Williamsburg International Film & Music Competition

2018 Competitions

NARRATIVE SHORT FILM COMPETITION

WINNER

Night Call

Directed by Amanda Renee Knox
Produced by Miriam Anwari & Phabillia Afflack-Borja

RUNNER-UP

Pasarea

Directed by Mikaela Bruce

DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM COMPETITION

WINNER

People of the Forest: Orang Rimba

Directed by Isaac Kerlow
Produced by EOS, the Earth Observatory of Singapore

RUNNER-UP

Unwelcome

Directed by Ida Theresa Myklebost
Produced by Jasmine El-Gamal & Ida Theresa Myklebost

ANIMATED FILM COMPETITION

WINNER

The Modern Lives

Directed by Bill Plympton
Animated by Bill Plympton
Produced by Joe Poletto & Wendy Cong Zhao

RUNNER-UP

Rooms

Directed by Andrew Zimbelman
Animated by Tom Brown & Andrew Zimbelman
Produced by Nathan Jew & Andrew Zimbelman

Music Video Competition

WINNER

Shut Up, I’m on a Roll!

Artist: Jes F. A. Falcon
Directed by Oscar Martin
Produced by Elena Muñoz

RUNNER-UP

Sting of The Cactus

Artist: Ori Dagan
Directed by Bekky O’Neil
Produced by Leonardo Dell’Anno
Animator: Keith del Principe

SOUNDTRACK COMPETITION

WINNER

Delerian’s Midnight Rider

Score by Nancy Stafford

RUNNER-UP

Friends For Life

Music by The Atomik Age Project

TV/WEB EPISODE COMPETITION

WINNER

Woman of a Certain Age

Directed by Amanda Cowper & Sami Kriegstein

FILM/TV/WEB TRAILER COMPETITION

WINNER

Love In Kilnerry

Directed by Daniel Keith and Snorri Sturluson

COMMERCIAL COMPETITION

WINNER

Feel the Difference

Client: GripRX
Directed by Michael Barnett and Jon Conklin

SCREENPLAY COMPETITION

Written by Andrea Forrest
Andrea Forrest was born in New York City and is an award-wining screenwriter for her screenplay Taking Down the Met. In 2017-2018, her screenplay scored first place in the Universe Multicultural Film Festival, the NOVA Film Festival and the New York Short Film and Screenplay Festival. It was a finalist in four other screenplay contests.

For the past thirty years, she has lived in Northern Vermont, where she gardens, invents, writes and researches fine art.

TAKING DOWN THE MET
A Rembrandt masterpiece, forged by its owner, looted by the Nazis and hidden away more than half a century, is given life by a widowed art authenticator. She uses technical skill, moral courage and the help of its 17th Century artist and subject, to overcome the art world’s arrogance and return a priceless treasure to its rightful owners.
Written by Greg Mania
Greg Mania is a New York City-based writer and comedian who is best known for his satirical columns for OUT Magazine. His work has also appeared in The Huffington Post, PAPER, BULLETT, Posture, LADYGUNN, CREEM, Baron, among other international online and print platforms. He’s also an award-winning screenwriter, and has recently co-wrote and co-produced his first feature-length film, Deadman’s Barstool. He’s a recent graduate of The New School, earning an MA in Media Studies with a concentration in screenwriting. He’s currently working on his first book.
MANIA
Greg Mania is fired from his retail job at a high-end consignment boutique in SoHo, Manhattan. Severely short with money for rent, he uses his connections in the world of New York City nightlife to rope him and Toni, his forty-something-year-old best friend and roommate, into a gig at a burlesque bar in the Lower East Side. Even though the owner of the bar, Chuck, says no, Greg, who we already know has no respect for authority, takes over Chuck’s bar for one night when Chuck conveniently has a gig with his band that same night. Toni takes over the turntables to spin a vinyl set while Greg go-go dances, but things go awry when a fog machine malfunction in the middle of their show causes the fire department to show up — just in time for Chuck to arrive for a nightcap after his gig.
Written by Mick Carlon & Ken Kimmelman
Mick Carlon’s three young adult novels—RIDING ON DUKE’S TRAIN; TRAVELS WITH LOUIS, and GIRL SINGER (Leapfrog Press)—are now in the curriculum of 100+ schools in America and Europe. He is honored to be collaborating with Ken Kimmelman on the film version of RIDING ON DUKE’S TRAIN.

Ken Kimmelman is an award-winning filmmaker and consultant on the faculty of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City. He received an Emmy Award for his work
on Sesame Street, and an Emmy for his anti-prejudice PSA, The Heart Knows Better.

He is currently in collaboration with Jazz at Lincoln Center on an animated feature-film about Duke Ellington, titled, Riding on Duke’s Train, based on the book by Mick Carlon. He has taught Film and Animation at NYU and SVA. His work was part of the 2006 Whitney Biennial.

RIDING ON DUKE’S TRAIN
Told in flashback, RIDING ON DUKE’S TRAIN is about eleven year-old Danny Bolden, an African-American boy living in the backwoods of Georgia with his beloved Granny, in the 1930s. His life is suddenly and dramatically changed when his Grandmother dies, and he is left an orphan.

