Greenwich Interntional Film Festival at Home
Greenwich International Film Festival at Home: The 6th Annual Greenwich International Film Festival (GIFF) goes virtual on May 1 to 3. Purchase a Virtual Festival Pass and you can can binge-watch all weekend long. There’s no timetable – just choose your faves from a selection of 29 Narrative & Documentary Features and Short Films from 8 countries. Additionally, GIFF will honor Gretchin Carlson as their 2020 Changemaker and offer exclusive video messages from festival filmmakers, and other special content.
You can experience the Virtual Festival on your computer, smartphone, or tablet using the secure log-in website information they will send you. If you want to stream the Festival films and content on your TV, no problem – you’d simply cast from your device to your Smart TV. If you have an Apple TV device, just enable AirPlay to stream on your TV.
8 Narrative Films: GIFF features eight narrative films from the United States, The Netherlands, Argentina, Spain, England, Italy and Japan. The American films are highlighted by Another Year Together, Daniel Hendricks Simon’s comedy about three romantic relationships in the same family (from millennials to boomers) during the holidays in New York City. And Artur Egeli’s drama, The Black Emperor of Broadway, about Charles S. Gilpin, the toast of the Great White Way in 1920 when he starred as Brutus Jones in Eugene O’Neil’s The Emperor Jones.
We’re going to check out Team Marco, from Julio Vincent Gambuto, a comedy about an 11 year-old boy who never leaves the house because he is obsessed with electronics. When his grandmother moves in she forces him to go outside where he discovers the local Bocce court and the old Italian men who play there. Soon he leads a youth movement to take on the old guys at their own game – call it Bad News Bears Italian Style. And Family Matters, Stanley Kolk’s Dutch drama, about Kelly, a female ex-con who moves in with her sister and gets a job with a package delivery company. But she has some debts to pay on the outside and she winds up dealing for one of her former creditors. When her sister finds out – Kelly finds out how much family matters.
11 Documentaries: GIFF will also feature 11 documentaries from the United States, Hungary and Brazil. These handpicked docs explore topics such as sex abuse, the hidden side effects of anti-depressants, bullying and anti-Semitism. They take us on the road with combat veterans, into Native American reservations in Montana where suicide rates are the highest in the nation and to a Brazilian village where indigenous quilombolas practice traditional midwifery and healing.
We have our eyes on some, including: Bastard’s Road, from Brian Morrison, that follows Jon Hancock, a combat veteran who travels 6,000 miles on foot visiting his fellow Marines from his Magnificent Bastards unit and the families of his fallen brethren along the way. In The Euphoria of Being, Réka Szabó directs the 90 year old Éva Fahid, one of just 50 members of her family who survived Auschwitz Birkenau, in a dance theatre duet with the internationally acclaimed dancer, Emese. Susan Koch’s, Music Got Me Here, explores how Forrest, an 18 year old snowboarder, who suffered a traumatic brain injury, was saved by music therapy as he slowly regains his abilities to move, walk, speak and sing. And in The Hoy Boys, Dave Simons’ pays a nostalgic homage to the golden era of photojournalism, through the work of twin brothers Tom and Frank Hoy who were White House news photographers for The Washington Post and The Evening Star in the 1950s and 60s.
Best Connecticut Shorts: Finally, GIFF presents 9 of the best Connecticut short films including documentaries, dramas, comedies and dark comedies. These films which range from 4 to 27 minutes offer a remarkable diversity of styles, themes and characters. From Conviction, a documentary about a 16 year-old’s fight for justice after he is convicted for rape and murder. To Greta, about a 22 year-old’s search for “one thing about adulthood that doesn’t suck.” Elvis is about a man who grieves the loss of his Bassett hound. Wax Paul Now follows three New Yorkers who, upon deciding that Madame Tussauds in Times Square is not complete without a wax statue of Paul Giamatti, plot to make sure this injustice is remedied. And all Jonathan Napolitano will tell us about his Mommy’s Nightmare is “While my mother filmed my Kindergarten Halloween parade, a monster waited for her back at home.”