City of Ali

City of Ali tells the story of how Muhammad Ali’s death brought the people of his Kentucky hometown—and the world—together for one unforgettable week. Ali’s passing on June 3, 2016, came in the midst of a bitter U.S. presidential election, a proposed Muslim ban, and the global expansion of the Black Lives Matter movement. Yet on the day of Ali’s funeral procession, more than 100,000 people lined the streets of Louisville to celebrate his life, while an estimated one billion people worldwide watched the events surrounding Ali’s memorial. City of Ali explores Ali’s lifelong relationship with his hometown through candid interviews with friends and relatives, who share stories even the most devoted Ali fans have never heard; NBC’s Craig Melvin, TV legend Dick Cavett, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, 4-time Heavyweight Champion Evander Holyfield, ESPN’s Hannah Storm, and many others who gathered in Louisville attempt to answer the question “How do you say goodbye to The Greatest?”

New French Shorts 2021

Back by popular demand! This annual showcase of some of the most exciting new cinematic voices from France includes the Oscar-nominated animated short Genius Loci, as well as César Award winners And Then the Bear and So What if the Goats Die? Boasting festival favorites from Cannes, Sundance, Berlinale, and beyond, this feature-length program of delightful, funny, charming, and provocative French shorts is sure to fill you with joie de vivre.

New French Shorts 2021 is made available through Young French Cinema, a program of UniFrance and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy.

Genius Loci
dir. Adrien Mérigeau, 16m
This Oscar-nominated short centers on Reine, a young black woman and a loner. She sees within the urban chaos a mystical oneness that seems alive and guides her in her path to self-discovery and transformation.

By a Hair
dir. Lauriane Escaffre and Yvonnick Muller, 21m
In three days, Elodie must take the hair removal exam for her beautician diploma. Her father would prefer she work with him in his butcher’s shop, but loves her so much that when her friend doesn’t show up to be her model for the exam, he reluctantly takes her place… with hysterical results.

Haute Cuisine
dir. Merryl Roche, 24m
Since Marie joined the team at multi-starred chef Bruno Mercier’s restaurant, all she thinks about is improving herself. But Thomas, the sous-chef who manages the kitchen on a day-to-day basis, is wary of this possible rival. During her shift, Marie cuts herself, letting a few drops of blood fall into and mix with her sauce, giving new meaning to the term “blood rivals.”

So What if the Goats Die?
dir. Sofia Alaoui, 23m
Abdellah, a young shepherd living in the Atlas Mountains, is forced to brave the snow in order to get food and save his goats. Once he arrives at a village, he faces a supernatural phenomenon.

And Then the Bear
dir. Agnès Patron, 14m
In this fanciful animation, houses will burn through the night. Men and women will tremble. Hordes of children will come together and howl as they dance alone on the ashes like wild bears. It only takes one shout to wake them all from their slumber!

Sukar
dir. Ilias El Faris, 10m
The beach in Casablanca is a playground for kids and the site of adolescent romantic encounters, but the police are always watching and no forbidden temptation is permitted. When a fight distracts their attention, two young lovers seize the opportunity to kiss…

Olla
dir. Ariane Labed, 27m
Olla replies to an advertisement on a dating website for women from Eastern Europe. She moves in with Pierre, who lives with his elderly mother…but nothing goes as planned.

Paris Calligrammes - English Narration

Paris Calligrammes is German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger’s love letter to the city where she came of age, and exploration of her own artistic growth fueled by bookstores, jazz clubs, workshops, and cafés. “Calligramme” is the term coined by Guillaume Apollinaire for his poems featuring stunning visual typography. Like a series of calligrammes, this film is divided into poetic segments, covering the period from Ottinger’s arrival in Paris in 1962 to her return to Germany seven years later. In the tradition of flânerie—Ottinger writes in her director’s statement—she takes us through the city, turning her lens on decisive personal and political focal points. They include her time at a legendary bookstore, the studio where she learned the art of etching, her embrace of the French New Wave through the Cinémathèque Française, and the cafés and streets where personal artistic ferment bled into political action against the war in Algeria—and, ultimately, to the protests of May 1968. Popping up occasionally only in archival photos, Ottinger creates a personal film that connects her own artistic awakening to the broader social issues of the day. Combining contemporary and archival footage, she evokes the past without succumbing to nostalgia.

