Founded 1999 | Language International | |
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Location Baltimore, Maryland, United States Website | ||
The Maryland Film Festival is an annual five-day international film festival taking place each May in Baltimore, Maryland. The festival was launched in 1999, and presents international film and video work of all lengths and genres. The festival is known for its close relationship with John Waters, who is on the festival's board of directors and selects a favorite film to host within each year of the festival.
Contents
- Festival history
- The Parkway Theatre
- John Waters picks
- Guest host presentations
- Alloy Orchestra presentations
- Vintage 3 D film presentations
- Gunkys Basement Film series
- Night Zones with Jimmy Joe Roche
- References
Each U.S. feature screened within the festival is hosted by one or more of its filmmakers. The many internationally known filmmakers who have presented their work within Maryland Film Festival include Barry Levinson, David Simon, Kathryn Bigelow, Melvin Van Peebles, Lena Dunham, Lisandro Alonso, Bobcat Goldthwait, Amy Seimetz, David Lowery, Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, and Jonathan Demme.
In addition to forty or more new features and fifty or more new short films, each Maryland Film Festival includes one favorite film selected and hosted by legendary filmmaker and MFF board member John Waters. The films presented by John Waters within Maryland Film Festival have ranged from Joseph Losey's Boom! to Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone.
Major names in contemporary music have presented favorite films within the festival, including Dan Deacon, Branford Marsalis, Marin Alsop, Ian MacKaye, Will Oldham, Jonathan Richman, Bill Callahan, and members of Animal Collective.
Additionally, personalities ranging from Harry Belafonte to Cal Ripken, Jr. have appeared at the festival alongside documentaries about their lives and work.
Each festival also includes a silent film with a live score by Alloy Orchestra.
The festival also programs film events in and around Baltimore year-round, including the film component of Baltimore's annual summer Artscape festival and many events for its membership support group Friends of the Festival.
The 18th annual festival will take place May 4-8, 2016 using 5 screens in and around the Station North Arts and Entertainment District as well as the auditoriums of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Walters Art Museum.
Festival history
The first Maryland Film Festival screening took place Thursday, April 22, 1999, with an Opening Night presentation of Barry Levinson's documentary Diner Guys (about the real-life inspirations for his first feature film, Diner) at the historic Senator Theatre.
Full programming began April 23, 1999, using all five screens of the historic Charles Theatre. These screenings were the first public use of the newly renovated Charles, which had expanded from one to five screens.
In 2002, the festival dedicated its Opening Night to a collection of short films, and has done so each year since 2004.
In 2009, the festival expanded its offerings of international films, with the stated goal of expanding the scope of international films brought to Baltimore, and in future years bringing a filmmaker to host each foreign feature film screening as the festival does with all U.S.-made feature films.
In 2013, the festival announced its expansion to 5 days, shifting its Opening Night to Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Previous opening nights had taken place on Thursdays. The festival continued as a 5-day festival in 2014 and 2015.
The festival currently employs a staff of five year-round, with several hundred volunteers working during each festival and in the weeks leading up to them.
The festival's feature-film programming has emphasized independent films represented by their filmmakers, as well as international works handled by such art-house and specialty film distributors as The Cinema Guild, Oscilloscope Laboratories, Factory 25, Milestone Films, Strand Releasing, and Kino.
The festival has offered the world premieres of such American independent features as Eugene Kotlyarenko's 0s & 1s (2010), Josephine Decker's Butter on the Latch (2013) and Stephen Cone's Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015).
The Parkway Theatre
In December 2013, the festival announced its plans to restore The Parkway Theatre, located at North Avenue and North Charles Street in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, for use as its year-round venue. The Parkway was built for film exhibition in 1915, and became one of Baltimore's first art-house movie theaters in the 1950s, operating under the name Five West, but has not been in regular use as a movie theater since the late 1970s. Maryland Film Festival's plans for the Parkway will restore the original auditorium, and build two smaller screens in an adjacent space.
The Parkway restoration project is scheduled for completion on or around the theatre's 100th anniversary in the Fall of 2015.
John Waters picks
Within every Maryland Film Festival since its launch in 1999, filmmaker and Maryland Film Festival board member John Waters has selected one film to present to an audience. His selections have ranged from vintage cult and camp titles to contemporary ribald comedies and art-house dramas.
Guest-host presentations
In addition to forty or more new features and a favorite film presented by John Waters, each Maryland Film Festival has invited guest-hosts to present a favorite film. Guest hosts have generally been known best for work outside the world of film and have frequently been musicians, but have also included politicians, athletes, authors, journalists, activists, and visual artists. The guest-host program has also included some film directors hosting revival screenings of their earlier works.
Alloy Orchestra presentations
A recurring highlight within each Maryland Film Festival since 2003 has been a silent film presented with Alloy Orchestra performing their new, original scores for these vintage films. Alloy Orchestra has also presented films at Maryland Film Festival stand-alone events throughout the year; this list is limited to presentations within the annual festival weekend.
Vintage 3-D film presentations
Beginning in 2002 and extending through 2012, each Maryland Film Festival presented a vintage 3D film in the two-projector 35mm format. Each screening was hosted by Baltimore Sun film writer Chris Kaltenbach.
Each Maryland Film Festival has presented forty or more feature films, with the screenings of each U.S. film hosted by one of its filmmakers.
Gunky's Basement Film series
Gunky’s Basement is an ongoing Maryland Film Festival series curated and hosted by musician Dan Deacon and video artist Jimmy Joe Roche. Each title has screened from a 35mm print and has been promoted in part with original screenprinted posters created by Baltimore-based artists.
Gunky’s Basement is a year-round extension of the Maryland Film Festival Guest-Host program, in which a person best known for work outside the world of film selects and hosts a favorite film. Prior to Gunky’s Basement, Dan Deacon was a guest host in Maryland Film Festival 2010, selecting Total Recall.
Night Zones with Jimmy Joe Roche
As an offshoot of Gunky's Basement, Maryland Film Festival and video artist Jimmy Joe Roche partnered for a series exploring Roche's love of horror films. As with Gunky's Basement, each title screened from a 35mm print, and was promoted in part with original screenprinted posters created by a Baltimore artist.