On Saturday night, Feb. 16, at 7:00 pm, the Black Maria Film Festival and the Hoboken Historical Museum will present a program of Stellar Award-winning films from the Black Maria’s 2019 festival tour, with special appearances by some of the filmmakers and subjects for Q & A.

Tickets for this screening are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Light refreshments will be served. The Littleman Parking-Independence Garage (Shipyard Lane at 12th St.) offers 3 hours of free parking with Museum validation (based on availability). Last year’s screening sold out in advance.

Click here to reserve a seat.

Random Thoughts – Animation (7 min.) by Steven Vander Meer, Arcata, CA. Having recently completed a film made of circles and personal health problems, our hero ships his masterpiece off in a box to a film festival. As he makes his way to the festival on foot, his thoughts reveal how inspiration can come to a creative spirit from anywhere, about anything, at any given time. After the festival, on his walk back home, the filmmaker feels super inspired and can hardly wait to start his next project – until, that is, he gets to his mailbox…

Twilight – Experimental (2 min.) by Richard Reeves, Creston, Canada. Twilight was inspired by the two lights (twi-light) found inside of film projectors. The film was created by applying both sound and picture directly onto 35mm film. The sounds were made by drawing Spirograph moiré patterns onto clear mylar sheets. The patterns were cut out and then stuck onto the 35mm film’s optical sound area, played through a Moviola, and transferred to computer for composition. Many sounds are just one to twelve frames long. Once the soundtrack was created, each individual sound was assigned a specific shape and color that repeats throughout the entire composition. The visual shapes were airbrushed and hand-painted onto an orange mask (negative film), then printed positive for further rendering by bleaching or scratching into the film’s emulsion before the final print copy was made. The result is a lively fusion of image and sound.

Koka, the Butcher – Documentary (37 min.) by Bence Máté and Florian Schewe, Berlin, Germany. Koka is a highly respected figure in the pigeon battling scene in Cairo, Egypt. His life revolves around his pigeons, as each year, whole areas clash in contests to release and capture each other’s birds. As the face-off between warring factions unfolds, 30-year-old Koka faces unbearable social pressure to leave “pigeoneering” behind, so he will settle down and marry. A race against time begins in a peculiar world where pigeons are the foremost source of martial spirit and pride. 

The Velvet Underground Played at My High School – Animation (7 min.) by Tony Jannelli and Robert Pietri, Summit, NJ. On  Dec. 11, 1965, an unknown four-piece rock ‘n’ roll band took to the stage for the first time at Summit High School, in Summit, NJ. “Nothing could have prepared the kids and parents for what they were about to experience that night,” wrote Rob Norris, a student at Summit at the time, in Kicks magazine. “Our only clue was the small crowd of strange-looking people hanging around in front of the stage.

What Aristotle Said – Documentary (4 min.) by David Gross, Brooklyn, NY, offers a portrait of the painter, art director, illustrator and teacher, Bill Curran of Hoboken, NJ.

Monthly film series debuts March 6

The Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival and Hoboken Historical Museum celebrate their long-standing partnership and announce a new initiative, the Black Maria Film Society, which will meet regularly at the Museum, 1301 Hudson St., Hoboken, NJ. Museum members, cinephiles, students, filmmakers, and film lovers alike are welcome to join in to view and discuss current cutting-edge shorts and feature-length films. Plans include pre-screening of Black Maria Film Festival submissions and special events featuring guest filmmakers.

Celebrating its 38th consecutive year in 2019, the Black Maria Film Festival is dedicated to creativity and innovation in the moving-image arts. It was named for Thomas Edison’s West Orange film studio dubbed the “Black Maria” due to its resemblance to the type of black-box police paddy wagon known as a “black maria.”

The Festival is an annual juried competition traveling to audiences across the US and abroad, featuring new short works in all genres, and supporting the work of international independent filmmakers.

Other Black Maria Film Festival screenings are being scheduled throughout 2019 at various NJ venues including the Bickford Theater at the Morris Museum, Centenary University, Monmouth University, the Sparta Train Creative in Sparta, NJ; the Secaucus Public Library, the LBI Foundation of the Arts and Sciences and many more.

The Thomas Edison Media Arts Consortium – Black Maria Film Festival has generous support from the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, NJ State Council on the Arts, the Charles Edison Fund, the Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs and Tourism, the Hoboken Historical Museum, WithumSmith+Brown, and Lowenstein Sandler LLP.