Paris Calligrammes - German Narration

QT Shorts

Curated by Brit Fryer, Creative Culture alum and Jonathan Demme Changemaker Board Member at the JBFC, and Arno Mokros, Creative Culture Program Coordinator, QT SHORTS connects audiences with short films made by a variety of queer and trans filmmakers. As the first event in this ongoing, pop-up screening series, the films in this program showcase recent festival highlights, talent from the JBFC community, and more. June’s virtual program is a small glimpse of the range of talent, styles, genres, and stories produced by contemporary LGBTQ filmmakers. This collection of films reminds us that there is, of course, no one monolithic queer or trans narrative, but rather a dynamic array of perspectives and experiences reflected in the work of storytellers creating the films they want to see in the world. 

QT Shorts is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).

In France Michelle is a Man’s Name

dir. Em Weinstein, 12 min, English, USA

Set against the backdrop of the American West, this narrative short film explores fatherhood, rituals of male bonding, and what it means to identify as a trans man in contemporary America. Winner of two Grand Jury Prizes for Best Narrative Short (Slamdance 2021 & Outfest 2020).

Queenie

dir. Cai Thomas, 20 min, English, USA

Queenie—a 73-year-young Black lesbian and resident of Marcy Houses—navigates applying for Stonewall House, NYC's first LGBT elder affordable housing. Edited by César Martínez Barba, an alum of the JBFC’s Creative Culture program, this short doc won the New York Short Film Grand Jury Award at NewFest 2020. 

Baby Steps

dir. Kira Findling, 8 min, English, USA

Through middle school texts, webcam videos, and secret moments, a young woman comes of age online in this hybrid animated doc. As she grows, she grapples with gender identity and sexuality, finding new language for herself. This film will play with open captions.

The Morning After

dir. Lauren Minnerath, 14 min, English, USA

A gay interracial Brooklyn couple copes with life the day after the 2016 Presidential election. This narrative short film was written, directed, and edited by Lauren Minnerath, the Fall 2019 Womxn Filmmaker Fellow in the JBFC’s Creative Culture program. 

Who Can Predict What Will Move You

dir. Livia Huang, 9 min, English, USA

Two boys spend one last night together in Brooklyn. This tender, narrative short film premiered at the Berlinale in 2020. This film will play with open captions.

This program is available for free

Slow Machine

Take Me Somewhere Nice

It’s one debacle after another for Alma (newcomer Sara Luna Zorić). When her long-estranged father is hospitalized in his native Bosnia, the not-quite-headstrong young woman leaves her home in The Netherlands to visit him, armed with a few Bosnian phrases and a new dress. But when her distracted cousin neglects to drive her to the hospital, she hits the road on her own, quickly losing her luggage, her money, and her mooring. Along a bizarre chain of events and interactions with a cast of road-weary characters, Alma faces disappointment after disappointment with devil-may-care detachment and a newfound maturity. An endearing update of Chantal Akerman’s Les Rendez-Vous d’Anna fused with the jazzy cynicism of Wim Wenders’ and Jim Jarmusch’s 70’s road movies, and the stark, sunlit despair of a David Hockney painting, Take Me Somewhere Nice is the unpredictable, neon-tinted feature debut for Ena Sendijarević, a Bosnian-born refugee raised in Holland who is now one of Dutch cinema’s fastest-rising talents. Her film’s breezy wit and pastel color palette disguise dark truths about national identity, gender, and coming-of-age, making it the first essential road movie about the TikTok generation.

