Planet Connections Film Festival to be Held This Saturday

From a village in India untouched by the footprint of technology, to four would-be private detectives on the streets of New York, to the political situation in St. Petersburg, Russia, Planet Connections Film Festival offers a globe-spanning journey all without ever leaving your seat. This year's Film Festival will consist of three separate series, all held on Saturday June 18th.

"The beauty of film is that it can take you literally anywhere and open your eyes to an entirely new experience," notes Planet Connections Film Festival Coordinator Marco Shalma. "I've very proud of this year's offerings for the Film Festival. They all have very interesting stories to tell."

This year's Planet Connections Film Festival includes a documentary short about the TAG Public Arts Project, which uses legal graffiti to beautify The Bronx, and a feature documentary about an extraordinary farmer who is changing how other farmers in America's heartland look at sustainability and the future of their communities.

The 2016 Planet Connections Film Festival will take place at THE PARADISE Factory, located at 64 East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery. Tickets are $10.00 to each event or $25.00 for all three. Reservations: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/27385/ or by calling OvationTix at 866-811-4111.

The Planet Connections Film Festival lineup is as follows:

Series 1: Documentary Shorts - 5pm

PosterKazwa - A Million Lanterns

Directed by Samarth Mahajan

Purushwadi is a little-known tribal village in India, which to date remains largely off the electricity, transportation and telecom grids. This remoteness, and the ensuing pristineness, invites millions of fireflies to come out and mate in the forests around Purushwadi at the onset of monsoons. The villagers, who not long ago sang songs of dry famines and hunger, tell us how this surreal natural phenomenon intertwined with their lives. The documentary film, while exploring the untouched spaces of the ethereal village, tells a story of sustainability in changing times.

If These Walls Could Talk

Written and Directed by Matthew Spaull

A young man becomes homeless when his mother becomes terminally ill. With the help of a youth agency he is housed in a shelter where he meets other homeless youth. They discover a strong bond in their love for creating music.

Mother's Cry

Written by Savon Bartley

Directed by Lisa Russell

Directed by Emmy-award winning filmmaker Lisa Russell, Mother's Cry is a poetic call to combat climate change, featuring renowned youth poet Savon Bartley.

GRAFSTRACT: The Bronx Street Art Renaissance

Written and Directed by Dan Perez

By enlisting the help of some of the world's top street artists, J. "SinXero" Beltran has made it his mission to legally beautify the Bronx, the birthplace of graffiti, through his TAG Public Arts Project (The Art of Grafstract).

Series 2: Narrative Shorts - 6:30pm

One Day

Written and Directed by Yeganeh Balouchi

A sequence of a desperate family's life spending one day in Tehran: a girl who is trying to have a pleasant time with her father.

Bombard the Headquarters

Written and Directed by Stepan Grusha

Russia, St. Petersburg. Summer, 2014. Young actors, artists and just some hipsters do nothing but argue and laugh about Maidan, the right sector and the DPR (Donetsk People's Republic). They get drunk and try to solve their love problems - but, all of a sudden, political hysteria starts creeping into the story from the outside world, and, unexpectedly, it changes the main character, someone originally totally indifferent to politics. Only now it is not clear to him where the border between drunken nonsense and frightening reality lies.

Meet Me Here

Written by Kirsten Russell

Directed by Maria Riboli

After yet another huge, embarrassing public lovers' quarrel, Nestor makes the inconvenient offer to his girlfriend Jeri to meet him on an abandoned building. Jeri shows, believing this to be yet reconciliation. Only Nester shows with his own version of a truce. As they have different versions of what could be a remedy for their passionate but combative relationship, they also have different versions of the relationship itself. Here this building, covered in graffiti, is where the two versions finally meet.

Amateur Dicks: The Series

Written and Directed by Richard Tayloe

We're not porn. We promise. Although you may not want to Google us at work - that didn't end well for Mom. Amateur Dicks chronicles the hard-boiled, half-baked adventures of four pseudo-sleuths as they attempt to solve the various cases they stumble upon. What happens when four broke, unmotivated New York roommates get stoned one day and find their life-purpose in a re-run of Magnum P.I.? A whole lot of dicking around, that's what.

Series 3: Documentary Feature - 8:30

Sustainable

Written and Directed by Matt Wechsler

America is facing a food crisis driven by profitability and a lack of consumer education. While the window to transforming our heartland continues to shrink, passionate individuals have emerged who provide hope that the health of our nation might still remain within our grasp. Sustainable is a documentary film that weaves together expert analysis of America's food system with a powerful narrative of one extraordinary farmer who is determined to create a sustainable future for his community. In a region dominated by commodity crops, Marty Travis has managed to maintain a farming model that is both economically viable and environmentally safe. Through his example and various expert interviews, the film explores options for reversing the issues facing America's heartland.

Planet Connections Festivity is designed to invoke the power of art in motivating philanthropy, community outreach and social change. Within the Festivity are multiple theater, film and music festivals. The Festivity is also the country's first eco-friendly arts festivity as their participating artists work to create eco-conscious art by revising their marketing, design and rehearsal techniques. Planet Connections artists are introduced to a community of like-minded theater makers, film MAKERS and music MAKERS as they raise awareness for an organization or cause of their own selection. The relationships formed during the Festivity allow artists to find new audiences and forge new partnerships. www.planetconnections.org

The Planet Connections Film Festival Awards honors according to audience and staff voting in both of our categories: Short Narrative Film and Short Documentary Film.

To post a comment, you must register and login.