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Black Maria Film Festival’s Hudson County Movie Tour
April 3, 2019 @ 7:00 pm
Black Maria Film Festival’s Hudson County Movie Tour
Hoboken Historical Museum, Hoboken, NJ
Program 2 – Wednesday April 3rd, 2019 – 7:00PM
An evening with Eugene Richards, acclaimed documentary photographer/filmmaker featuring “The Rain Will Follow,” and “Thy Kingdom Come” with Javier Bardem
Black Maria Film Festival Introduction
The Rain Will Follow – Documentary
15 min. by Eugene Richards, Janine Altongy, and Sam Richards
A hazy sunset envelops a dark farmhouse while a tractor barrels along. Sunflowers sway unanimously to the right in a brightly lit field. An unhinged door opens to a decaying kitchen. Outside, a rusty chain clanks against a pole. A husky narrator begins telling the origin story of his time on this barren land. Soon, swift, machinated sounds of automatic doors and wheelchair lifts fill the air, as the image of 90-year-old Melvin joins his narrated voice. From here, an astute tension emerges between the glowing images of North Dakotan farmland and Melvin’s poignant and often tearful recollections of wartime and strife. Quietly, thoughtfully, and in so few words, filmmaker Eugene Richards captures the disappointment of a generation of unhappy settlers while creating a powerful meditation on life.
Thy Kingdom Come – Documentary
42 min. by Eugene Richards, Brooklyn, NY, with Javier Bardem
“I’m here to listen,” the priest says, clasping the hands of the grieving mother, who has been blamed for her baby’s death. When the young woman closes her eyes, she sees her eight-year-old son settling her baby into the bathtub, as the water is running. The water is everywhere…
Thy Kingdom Come is a deeply moving rendering of life in small-town Oklahoma. An unknown priest, portrayed by acclaimed actor, Javier Bardem, enters the lives of the townspeople who seem to be expecting him, and listens to their confessions. A dying cancer patient reveals that she is angry at God, a Ku Klux Klansman hopes for redemption, an expectant father is afraid for the future of his child. Bardem spoke of the experience as by far one of the hardest of his life. “I was not an actor in there. I was there for them, and I had to be empty to be filled with their statements, with their words, with their dreams, with their nightmares.” Unscripted and woven from a dozen real life stories, Thy Kingdom Come reveals life to be alternately precious and harsh, painful and hopeful.
Eugene Richards is a photographer, writer and filmmaker who has authored 17 books. His first publication, Few Comforts or Surprises (1973), which speaks of the lives of sharecroppers in the Arkansas Delta, was followed by Dorchester Days (1978), a portrait of the inner-city neighborhood where he was raised. Subsequent books include Cocaine True, Cocaine Blue (1994), a study of the impact of hardcore drugs on inner city communities; The Blue Room (2008), a study in color of abandoned houses across rural America; and War Is Personal (2010), a documentation of the consequences of the Iraq war. Recent books include Red Ball of a Sun Slipping Down (2014), which contrasts life in the Arkansas Delta decades ago and today; and The Run-On of Time (2017), a retrospective of his photographic work from 1969 to 2014. Richards has filmed and directed a half dozen short films; his recent film, Thy Kingdom Come, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2018.
The Black Maria Film Festival’s Hudson County Movie Tour is made possible through the generous support of The Hudson County Executive Thomas De Gise and the Board of Chosen Freeholders – the Hudson County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs & Tourism – Gina Hulings Director/Administrator.
Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival
The films that become the centerpiece of the Black Maria Film Festival honor the vision of Thomas Edison, New Jersey inventor and creator of the motion picture. It was his New Jersey studio, the world’s first, which he called the “Black Maria” from which we take our name. The Festival reaches out to diverse audiences in diverse settings including universities, museums, libraries, community organizations, and arts venues. The cutting edge, cross-genre work that makes up the Festival’s touring program, has been traveling across the country every year for decades.
We focus on short films – narrative, experimental, animation, and documentary – including those, which address 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 and are the heart and soul of the festival.
www.blackmariafilmfestival.org, office: 201.856-6565
info@blackmariafilmfestival.org
Jurors for the 2019 Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival:
Henry Baker works in video, television, film, sound, print and interactive media. In 1987, he founded his video company BXB in NYC. Clients included HBO, Cinemax, SONY, Panasonic, Four Seasons Hotels and many others. At BXB he received numerous awards for his creative work in video and television including: Houston International Film Festival, Broadcast Designer’s Association, ACE and IFTA awards.
His work has been screened at various locations including: Leslie Lohman Gallery, National Museum of LGBT History, Simon Watson Gallery, Vancouver College, Hallwalls, Intermedia Arts Center, Matrix Gallery et al. His works are in the collections at The NY Public Library and the Everson Museum.
He administered the Video Artist Grant Program at Synapse Video Center, Syracuse NY, serving as Director of the Center from 1978-81. At Synapse he curated video exhibitions and distribution programs. He served as a panelist at the National Endowment for the Arts, the WNET-TV Lab, the Broadcast Designer’s Association and the Ithaca Video Project. He has served as an annual pre-screening juror for the Black Maria Film Festival for 4 consecutive years.
Baker has given lectures at the International Television Society, Video Free America, Greenwich High School, Boston Film and Video Foundation and the San Francisco Art Institute. He co-founded the New York State Media Alliance. A consummate sound aficionado, he produced regular radio broadcasts for over a decade at WAER-FM and WONO-FM.
Margaret Parsons is curator of film and media programs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Besides an international film exhibition program, the Gallery maintains an archival collection of documentary media on the arts. Parsons has organized media events for other organizations including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, American University, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Museum of American History.
She has served as a trustee for film organizations ranging from the Robert Flaherty Film Seminar to CINE, and she has been on the editorial boards for The Moving Image and the Getty Trust’s experimental Art on Film in association with the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has served as festival juror for numerous international film festivals including Washington, Nashville, Syracuse, Turin (Italy), and Tulcea (Romania).
Currently, Parsons is a member of the advisory board for the Washington DC Environmental Film Festival and curator for Glimmerglass Film Days, a festival she founded in central New York State. She has recently received awards for her work in film preservation from the governments of France, Georgia, and the Czech Republic, and in the U.S. has been the recipient of awards from the Black Maria, the Washington DC Independent Film Festival, and from Women in Film and Video. Her writing has been published in the journals Raw Vision, Folk Art, The Folk Art Messenger, New York Folklore, Curator, and The Moving Image.
The Consortium is grateful for the generous funding and support from:
New Jersey State Council on the Arts
Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University
The Charles Edison Fund
The Hudson County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs and Tourism
Hoboken Historical Museum
WithumSmith+Brown
Lowenstein Sandler, LLC
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Fairleigh Dickinson University School of the Arts – Filmmaking
Corporations and private donors
And most importantly, viewers like you!
Please visit our website and click on “Donate” to support the Black Maria Film Festival. www.blackmariafilmfestival.org
