By KENJI FUJISHIMA
FILM EDITOR
A new year brings not only a new semester at Rutgers, but also a new batch of independent and experimental films offered at the New Jersey Film Festival. Kicking off tonight and running through April 15, the festival brings its usual program of rich and varied films both new and old, mainstream (relatively speaking) and avant-garde, fiction and nonfiction.
Some things to look out for this semester:
• Tonight, 7 p.m. and tomorrow, 8:30 p.m.: Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's documentary Jesus Camp will be screening (see today's issue for a detailed review).
• Tomorrow, 7 p.m.: the Film Festival will screen Emerson, Lake and Palmer's famous 1970 rock arrangement of Modest Mussorgsky's famous classical work Pictures At An Exhibition, performed at the London Lyceum. The program will include both a lecture on classical music's influence on rock and roll by Dr. Marla Meissner, a professor at the John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University, and an audience discussion moderated by festival director Albert G. Nigrin. Admission will be free for this event, which is co-presented by the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra
• Saturday and Sunday, 7 and 9 p.m.: animators Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt present The Animation Show, a collection of recent, experimental animated shorts. Special admission prices apply for both nights.
• Michel Gondry's brilliant surrealistic fantasy The Science Of Sleep will be among the more well-known recent films being screened this semester; it will run for three nights, from Friday, Jan. 26 to Sunday, Jan. 28. Other such recent films will include Christopher Nolan's The Prestige (Friday, Feb. 2 through Sunday, Feb. 4, 7 p.m.; Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (Friday, Feb. 9 through Sunday, Feb. 11, 7 p.m.) and Richard Linklater's muckraking Fast Food Nation (Friday, March 2 through Sunday, March 4, 7 p.m.).
• The New Jersey Film Festival will sponsor a series of screenings as part of the Puzzle Films-Cinema 101 course: Terry Gilliam's Tideland (tonight, 8:30 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 25, 7 p.m.); Christopher Nolan's Memento (Thursday, Feb. 1, 7 p.m.); Peter Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract (Thursday, Feb. 8, 7 p.m.) and Drowning By Numbers (Thursday, Feb. 22, 7 p.m.); Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (Thursday, March 1, 7 p.m.); and Alain Resnais' classic French film Last Year at Marienbad (Thursday, March 29, 7 p.m.).
• Friday, Feb. 16 through Sunday, Feb. 18, 7 p.m.: the 19th annual United States Super 8 Film & Digital Video Festival will be screenings its winning entries. Each night will feature a different program, and on the last night, cash and prizes will be awarded to the competing film/video makers. Special admission prices apply for all three nights.
• Friday, Feb. 23 through Sunday, Feb. 25, 7 p.m.: Dan Lohaus' documentary When I Came Home depicts the plight of homeless war veterans both today (thanks to the Iraq war) and decades ago (Vietnam). Among the subjects interviewed is Herold Noel, an Iraq war veteran who lives out of his car in Brooklyn as he deals with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Director Lohaus will make a special guest appearance at the Friday night screening.
• Friday, March 30 through Sunday, April 1, 7 p.m.: Animator Bill Plympton will make a special guest appearance at the Friday night screening of his recent animated feature Hair High, a gothic comedy about high school in all its repressed horror.
• Friday, April 6 through Sunday, April 8, 7 p.m.: a Gary Null documentary double-bill: Friendy Fire - about sicknesses plaguing veterans fighting in Iraq - and Prescription For Disaster, a critique of the pharmaceutical industry and how it has led Americans to become so dependent on prescription drugs. Special admission prices apply. Null is supposed to make a special guest appearance, but the date has yet to be determined.
• Friday, April 13 through Sunday, April 15, 7 p.m.: a documentary triple-bill closes out the season: Carolyn Travis' Wildwood Days, Tom Franklin's Ford's Toxic Legacy, and D.R. Hernandez's The Ultimate Betrayal: A Survivor's Journey.
All Thursday evening screenings are at Loree Hall 024. All Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening screenings are at Scott Hall 123. Admission for students is $5 unless otherwise noted. For more information, check out the New Jersey Film Festival Web site at http://www.njfilmfest.com/.
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