The Bronx Independent Cinema Center is launching an annual series of outdoor films in the borough. The first event kicks off this Thursday.
Photo courtesy Getty Images
If you’re feeling a movie night this week, ditch the herds at the big-budget blockbusters and opt for something more unique — not to mention free.
At 8:30 p.m. on Thursday, the nonprofit Bronx Independent Cinema Center will host the first of three outdoor film screenings at Joyce Kilmer Park at the Grand Concourse (facing the courthouse).
No tickets are required — just show up, said Gregory Hernandez, the center’s president.
“Bring your picnic blanket, your lawn chair, bring some snacks, and just come out and watch two movies,” he added.
The center plans to offer this screening series annually going forward.
First in the lineup is a short film called “Ro & The Stardust,” written and directed by award-winning Bronx native filmmaker Eunice Levis. At 16 minutes long, “Ro & The Stardust” is the story of an imaginative teenager who fulfills her dying grandmother’s wish of building a rocketship to propel her into space.
Levis, who now lives in Philadelphia and is a film professor, told the Bronx Times that the film was shot in Brooklyn and Queens, and all the actors are Afro-Latina New Yorkers. She said the story is meant to “inspire people to live beyond what you see in your immediate surroundings.”
Thursday’s feature film is “Black Girl” (1966), directed by Senegalese author and filmmaker Osumane Sembène. The film tells the story of a young Senegalese woman who moves to Paris to work for a wealthy white family, only to become a spectacle — and something like a prisoner — under their roof.
Hernandez told the Bronx Times that with these carefully-curated selections, the center, which launched in 2022, aims to “showcase films that are not the Marvel or Disney movies. These are thought-provoking, independent, arthouse, and foreign…
Read the full article here
Leave a Reply