Festival of Cinema NYC Returns to the Regal UA Midway in Forest Hills for its 7th Annual Film Festival

Festival of Cinema NYC returns to the Regal UA Midway and the Queens Library at Forest Hills for its 7th year, August 3 - August 13. The festival opens with Christina Kallas' indie NYC favorite Paris in Harlem and closes with Anna Baumgarten's multiple award-winning drama Disfluency. Dito Montiel will be honored with FOC NYC's inaugural Achievement in Filmmaking Award in conjunction with a special screening of his film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, and Greg Brownderville and Bart Weiss' groundbreaking Southern Gothic multi-media project Fire Bones will be presented live in New York City for the first time.

World premieres include Isaac Dell's Boys At Twenty, and North American premieres include Aly Yeganeh's Sibel's Silence, Pelayo De Lario's Tales of Babylon, and Cindy Drukier's The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told

After a pre-launch party inside Resorts World NYC's famous 360º Bar and Lounge (110-0 Rockaway Blvd) on Wednesday, August 3, FOC NYC will screen over 100 independent films from local filmmakers as well as world cinema representing countries that include Turkey, Spain, Denmark, The Philippines, Germany, and more.

New initiatives and presentations include participating in the Theaters Unsilenced Initiative. A nonprofit organization founded by three sisters in Queens whose mission is to spread awareness and provide educational resources and tools to help improve communication with the deaf and hard of hearing community. As part of the initiative, participating filmmakers have added subtitles and captioning to aid in making the festival accessible to individuals with hearing impairment.

This year, FOC NYC has invited organizations that offer further resources to filmmakers. Phil Cappadora, founder of The Astoria Filmmaker Club, will host a seminar discussing how to get involved with the community of filmmakers based in Queens. The film festival will also include a special screening block of selected short films from members of Ghetto Film School - a Bronx-based organization dedicated to educating and developing the next generation of great storytellers. Other seminars include a presentation by entertainment lawyer Patrick Kondas, on the legalities of film making and contracts; cinematographer Ray Preziosi will be holding a Cinematography workshop; and crowdfunding expert Melissa Center will talk about raising funds for indie film production. In addition, this year's festival welcomes FoHI Improv, giving attendees a chance to participate in an improv 101 demonstration, and an interactive presentation by members of The Station House Reading Series.

Also new this year will be the addition of a script writing competition where 13 un-produced scripts will compete for top honors. Attendees will be given the opportunity to attend a live staged reading of each of the 13 Finalists.

Along with its presentation of more than 100 screenings, and FOC NYC's popular Red Carpet entrances flush with seemingly countless filmmakers, actors, documentary subjects, and below-the-line talent, the festival will also offer filmmaking seminars and workshops, that are completely free and open to the public, at the Queens Library in Forest Hills. The jam-packed week and a half of screenings and events will conclude with an Awards Ceremony on August 13th at the Jamaica Performing Arts Center in Jamaica Queens.

Festival of Cinema NYC Founder and Executive Director Jayson Simba, said, "This year's edition of the film festival embraces the idea of not simply screening our films and celebrating our filmmakers, but underlining the 'festival' in "'film festival', by emphasizing the connection of filmmaker to audience member via our panels, discussions, and Q&As, focusing on our accessibility, and increasing the interactive nature of FOC NYC. It always begins and ends with great films, but it becomes special by highlighting why we love to come to the movie theater and the artistic accomplishments of our filmmakers."

Christina Kallas' drama Paris Is In Harlem opens the film festival on Thursday, August 4. The film involves the lives of several strangers intertwining during a shooting a jazz club in Harlem on the eve of New York City's controversial "No Dancing" Law getting repealed. The screening will be preceded by Miguel Gallardo's short film, Herizon. Anna Baumgarten's Disfluency, a winner of several awards on the film festival circuit., closes FOC NYC on Sunday, August 13. The film follows a promising scholar who returns home without graduating as she deals with the PTSD resulting from the incident that sent her spiraling. The screening will be preceded by John Cappello's short film, Floppies.

On Wednesday, August 9, Greg Brownderville and Bart Weiss will introduce NYC audiences to their one-of-a-kind multi-media creation, FIre Bones. A whimsical Southern Gothic shaggy dog story told in ten chapters via multiple mediums including podcasts, short films, music videos, poems, and still images. Fire Bones follows a poet and filmmaker who meet one crazy character after another as they investigate the mystery of a missing pilot and Pentecostal preacher who vanished on a transatlantic flight. Created with smartphones in mind, the project includes podcasts, short films, music videos, poems, and still images.

On Sunday, August 13, Dito Montiel will be honored with FOC NYC's inaugural Achievement in Filmmaking Award in conjunction with a special screening of his film, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006). The coming-of-age drama about a boy growing up in Astoria, New York during the 1980s, earned Montiel awards at Sundance and Venice, and launched his indie filmmaking career, including Fighting (209) and The Son of No One (2011), both of which starred Channing Tatum, Empire State (2013) with Dwayne Johnson, Boulevard (2014) with Robin Williams, Man Down (2015) with Shia LaBeouf, and The Clapper (2017) with Ed Helms and Amanda Seyfried. The prolific filmmaker's currently in production on the film Riff Raff, which will star Brian Cox, Jennifer Coolidge, and Gabrielle Union.

World premieres include Isaac Dell's Boys at Twenty which follows the experiences of two post-teen boys sorting through their fraying friendship. Among the films making their North American premieres are Aly Yeganeh's Sibel's Silence about a young Iraqi woman forced into sexual slavery by ISIS until she is pulled out of her situation by a French woman

Who tries Hana tries to provide her with a normal life. Pelayo De Lario's Tales of Babylon finds two siblings at the center of its story, who join forces with a pair of hitmen with a knack for the theatrical in their search for a new life. Cindy Drukier's documentary The Unseen Crisis: Vaccine Stories You Were Never Told looks at the lives of those who live with the debilitating after-effects they claim were caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

Additional highlights include Alethea Root's Good Side of Bad about a brother and sister who struggle to care for their sister dealing with mental illness, The film was recently the Opening Night selection at L.A's Dances With Films. Linh Tran's Waiting for the Light to Change follows the relationship machinations of high school friends reunited a year later during a week-long beachside getaway, with jealousies, unrequited crushes and more coming to light. The film, recently picked up by Byron Allen's Freestyle Digital Media, won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance earlier this year. Quark Henares' Trans catfishing drama Where Is The Lie? focuses on a hopeless romantic girl who is randomly targeted by a sociopathic mastermind. Matthew Taylor's documentary Gotham: The Fall and Rise of New York looks at the largely untold story of New York City's revival and revitalization of its infrastructure and neighborhoods with an eye toward how it could be duplicated in other major cities across the country.

Tickets for the 2023 Festival of Cinema NYC can be purchased beginning July 5th by visiting FestivalofCinemaNYC.com. General admission tickets begin at $18 per screening block ($35 for opening and closing night films which include entry to the afterparty), with discounts offered to seniors and individuals with disabilities. Tickets can also be purchased to the Closing Awards Dinner for $75. All programming at the Queens Library at Forest Hills is free and open to the public.

The 2023 festival is supported by The National Endowment for the Arts, The New York Department of Cultural Affairs, and The New York State Council on the Arts. Support from all three major foundations is a testament to the organizer's passion for community, education, and advocacy through film exhibition. Sponsors for this year's festival include Resort World Gives, NYC & Company Foundation, Ponce Bank, the Queens Library, and Regal Cinemas. Prizes are being offered by Soundview Media Partners, Stage 32, Inktip, Videomaker Magazine, and Silver Sound Studios.

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