Facing an uncertain future, Danny decides to take his chances; he leaves his home and heads north to seek a new life. He narrowly escapes a KKK lynching party and then, one moonlit night, he comes upon a beautiful silver train. Entranced by this almost ethereal vision he sneaks aboard. Danny soon discovers he is on Duke Ellington’s private train carrying the legendary jazz composer and his famous orchestra. Ellington and his talented musicians take Danny under their wing and make him part of their touring family, with Ellington’s lead vocalist, Ivie Anderson, becoming a big sister to him. The adventure begins!

Honorable Mentions
(in alphabetical order by title)
Alter Ego
Linda Gentry
When a couple struggles to recapture their intimate relationship, they turn to a sex therapist that recommends role playing. This works at first, until the wife’s alter ego threatens to take over their lives and ruin their marriage. Once the diagnosis is made, it’s a race against time before one personality crushes the other. It becomes a game of cat and mouse where only the strong survive. Can this young marriage survive the turmoil and come out whole on the other side?
Bermuda
Laura Puccia Valtorta
Mildred, a large, athletic, very bad poet, believes she deserves a trip to Bermuda. She kidnaps her son to steal his VA disability benefits.
Chasing Nightmares
Chris McGowan
Laura Sanders has been plagued with nightmares since she was a young child. After discovering a photograph of the same house from her dreams, she begins asking questions. Not satisfied with her parents’ vague answers and frantic for the truth, she uncharacteristically tricks her friends to join her on this forbidden trip.

Upon arriving at a secluded lake house, Laura shares her true intent of solving this mysterious crime that she believes is associated with her family. Her friends, with disbelief and uncertainty, ultimately comply with Laura’s plea to stay by her side.

Piece by piece, the twisted nightmares begin to take shape, but at a grave price. The sadistic masked man from her dreams is very real and terrorizes them. With several friends already perished and her family now involved, she needs to make the decision to continue seeking justice or submit that dangerous pasts are best left alone and surrender.

Four Glorious Years
Anthony Marinelli
A fictionalized life of Preston Sturges who, from 1940 to 1944, made seven classic all-time great comedies and paved the way for others who dreamed of writing and directing their own movies.
Get Smacked
George Basiev
A drug addicted father’s priorities change when his estranged daughter comes back to live with him.
Gone Wild
Kenneth Guidry
A mother and her teenage son travel to New Orleans to tour a college campus right in the middle of Mardi Gras, then find themselves getting caught up in the debauchery as soon as they visit Bourbon Street.
Postnuptials
David Earle
Postnuptials is a ménage à trois of love, secrets and drag, set in present day San Diego that begins shortly after newlyweds Kevin and Lillian cross that threshold of matrimony only to have their first night of wedded bliss degenerated into a nightmare of chaos and confusion when a female impersonator from the Las Vegas strip named Joey (a.k.a. Amber Star) arrives at their apartment with the intent of bringing closure with his husband who jilted him the morning after their impromptu wedding in The Little Chapel on the Strip. When the news that Kevin is a homosexual bigamist married to a drag queen reaches the wedding party still at the reception at the Hotel del Coronado; in-laws, a sibling maid of honor, a drunken best man, and a dim-witted ex-fiance join the fray that culminates into a surprise ending while it explores thematic concerns of gay marriage, heterosexual infidelity, the extent of unconditional love, and an individual’s quest to challenge parental conditioning, laid down in childhood that at times may inhibit an adult’s own choices in life, and perhaps the meeting of true minds and hearts in a search for love.
Tested
Lisanne Sartor
After her minister husband suffers financial problems, Allyson Flynn is forced to take a regional health center job notifying people that they’ve been exposed to STDs. Though her first case starts out as straightforward gonorrhea notifications at a retirement community, she soon discovers that the case has spread like wildfire and the flames are burning down her front door.
The Date Rape Club
Christine Clayburg
Four highly unstable sexual assault victims set off on a road trip to warn an unsuspecting potential victim, but they aren’t quite done with their therapy yet.
The Strip
Cherie Song
Jessica will do anything for her family with her husband in prison and bills mounting, she needs cold hard cash now. Her prayers are answered one night when she wins a thousand dollars at an amateur striptease contest at the local gentleman’s club. Emboldened by her newly discovered talent, Jessica plunges headfirst into the racy, intriguing and dangerous world of exotic dancing, but at what price?
The Phoenician
L.W. Thomas
When a Phoenician slave wins his freedom from the gladiator games, he returns to his homeland in search of his enslaved family members.
Last of the Burly Girls
John Pisano-Thomsen
Confronted by curious granddaughters who discover “questionable” items in a trunk, 95-year-old Letty Kowalski Baxter recounts her life as a runaway circus orphan turned burlesque soubrette in 1935 New York, her tragic romances, and the backstage rivalry with another showgirl that brought “family” back into her life. “Last of the Burly Girls” is a celebration of late 1930’s New York burlesque at it’s finest (before Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia shut it down) and the indomitable spirit of those fearless, independent women who graced the burlesque stage while surviving the Depression and a sexist world.
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