Two Lottery Tickets

The next generation of Romanian filmmaking talent arrives in the U.S. with Two Lottery Tickets! A buddy comedy produced on a shoestring budget starring three of the most recognizable faces in Romanian movies, Two Lottery Tickets suggests Pineapple Express by way of Abbas Kiarostami. Sile is an irresponsible carpenter who spends most afternoons at the pub, placing small bets, racking up a huge tab, and buying lottery tickets. He convinces his drinking buddy Dinel—whose wife has just left him for an Italian—to play the lottery one hot afternoon. Borrowing a few Euro from Pompiliu, the local conspiracy theorist, Dinel plays the numbers on the off chance that a win would bring back his wife. After two petty criminals jack his fanny-pack and the winning ticket, the three guys spend what little money they have tracking down the thieves, from a wild goose chase around Dinel’s apartment complex to a road trip to Bucharest. Unpretentious, well-acted, and consistently hilarious, Two Lottery Tickets is a breezy reminder of the eternal essentials for good comedy: smart performances, a clever and intuitive style, and an irresistibly unpredictable yarn.

Wet Season

As Mandarin-language teacher Ling continues with fruitless IVF treatment while taking care of her ailing father-in-law, she finds herself slowly drawn towards a promising student who seems to have been abandoned by his parents. Outside it’s monsoon season, but Ling’s inner turmoil looks set to get her into a heap of trouble. Director Anthony Chen brings this simmering Singapore-set drama to a boiling point using an associative and poetic editing rhythm, repeating colors and shapes to highlight the small parallels that link people and reveal the profound in lovely and subtle ways. With uniformly sensitive performances from the returning cast of Ilo Ilo, Chen’s Wet Season is the classy and well-measured teacher-student drama that will have you weeping.

Who Will Start Another Fire

Featuring nine stories hailing from Nigeria, Uganda, The Philippines, Israel, and more, Who Will Start Another Fire is the first collection of short films from Dedza Films. The films showcase emerging BIPOC, LGBTQ, and international filmmakers who are defining the future of cinema.

Like Flying 
dir. Peier Tracy Shen, 2020, 15 min, USA
A young Chinese-American girl navigates her childhood through her parents’ broken relationship.

Family Tree 
dir. Nicole Amani Magabo Kiggundu, 2020, 17 min, Uganda
We meet Nagawa, an 8 year old, on a day like any other. But when her mother Margaret picks up Nagawa from school, she doesn't have the heart to tell her daughter that her beloved father has been in a terrible accident.

Troublemaker 
dir. Olive Nwosu, 2019, 11 min, Nigeria
Obi is hot, bored, and desperate for something to do. When his best friend Emeka gives him a packet of firecrackers, the boys decide to have some fun.

Polygraph
dir. Samira Saraya, 2020, 20 min, Israel
Based on a true story, Yasmine, an openly lesbian Arab nurse living in Tel Aviv, finds out that her lover Or—an intelligence officer in the Israeli army—has been reporting on their relationship.

The Lights Are On, No One’s Home 
dir. Faye Ruiz, 2020, 10 min, USA
Mar, a trans woman who left home years ago, returns to her old neighborhood to find her childhood home. Upon her return, she’s confronted with the changes that gentrification has brought to the place she once knew so well.

By Way of Canarsie
dir. Lesley Steele & Emily Packer, 2020, 14 min, USA
A wandering portrait of an oft-neglected shoreline community, By Way of Canarsie imagines possible futures at odds with a peaceful present.

The Rose of Manila
dir. Alex Westfall, 2020, 12 min, Philippines
An imagining of the formative years of Imelda Marcos, who, as one half of the Marcos regime, would become infamous for embezzling billions from the Philippines to sustain her extravagant lifestyle.

Slip 
dir. Nicole Otero, 2019, 11 min, USA
A woman arrives home at the end of a regular day, but is overcome with a sense of restlessness as she begins to turn in for the night.

Not Black Enough 
dir. Jermaine Manigault, 2020, 19 min, USA
A young African-American man struggling to find his identity within his community meets a persuasive relic of the past.

New Releases

The Power of Kangwon Province

In only his second film, Hong Sang-soo was conducting stunning structural experiments. In the film’s first act, Jisook—recently free of a relationship with a married man—joins two girlfriends for a vacation in Kangwon, a mountainous region near Seoul in South Korea’s northeast. Jisook quickly starts to make the same mistakes all over again, tumbling into bed with a married policeman after a sloppy drinking party. Later, we catch up with Jisook’s ex, Sangwon, who happens to be visiting Kangwon at the same time, threatening to cross Jisook’s path.

New digital restoration with a new and improved English subtitle translation.

Retro Revival

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