Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival 2017
September 14, by Nathaly Pesantez
The Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival has returned and its organizers will be screening films for all ages in an event next week.
The one-day festival will feature 11 films for adults and nine films for children on Sept. 23 at the Sunnyside Reformed Church, the event’s sponsor, located on 48-03 Skillman Ave.
The daytime children’s film series will run from 1:00pm until 2:30pm and features an international lineup of directors from Germany, South Africa, Israel, and Colombia. A children’s favorite, Pawo, which was shown in the 2016 festival, will be played again for kids for this year.
The evening film series for adults will take place from 7:00pm until about 9:30pm, and will open with “The Pioneers”, a French film that premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The other films scheduled for the evening are an international mix, with shorts from Serbia, Ireland, South Korea, Iran, and Spain. Two films in the series are American, with one of them from a Sunnyside-based director.
Gamlin said the films selected for this year’s event were chosen from the thousands that were submitted for the 2016 festival, but were unable to make the round then.
“Last year we had over 1,200 submissions, which is crazy wonderful,” Gamlin said. “From there we picked a lot of films that we really liked.”
Gamlin and 6 other judges, including two Sunnyside mothers, sifted through the films and came up with their selections in a process that took about three months. The genres for the films range from thriller, satire, documentary, and drama.
Tickets for the evening series cost $15.00 at the door and $12.00 online. The tickets for the children’s series can only be bought at the door for $10.00, with parents and guardians entering for free. Free refreshments will also be available at the event for kids and adults.
Gamlin said the funds raised for this event will go toward next year’s festival.
The Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival has its roots in 2001, when Shinichi Murota, a Japanese exchange student studying at Hunter College, created it for a class project. The film festival subsided when Murota returned to Japan three years later, but was picked up by Gamlin and revived for the fall of 2016 after a hiatus in between.
“I love films, and I love my neighborhood,” Gamlin said.
For the film lineup and to purchase tickets for the evening adult series online, visit the Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival website.
Gamlin (left) prior to 2016 festival
