The Rockaway Film Festival is back for its seventh year from August 17 to 25 with a packed lineup of cinematic and artistic events on the Rockaway peninsula.
Highlights include Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood's multi-screen installation "Waking Up (For the First Time)," an audiovisual experiment that reconsiders footage of a film-in-progress as a place-based installation. There's also the East Coast premiere of Ed Lachman's restoration of "Report from Hollywood," a behind-the-scenes account of Wim Wenders' production of "The State of Things," a film about how hard it is to make a film. See a centennial tribute to animator Faith Hubley, a trailblazer with roots in Rockaway. Also enjoy live music performances and DJ sets by members of Animal Collective and MGMT. Special events also include a curate children's cinema, stop-motion animation workshops, and bio-art sessions where you can create living artworks from gene edited microbes in Petri dishes.
Other film events include the U.S. premiere of Nele Wohlatz's "Sleep With Your Eyes Open," the New York premiere of Juan Palacios and Sofie Husum Johannesen's "As the Tide Comes In," and world premieres of Corey Hughes' "Your Final Meditation" and Sam Fleischner's "Jetty." The festival culminates with a rare screening of Agnes Martin's "Gabriel," an abstract, mostly silent film that will be live-scored by Rockaway Chamber Music.
Events will be held at the festival's flagship Averne Cinema and other local sites. While some events are free, you can get a festival pass offering unlimited access to all events for $75.
"Every year, our program emerges intuitively," co-founders Courtney Muller and Sam Fleischner said in a press release. "We choose films in consideration of the setting in which we’ll show them, and given the transient nature of Rockaway as both a unique community and a coastal environment right next to JFK airport, we are excited to include stories from across the globe that put forth imaginative visions for how we connect to our surroundings and to each other."