On Friday, February 26th, the Hoboken Historical Museum and the Thomas Edison Film Festival present a virtual custom-curated program featuring top award-winning short films from the Thomas Edison Film Festival 40^th anniversary season.  

The films will be live to view starting at noon on Friday, then at 7:00 pm, Museum Director Bob Foster will join Festival Director Jane Steuerwald to discuss the program, with a panel of five filmmakers: Filmmakers Charly and Eriel Santagado, Mignolo Dance, of Metuchen, NJ; Vicente Cueto, of Brooklyn, NY; and Geoff Hecht, of San Francisco, CA. This event is free to the public – donations are welcome and much appreciated.

To view the showcase of films starting at noon on Friday, click on this Vimeo link.

To join the special online event on Friday at 7 pm, click this Zoom link. 

To make a donation to the Thomas Edison Film Festival visit http://tefilmfest.org and click on Donate in the menu bar. To make a donation to the Hoboken Historical Museum visit https://www.hobokenmuseum.org.

Films include Last Stop for Lost Property – a documentary about the NYC subway by Vicente Cueto, Brooklyn, NY;  Metro6 – animation by Geoff Hecht, San Francisco, CA (pictured above);  De-Eschatology by Charly Santagado and Eriel Santagado, Metuchen, NJ, an exuberant dance performance inspired by the claustrophobic conditions created by the Covid-19 crisis;  A Family that Steals Dogs – animation by John C. Kelly, Knoxville, TN; Ekstase – a montage of scenes from various European silent films by Marion Kellmann, Cologne, Germany;  My Body Given for You by Anna-Clair Ostasenko Bogdanoff, Paris, France;  The Chimney Swift – Animation by Frédéric Schuld, Hamburg, Germany;  Pipo and Blind Love – a narrative by Hugo Le Gourrierec, Paris, France; and Beyond Noh an animated filmby Patrick Smith, NY, NY and Kaori Ishida, Osaka, Japan which rhythmically animates 3,475 individual masks from all over the world.

For 40 years, the Thomas Edison Film Festival has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short form. The Festival is an international juried competition open to all genres and filmmakers across the globe.

The Festival’s touring program reaches out to diverse audiences in diverse settings with screenings of cutting-edge, cross-genre films — narrative, experimental, animation, and documentary. Subject matter includes issues and struggles within contemporary society such as the environment, public health, race and class, family, sustainability, and much more. These exceptional works range from animation, comedy, and drama to the exploration of pure form in film and video.

To learn more about the Thomas Edison Film Festival visit blackmariafilmfestival.org. 

The festival’s Hudson County Movie Tour is made possible through the generous support of The Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs & Tourism, Gina Hulings, Director/Administrator.