Picks for NAFF VI now posted!
Dearest readers, today is your day! This is because we can finally share with you the list of nearly 40 shorts that will play the sixth annual New Art Film Festival, our free show at The Art Theater Co-op in downtown Champaign, Illinois, this coming weekend! While intended to reflect the breadth and vibrancy of what our friendly neighborhood filmmakers have been producing during the past year or so, it also has become something of a destination event for the practitioners of film culture du C-U! Below is our press announcement, after which is a link that will take you to the complete program on the official NAFF Web site. This is always a cool opportunity to revel in what our community members can accomplish and be inspired to do it yourself! We will update you again later this week on C-U Blogfidential and then expect to see each and every one of you filling the seats at the Art on Sunday night. Deal? Deal!
~ Jason Pankoke
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FALL FOR THE NEW ART FILM FESTIVAL ALL OVER AGAIN THIS OCTOBER AT THE ART THEATER CO-OP!
(Champaign, Illinois) September 25, 2015: No other art scene in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, can command the screen like our local film and media makers, so here comes the New Art Film Festival to do their part in proving it! The Art Theater Co-op, 126 W. Church St., Champaign, IL, will play host for the sixth year running to this homegrown movie showcase on Sunday, October 4, 2015, during which festival director Jason Pankoke will guide hundreds of citizen-cineastes through a program boasting nearly 40 pieces. The NAFF, presented by C-U Confidential and co-sponsored by ThirdSide, Shatterglass Studios, and the Art Co-op, will begin at 5 p.m. on the 4th and end at approximately 11 p.m. Admission is free to all NAFFanatics who attend!
Highlights of the 2015 NAFF schedule include:
Pens to Lens – The pioneering short-film program organized by Champaign Movie Makers and the Champaign-Urbana Film Society is well represented at the NAFF this year! Look for WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?, THE MOOSE EMERGENCY, ZACK AND THE MOUNTAIN MAN, SUNSHINE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, and MR. SNUGGLES in the schedule; made by volunteer teams of C-U filmmaking’s finest, all are adapted from movie scripts written by K-12 students living in our immediate area.
UNA MUJER SIN PRECIO 1961 & LAS FIERAS 1969 – Mexican genre filmmaker Juan Francisco Moctezuma II ladled his low-budget productions with blunt metaphor and topical references. One by one, his flicks are being restored by NAFF alumnus Alaric Rocha of Chicago; let’s see how good they look – and, better yet, how well they play – today!
THE CROSSING – Fellow NAFF alumnus Johnnie May, who earned C-U movie street cred long ago as a veteran of the Freaky Film Festival, shares his latest hand-made, hand-animated film from Madison, Wisconsin! A scrap-collecting robot in a vivid wasteland happens upon the well-preserved remains of a cabin … and discovers it might not be deserted after all.
ART BTS – WILL-TV 12 in Urbana and producer Tim Meyers have been kind enough to lend us three episodes from their profile series on local artists. We’ll get to know a bit better the featured individuals whose work most fits the NAFF bill – Deke Weaver, Nina Paley, and Thomas Nicol – in a project co-conceived with the 40 North arts council of Champaign County.
THE THINKING MOLECULES OF TITAN – The NAFF proudly presents a rare, big-screen encore of the dramatic short based on the science fiction story by Roger Ebert, co-scripted by Andrew Stengele and Patrick Wang (IN THE FAMILY) and directed by Stengele.
Please follow this link to the NAFF Web site for the complete schedule. Journalists and editors may contact NAFF program director Jason Pankoke with interview or media requests, and Art Co-op general manager Austin McCann with queries about the Art and its upcoming slate!
CONTACT
Jason Pankoke
Program Director, New Art Film Festival
NewArtFilmFestivalCU [at] gmail [dot] com
217-418-5685
Austin McCann
General Manager, The Art Theater Co-op
the.art.theater [at] gmail [dot] com
217-979-9519
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