Maryland Film Festival Blog

THE CHAIR

Maryland Film Festival (May 8-12 in downtown Baltimore) is proud to announce our 2013 Opening Night Shorts program, an eclectic mix of work from an extremely talented array of filmmakers. Maryland Film Festival has played a special role in advocating for short-form film and video since the festival’s launch in 1999, and has dedicated each of its Opening Nights to short films since 2004. The MFF 2013 Opening Night Shorts program will take place Wednesday, May 8^th at 8pm, in The Brown Center (1301 Mt. Royal Avenue) on the Maryland Institute College of Art campus.

BONESHAKER

Maryland Film Festival 2013’s Opening Night Shorts Films are:  Frances Bodomo’s Boneshaker, a drama about an African family lost in rural Alabama starring Quvenzhané Wallis (Academy Award nominee, Beasts of the Southern Wild); Grainger David’s The Chair, the story of one boy’s reaction to an outbreak of poisonous mold in his small town, nominated for Cannes 2012’s Short Film Palme d’or and winner of SXSW 2012’s Short Film Jury Prize;  Riley Stearns’ 16mm-shot The Cub, a note-perfect dark comedy about humans living amongst wolves that was nominated for Sundance 2013’s short-film grand-jury prize;  Dara Bratt’s observational documentary Flutter, a portrait of an ordinary man living in the extraordinary world of butterfly collecting; Chetin Chabuk’s Jujitsuing Reality, an inspiring documentary about Scott Lew, a screenwriter living with ALS; and Lauren Wolkstein’s elegant and sly Social Butterfly, in which a mysterious American woman (Anna Margaret Hollyman) arrives at a teenage party in the South of France.

In addition to approximately 50 feature films and this Opening Night program, Maryland Film Festival 2013 will include nine more programs of short films, totaling approximately 80 short films including comedy, drama, animation, documentary, and experimental work, as well as Maryland Film Festival’s signature, mind-bending “WTF Shorts” program. Other filmmakers with new short-film work in MFF 2013 include acclaimed filmmakers such as Tsai Ming-liang, Amy Seimetz, Clay Liford, Dustin Guy Defa, Kat Candler, Kelly Sears, Annie Silverstein, Steven Schardt and the team of Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer; shorts with performances from Martin Starr, Brie Larson, Kate Lyn Sheil, Will Oldham, and Tunde Adebimpe; and shorts from Baltimore-based directors such as Karen Yasinsky, Alan Resnick, Phil Davis, Lorenzo Gattorna, and the team of Nicholas Kovacic and Matthew Riggieri.

Maryland Film Festival’s Opening Night Shorts program is made possible by the generous support of the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Awards.

Maryland Film Festival has now announced the majority of its 2013 lineup, with the announcement of its 2013 Closing Night soon to come. A full list of the feature films announced for MFF 2013 follows:

12 O’CLOCK BOYS (Lotfy Nathan)

16 ACRES (Richard Hankin)

AATSINKI: THE STORY OF ARCTIC COWBOYS (Jessica Oreck)

AFTER TILLER (Martha Shane and Lana Wilson)

AUGUSTINE (Alice Winocour)

BEFORE YOU KNOW IT (PJ Raval)

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (Peter Strickland)

BLUEBIRD (Lance Edmands)

THE BOY EATING THE BIRD’S FOOD (Ektoras Lygizos)

BUTTER ON THE LATCH (Josephine Decker)

BY AND BY: NEW ORLEANS GOSPEL AT THE CROSSROADS (Matthew T. Bowden & Joe Compton)

COMPUTER CHESS (Andrew Bujalski)

DOWNLOADED (Alex Winter)

DRINKING BUDDIES (Joe Swanberg)

FILL THE VOID (Rama Burshtein)

GOOD OL’ FREDA (Ryan White)

HERE COMES THE DEVIL (Adrián García Bogliano)

HIT & STAY (Joe Tropea and Skizz Cyzyk)

I AM DIVINE (Jeffrey Schwarz)

I USED TO BE DARKER (Matt Porterfield)

IF WE SHOUT LOUD ENOUGH (Gabriel DeLoach and Zach Keifer)

IT FELT LIKE LOVE (Eliza Hittman)

LEVIATHAN (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel)

THE LOST WORLD (Harry O. Hoyt)

MUSEUM HOURS (Jem Cohen)

PARADISE: FAITH (Ulrich Seidl)

PARADISE: HOPE (Ulrich Seidl)

PARADISE: LOVE (Ulrich Seidl)

THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO IDEOLOGY (Sophie Fiennes)

PIT STOP (Yen Tan)

POST TENEBRAS LUX (Carlos Reygadas)

PRINCE AVALANCHE (David Gordon Green)

THE RAMBLER (Calvin Reeder)

REMOTE AREA MEDICAL (Jeff Reichert & Farihah Zaman)

SWIM LITTLE FISH SWIM (Lola Bessis and Ruben Amar)

A TEACHER (Hannah Fidell)

THIS IS MARTIN BONNER (Chad Hartigan)

TOUCHY FEELY (Lynn Shelton)

V/H/S/2 (omnibus)

WATCHTOWER (Pelin Esmer)

WE ALWAYS LIE TO STRANGERS (AJ Schnack and David Wilson)

WILLOW CREEK (Bobcat Goldthwait)

WHITE REINDEER (Zach Clark)

ZERO CHARISMA (Katie Graham and Andrew Matthews)