Boston Area Film Festivals
The Boston Film Festival is the premiere film festival in the region. The festival runs every year in early autumn. Films there include work by local filmmakers as well as “art house” fare and showings of bigger name films. Directors and stars are sometimes on hand for evening events before headliner movies are shown. A-list talent like Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey have put in appearances over the last few years. Several classic venues participate in the festival, including the Copely.
The Boston International Film Festival takes place in early June. Begun in 2002, the festival’s goal is to “to encourage and support the work of worldwide independent filmmakers and to promote their products as an art concept and as a valuable contribution to world understanding.” The festival includes short and feature length films from artists from all over the globe – Asia, Europe, Africa, North America. It also sponsors a screenwriting contest. The Boston International Film Festival showcases films at various Boston venues including AMC/Lowes.
Boston has become a very ethnically diverse town in the last few decades. But even before immigrants from Asia, South America and Africa joined Boston’s citizenry, there were sizable Jewish and, of course, Irish populations in Boston. It makes sense, then, that films from these two ethnic groups would be the subject of their own respective Boston-are film festivals.
Since the late 90s, The Boston Irish Film Festival has been showcasing Irish cinema. Films include short and feature length productions by Irish talent dating from the 1950s to contemporary times. The festival has presented awards to such Irish stars as Gabriel Byrne and Finnoula Flanagan. Venues showing Irish Film Festival movies include the Harvard Archive and the famed Brattle Theater. (www.irishfilmfestival.com)
The Boston Jewish Film Festival (www.bjff.org) has been in existence for almost twenty years. Movies showcased in this festival are “the best contemporary films from around the world on Jewish themes,” according to the festival’s website. Past showings include well-known films like The Pianist with Oscar-winner Andrien Brody and documentaries that have also been Oscar nominated. Short films are shown as well. Films play at two great Boston locations: Coolidge Corner in Brookline and The Museum of Fine Arts.
Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (www.mfa.org/film) also is home to several other festivals including the annual Boston French Film Festival which plays old and new French films in July. For over ten years, the French Film Festival has brought films a shown in their original French to Boston audiences. Boston’s MFA also hosts a Gay/Lesbian film festival featuring films on “of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender issues and culture”. The Gay & Lesbian film festival has been running for over twenty years. Other festivals that take place at the MFA include an African Film Festival and the Human Rights Watch Festival.
Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, known as a center of African American culture, has its own film festival. (http://www.roxburyfilmfestival.org/) in July. Since the late 90s, the RFF has been bringing a diverse array of films mainly by people of color to Boston audiences. Among the stars who have attended RFF showings are Michael Beach (Third Watch) and Hill Harper (CSI:NY). Works shown include short films and feature films. Directors whose works have appeared at the RFF include Cassie Lemmons and Craig Ross. The RFF shows films at the Museum of Fine Arts, Mass College of Art and Northeastern University.
For film festivals outside of the city itself, movie fans may want to check out the Provincetown Film Festival, The Martha’s Vineyard Independent Film Festival or The Woods Hole Film Festival- all located “down the Cape”. Fans can may also want to check out The Rhode Island Film Festival just south of the border in Providence, RI.
