Staged for the third time from October 15-18 in New York City the Chelsea Film Festival focused on Women in Film and Media and presented sixty six productions from twenty three countries of which the majority were directed, produced and written by women.  The non-profit international festival was organized with cooperation from the School of Visual Arts and the Fashion Institute of Technology and exceeded last year’s success. In 2013 47 films from 24 countries were shown to 4000 people. This year there was a significant increase in the number of films and the audience grew to about 5000. More than 1000 productions were submitted and 19 feature length films and 47 shorts selected for the program.

Virtually all productions were world, U.S. or New York premieres. The festival was founded by its directors Ingrid and Sionia Jean-Baptiste with the goal of serving international emerging film makers and showcasing their first or second film. By offering  many issue themed shorts, documentaries and feature length productions  the festival  followed the mission it had has been since its inception “making the world a better place”, thus showcasing films with specific messages and facilitating their distribution.  

The festival offered five professional panels with industry experts. Themes ranged from film investments and funding independent productions, the redefinition of distribution through on-demand options, to the progression of a production from concept to distribution. Also finding also a most responsive audience Several Apple Store Events, free and open to the public, were offered covering Women in Hollywood, Social Issues in Filmmaking, and Making a Feature on a Micro Budget.

The festival has set up the Chelsea Film Institute which offers throughout the year free arts training to underprivileged youth in New York’s Chelsea area for which funds were raised during the red carpet opening and closing ceremonies.  Expanding its screening program, a partnership  with the local Bow Tie Cinemas  has been established for a monthly program the Kino and Vino series showing a film each second Monday. It will start on November 9th with the grand prize winning feature P.T.S.D. by Cedric Godin. An estimated $70,000 in prizes is awarded by the jury, an amount that might increase given the continued growth of the Chelsea Film Festival.

SOLITARY, Sasha Krane, United States, UK 2015;   The opening film SOLITARY demonstrates the devastating impact an early hidden child hood trauma in a single parent broken family has on Nora.  It turns her into an alcoholic incapable of maintaining relations, a condition worsening when she is forced to live with her disabled father. Images from her past are haunting her in the house she returned to and her condition deteriorates. Drunk driving she causes the death of her close friend who was about to get married and is sentenced to a prison term. In jail she is sexually abused by a guard and assaulted by a female cell mate which prompts a fight and a longer prison term. Her sister secures her release and she finally reveals the repressed memory which had such devastating consequences. As a child she had been raped by her father and could never articulate and share her pain. Yet at the end she levels with her aging father and forces him to admit his crime. In her role as Nora Katherine Lee McEwan who is also the film’s writer and producer delivers an impressive performance. The film certainly presents a powerful narrative and was well enacted and staged. Yet its message of the severe damage caused by family based sex abuse may have been more effective if told in a more subdued way.

VALLEY [Emek], Sophie Artus, Israel, France, 2014;    The closing night film Valley pursued a related theme. In her first feature film Sophie Artus a former teacher who turned filmmaker analyses with finesse the social transmission of violence in apparently dysfunctional families and the impact of the school environment. The films is set in a small town in Northern Israel  and features a trio of teenagers  David, Josh and Linoy who become close friends attending the same high school class.  David, a quiet boy has just moved to the town, loves music and literature and lives with his single withdrawn father, a former security professional not communicating with his son, apart from trying to teaching him how to use a gun. His mother has committed suicide. Josh comes across as an outgoing and aggressive bully and seems to be only attached to his puppy dog, not caring for anything else, though he slowly embraces David as a friend. In his single parent family there is no father and the mother is unable to take care of him and is involved in affairs. His older brother is an unemployed a petty criminal and prone to impulsive violence. He belittles and beats Josh who even has protect his little brother and mother from the violence.  Linoy is an attractive girl with aspiration of becoming an actress or model in the future though she is on her own. There is no support for her. She falls in love with David creating a conflict between the boys. When Josh’s small dog is killed by his brother tensions explode resulting in a fateful violent encounter between the three and Josh’s brother and his buddies. Valley provides an outstanding illustration of the rise of violence shown in its raw imagery and of its family and social context from which there is no escape. This uncompromising film has already received several awards.

DAWN, Romed Wyder, Israel, 2014;   Based on a story by Elie Wisel DAWN is a feature staged like a theatrical play. Set in 1947 four men and one woman from the underground movement and a British officer they are holding spent one night together. They want to trade him for one of their fighters who is supposed to be hanged by the British forces the following morning. Under curfew they are holed up together in an apartment they cannot leave waiting for instructions to either kill or release the officer.  During the hours that follow their characters are shown. We encounter the commander who is a hardened resistance fighter, then the multi-faceted female organizer, a believer who is enmeshed in his prayers and can only love God, and finally cynic who is an apparent patty criminal. The youngest fighter Elisha is the central character completing the group. Their personalities emerge in their interactions. For Elisha any killing posits a moral dilemma, yet he is charged to shoot the officer with whom he speaks and who has a son his age. Elisha is a Holocaust survivor who joined the Zionist underground recently and is played to perfection by Joel Basman who is the only non-professional actor in the film. Elisha is troubled by the apparent ease of his fellow fighters to kill the officer and not swayed by their arguments. As he suggests the killing will not bring to life the fighter who maybe executed by the British and only add to the violence. After the order is given to execute the officer he descends to the basement, appealing to his dead parents “Do not judge me, judge God”.  Elisha’s notion of violence begetting violence appears to be borne out by Israel’s development. Relevant footage is bracketing the film with documentary material about the violent birth of Israel and the current raging conflict with Palestinians. It includes a brief telling scene reenacting an experience Elisha had.  After he is liberated from the concentration camp he refuses to beat a tormentor.  DAWN is an impressive achievement forcing the audience to reflect.

BEAST OF CARDO, Virginia Sanchez Navarro, Dominican Republic, 2014;    The social cage of one’s aristocratic background is an imprisonment from which one cannot escape, specifically in a small Latin American town where everything is known and shared.  Moira the principle protagonist of the film returns to Cardo after living in New York but continues to be pursued in her home town by the image of a loose woman which was attached to her when she lived there. Though her family is wealthy and shares with another aristocratic firmly the domination of the town, Moira is not accepted. A rejection due to her coming from an interracial marriage or and refusal to get involved with men from her background.  High society is suffocating her and she grows close to an aspiring gay fashion designer certainly not socially welcome by her circles. Intermittently there are some surreal scenes yet what struck me most was the ethnographic depiction of the upscale groups, the imagery of a caste life existence. The film is a dramatic social commentary of apparent wasteful lifestyles, devoid of content but rich in conspicuous consumption, hypocrisy, gossip, rumor, prejudice and self-absorption.

Having attended the fest for the first time I was certainly struck by its international character and the quality of the program which is superior to what is offered by similar New York based fests. Its involvement in the Chelsea community is also impressive.

Claus Mueller filmexchange@gmail.com