventor employs unconventional methods to understand the mechanics of the human knee.

>>Davy Crockett in Outer Space - 2 min. by Ru Kuwahata, Brooklyn, N.Y. Older baby boomers will remember the 1954 Disney TV mini-series "Davy Crockett," the related raccoon hat craze, and the theme song which in this irreverent animated film is twisted into a anarchical, post modern send up of popular culture by with music by They Might Be Giants. >>Hold the Soup, (Matso Ball Eating Competition) - 12 min. by Faye Lederman, Fort Lee, N.J. It's not the soup but the quality and size of the matzo balls that matters to the home cooks who supply this traditional Jewish staple to the contestants.

>>Horizon Diner - 3 min.by Joseph Crockett, Philadelphia, Pa. Space and time fold in on each other in the intriguing digital animation in which an everyman character finds himself in a surreal, retro diner where the juke box shape shifts and propels the protagonist into Mobius strip realm.

>>How to Disappear Without a Trace - 3 min. by Jane Steuerwald, Glen Rock, N.J. A frolicsome work demonstrating magic feats, tricks, abracadabra, alchemy, and sleight of hand. Lighthearted family footage is integrated with stop-frame animation and the staging of a magic show shot in an open field at the filmmaker's retreat in New York.

>>The Last Butcher in Little Italy - 5.5 min. by Laura Terruso, N.Y. This slice of life documentary provides an intimate and rewarding portrait of a true old guard tradesman who takes pride in his work and maintains his presence in his neighborhood despite the sea change in the community he has served for decades.

April 4 at Edison State College:

>>Ice Bears of the Beaufort - by Arthur C. Smith >>Stuffed - 20 min. by Arwen Lee Curry, San Francisco, Calif. The evolution from collector, to pack rat to hoarder can creep up on a person. This eye-opening work visits the domiciles of three hoarders who share their stories and show their stuff. Each person has a strategy to manage the ramifications of his or her obsession but sometimes the behavior becomes so all consuming.

>>The World's Largest Shopping Mall - 12 min. by Sam Green, San Francisco, Calif. Take a trip to one of the strangest attractions in all of Asia, where Kentucky Fried Chicken and a reproduction of the Arc de Triomphe collide in a surreal Disney-esque realm known as The South China Mall. It's a fake shopper's paradise that is virtually empty most of the time.

>>Yours Truly - 7 min. by Osbert Parker, London. Film icons burst through lost layers of yesterday's emulsion in this astounding assemblage of noir cinema clips and recreations. It's told as a mixed media mystery/ romance with unexpected plot twists as the lovers find more than they bargain for when their two worlds of animation and live action cutouts collide in a frenzied tribute to celluloid history.

>>"0" - 10 min. by Seounguo Cho, Elmhurst, N.Y. A frantic procession of numerals fly across the screen in a smart conceptual comment on digital technology's invasion of every aspect of modern life.

>>7 Days of the Week - 2.5 min. by Sean McBride and David Cowles. >>Horizon Diner - 3 min. by Joseph Crockett. >>Speechless - 13 min. by Scott Stark, Austin,Texas This provocative work, which, in some ways seems to echo paintings by Georgia O'Keeffe, will be controversial for some viewers, but once the viewer releases his or her preconceptions, something strikingly exploratory emerges. "Speechless" interweaves clinical macro close-ups against scenes of grasslands and related flora to create an eye-opening and ultimately beautiful topography of both human and botanical terrain.

>>The Idiot Stinks - 2 min. by Helder K. Sun, Los Angeles, Calif. "The Idiot Stinks" is an utterly insane, inventive, truly outlandish and riotous scratch board animation about one character's wild displeasure with another character.

April 6 in the Schein Performance Hall at BIG ARTS:

>>Ice Bears of the Beaufort - by Arthur C. Smith. >>Ichthyopolis - 9 min. by André Silva. >>Nora - 35 min. by Alla Kovgen, Somerville, Mass. An extraordinary, thoroughly captivating narrative/ dance film shot in South Africa. "Nora" is based on childhood memories of dancer Nora Chipaumire, who was born in Zimbabwe in 1965 and now resides in Manhattan. Amid stunning close-ups of drumming, and panoramas of majestic African scenery, Nora's striking presence with local tribal members brings to life a rich and expressive heritage. It's an amalgam of modern/interpretive dance and indigenous performances. The protagonist creates a visually poetic portrait of her life in this cinematic tour de force. The original score was composed by a Zimbabwean legend, Thomas Mapfumo. >>Bob's Knee - 4 min by Michael Attie. >>The Last Butcher in Little Italy - 5.5 min. by Laura Terruso. >>Les Chaises - 9 min. by Vincent Grenier. >>Old Days - 23 min. by Matthew Shapiro, Brooklyn, N.Y. A sweet, and clever fictional work about the reality that seniors might soon face. The lead character finds herself dealing with the fact that she's been resettled in a corporate-run retirement facility before her time. She encounters some rather daunting personalities and finds a way to acclimate to them.

Film selections are subject to change.