Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival 2017
September 14, by Nathaly Pesantez
The Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival has returned and its organizers will be screening films for all ages in an event next week.
The one-day festival will feature 11 films for adults and nine films for children on Sept. 23 at the Sunnyside Reformed Church, the event’s sponsor, located on 48-03 Skillman Ave.
The daytime children’s film series will run from 1:00pm until 2:30pm and features an international lineup of directors from Germany, South Africa, Israel, and Colombia. A children’s favorite, Pawo, which was shown in the 2016 festival, will be played again for kids for this year.
The evening film series for adults will take place from 7:00pm until about 9:30pm, and will open with “The Pioneers”, a French film that premiered at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The other films scheduled for the evening are an international mix, with shorts from Serbia, Ireland, South Korea, Iran, and Spain. Two films in the series are American, with one of them from a Sunnyside-based director.
Gamlin said the films selected for this year’s event were chosen from the thousands that were submitted for the 2016 festival, but were unable to make the round then.
“Last year we had over 1,200 submissions, which is crazy wonderful,” Gamlin said. “From there we picked a lot of films that we really liked.”
Gamlin and 6 other judges, including two Sunnyside mothers, sifted through the films and came up with their selections in a process that took about three months. The genres for the films range from thriller, satire, documentary, and drama.
Tickets for the evening series cost $15.00 at the door and $12.00 online. The tickets for the children’s series can only be bought at the door for $10.00, with parents and guardians entering for free. Free refreshments will also be available at the event for kids and adults.
Gamlin said the funds raised for this event will go toward next year’s festival.
The Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival has its roots in 2001, when Shinichi Murota, a Japanese exchange student studying at Hunter College, created it for a class project. The film festival subsided when Murota returned to Japan three years later, but was picked up by Gamlin and revived for the fall of 2016 after a hiatus in between.
“I love films, and I love my neighborhood,” Gamlin said.
For the film lineup and to purchase tickets for the evening adult series online, visit the Sunnyside Shorts Film Festival website.
Gamlin (left) prior to 2016 festival
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22 Comments
No, nobody likes this the dislikes are accurate on this subject
thank you for coming.
Hi Shinichi! You started a wonderful thing here in Sunnyside. Thank you and I hope all is well.
🙂
12 dislikes? What makes someone dislike that comment? It’s such an innocuous comment. I’m baffled. Perplexed. Almost apoplectic. It’s really getting to me. I can feel the rage building, boiling, bubbling up to where I am going to do something rash.
Alt- The likes and dislikes don’t work properly. Sometimes on some devices you can hit and register an infinite amount of likes and dislikes.
47 dislikes!!!!! MY FEELINGS!!!!!
My ma and I will be there Saturday night. We’re looking forward to it.
Another hipster/yuppie dumbocrat festival.
Brian Johnson – How is that low wage right to work for less wage, the Republicans are so fund of treating you?
The Democrats destroy me on taxes and btw I am not a republican.
Won’t find many working class at this stupid yuppie/hipster festival.
Where will you find them?
This is a fantastic event. I have been to many over the years Sherry Gamlin puts an outrages event for the community. You and your family should not miss this.
I’ll be there, wearing my Sunnyside shorts.
I guess your out to huh. Sir Walter dooshbag
Yep. There will only be intellectual Snowflaksiders wearing Crocs and mismatched clothing. Driving non American made cars. So I agree there will be nobody who has skin in the game keeping this country safe. There will be tons of intellectual scholars who study for their thesis with their laptops at Starbucks.
BLLP- I’m a Navy man who just retired from service and feel the need to correct your ignorance and disrespect. Sailors have been known to frequent Starbucks just visit San Diego. There are plenty of intellectuals in the Anerican armed services. There were and are plenty of guys who serve who have interest in film production as a matter of fact the military has its own film crews and production units. We don’t need ignorant blowhards to speak for us, so kindly step off and go back to screaming at your TV set.
Retired is a blow hard. Just because you took a paddle boat out into Flushing Meadow Park lake with your mommy when you were six years old doesn’t mean you were in the Navy. He’s really Al from Snowflakeside. BTW- Al was not only banned from Lily’s, he’s also banned from Starbucks because he was caught stealing the brown packs of sugar in the raw. His mommy likes that type sugar in her Choc Full O Nuts coffee.
This is an intellectual affair so you won’t see any Trumpanzees.
By the way Al from Sunnyside never wore Huk a Poo shirts back in the day because they were too tight. He’s not as svelt as El Loco. But Al was scene being thrown out the back door of Elephas disco on Notthern Bd when he tried to steal a guys 7&7 drink from the bar.
Well finally I get top billing on these threads. There will be a short film classic called skinny and fatty…the story of EL Loco and Al from Sunnyside growing up in Sunnyside in the 60’s and 70’s. There’s a great classic scene where you see El Loco and Fat Al sitting at the counter in the old Woolworths on Greenpoint Avenue sharing a hot fudge sundae. It’s like a scene from an old Norman Rockwell painting. You hipster Snowflaksters won’t be able to relate to this sort of real old NY scene because of your sheltered upbringing in Vermont, Ohio, New Hampshire backgrounds going to your little country day schools. You were driven there in your mommy and daddy’s Volvos, Subarus (sadly they never bought American cars either). But sit back and enjoy the show. You might even catch the scene of El Loco strutting up Skillman Ave in 1979 wearing a Huc a Poo with Capezio shoes while listening to Oran Juice Jones blasting out of the boom box on he’s holding up on his shoulder.