Newtown Film Festival: Three Days Of Free, Family-Friendly Screenings At Edmond Town Hall
Organizers of the inaugural Newtown Film Fest (NFF) are preparing to offer nine programs to film lovers of all ages. The bundled films — documentaries, shorts, animated offerings, and more — will be screened Friday, September 18, to Sunday, September 20, and all of it is being offered free of charge at Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street.
Cristin Carlin is the founder and executive director of NFF. The 24-year-old Newtown resident did a lot of work before launching this project. She said recently that the first time she envisioned herself working in the film industry was after viewing not only the films, but the extended behind-the-scenes editions, of the Lord of The Rings trilogy.
“I love those movies, but if you ever watch the ‘making of,’ it’s incredible,” she said. “I never realized how many departments — art, sound, writers, lighting, and so much more — how many different things, go into making a film. I was obsessed,” she said, laughing, “ever since I watched those.”
Long a fan of the theater, Ms Carlin said she sees film as an extension of that art form. After graduating from Newtown High School in 2009, she began studies at Ithaca College exploring both majors, but began focusing on film classes before too long. She graduated from Ithaca in 2013 with a bachelor of art in anthropology, a bachelor of science in cinema and photography, and a minor in Native American studies.
One of the best-known festivals in the world served as her first foray into volunteering at such events.
“My first festival was Sundance,” she said August 31, taking a coffee break late that afternoon while myriad NFF events were still being updated and organized. “Applications were done online, and I was lucky enough to get asked to work at Sundance.”
Since then Ms Carlin has also worked at Tribeca and Woodstock film festivals, as well as Burlington Jazz Festival, among other events.
“I definitely respect indie filmmakers, so much,” she said, “especially working with so little, usually such a small budget. I feel like a lot of independent films are a lot more passionate. They make films that matter, versus to make money. That resonates with me.”
It was after working at a number of festivals that she felt she could do something for her hometown.
“I thought it would be a great way to come back, and to bring something like this to Newtown,” she said. “My inspiration goes back to the first time I made a real movie, not just a silly home video, when I was in a sixth grade after school video production class.
“I really started looking into film in college after taking Mrs Ottomeier’s Writing Through Film class in high school,” she continued. “It was an English class which was all about analyzing film, and speaking to films in larger theoretical [ideas]. That blew my mind. It was a good jumping point to my education at Ithaca.”
In the back of her mind, Ms Carlin was always hoping to have a film festival in Newtown.
“I know that I would have loved to have had a film festival here while growing up,” she said. “Classes like [Writing Through Film, when they are offered] at college are great, but there are so many years before college when you could be watching these great indie films, and foreign films, and films that you don’t always learn about at a younger age.
“It’s a great way to come back, and give something back,” she said.
Ms Carlin is working with a core team of six additional volunteers to pull Newtown Film Festival together. Organizers received more than 2,500 submissions for consideration when they issued a call for entries back in the spring, and have culled that crop down to 36 films for next weekend’s three days and nights of programming.
The largest number of submissions were received from filmmakers in the United States, followed by projects from the United Kingdom, India and Iran.
“We got to see a lot of different work,” she said.
The NFF team has put together not only a selection of movies to be viewed, but also a number of related programs (see separate story).
“What’s great about film festivals is the community of getting to not only screening the films together, but also you get to talk about them afterward,” she said. “You get to meet different people in the industry that are also as passionate as you are. It’s a great way just to talk about other people, see what they’re doing.
“If you’re a filmmaker, going to these festivals is fun because you get to showcase your work, see what other people are doing, and even get other ideas from them through networking and brainstorming,” she said.
One of the things that makes NFF different from many other festivals, said Ms Carlin, was part of the film selection criteria.
“After everything that happened in our town, we made a choice to focus on positive films, family-friendly offerings,” she said. “We’re very proud of our lineup. I think that we picked a good lot.”
Three Days, 36 Films
The three-day festival is an event of Newtown Arts Festival, presented by Newtown Cultural Arts Commission. Admission is free all weekend, and organizers are hoping that audiences will be generous with donations before or after they view a program.
“We have amazing films,” Ms Carlin promised. “We are shorts-heavy, because that was the majority of our submissions.”
As a result, the schedule has four feature-length films, and five programs of shorts collected together. The first event, in fact, is a “medley, a run of the gamut” of seven shorts, said Ms Carlin, which will begin at 6 pm Friday.
“We have live-action documentary, animated, and we’re ending that program with a Sundance Grand Prize Jury winner, World of Tomorrow, which is just phenomenal,” she said.
The first full-length film, Lake Michigan in a Dugout, “is fun spirited, and adventurous … about two girls from Indiana who decide to build a canoe themselves, and sail around Lake Michigan,” according to Ms Carlin.
Ms Carlin continued, “The film is just their iPhones, and GoPro, and it’s just something they did for fun. They put it together, and we were inspired just by their spirit and the adventure that they had.”
Four programs on Saturday will open with a 33-minute program, Saturday Morning Cartoon Shorts, with “some really fantastic animated shorts,” Ms Carlin said.
At 2 pm the festival will feature its Connecticut Connection Shorts, four films by Nutmeg State filmmakers. Two of those selections have been created by young adults from Newtown.
Comedy Shorts, Saturday at 3, is the first collection that has an age suggestion. Due to mild language, NFF organizers are suggesting that audience members for these eight shorts be at least age 13.
Also an Saturday, NFF will include a screening of the 2015 documentary Most Likely To Succeed. An official selection of Sundance Film Festival, the documentary about education and curriculum reform in 21st Century America has been making its way across screens nationwide to spread the word that change is necessary.
The film, to be screened at 7 pm, is “one of the best education documentaries I’ve ever seen,” said Ms Carlin. “It does a very good job of portraying all sides.”
The Academy Award-nominated animated feature Song Of The Sea will open Sunday’s programming at 1 pm.
“It’s a children’s film, but I think adults will also enjoy it,” she said, laughing. “I know I did. It’s one of the most creative, artistic journeys of the imagination.”
Following that will be Social Impact Shorts, “which are, again, probably for the mature audience,” she said. “These are films that have a social impact message, from Letter to My Son, an amazing and powerful piece about discrimination and prejudice in the world, all the way to Girl With A Movie Camera, which was at Cannes, and is about women in film, and how rare it is to see women behind the camera, and why that is.”
Four additional shorts will make up that 44-minute program.
The final screening will be at 5 pm. Imba Means Sing is, said the festival’s executive director, “another heartwarming documentary, this one about the African Children’s Choir.”
Imba Means Sing will be followed by a Closing Night Ceremony in the town hall’s Alexandria Room, on the third floor. To bring a close to the festival, organizers invite attendees to mingle with guests and find out the audience award-winning films.
Edmond Town Hall’s concessions stand will be open during the festival. Maintaining the family-friendly foundation, Ms Carlin also points out that each evening will conclude fairly early.
“This is a labor of love for film to all those involved and we want to bring a constant flow of guests enjoying the amazing selection we’ve compiled,” said Ms Carlin. “We hope it will show off a lot of films that people haven’t seen, and maybe inspire future filmmakers while celebrating current filmmakers.”
Donations, however large or small, are greatly appreciated and can be made in person to one of the several Newtown Film Fest employees who will be at Edmond Town Hall during the festival weekend, or online at www.newtownfilmfest.com (a Donate button can be found at the bottom of the page).
For additional information visit newtownfilmfest.com or find the festival’s page on Facebook.