Written by Tasnia Habib
The Chesapeake Film Festival announced earlier this year that its 2020 film festival will take place virtually from October 1st to October 4th. The Chesapeake Film Festival was founded in 2008, with a mission to “entertain, enrich and inspire by bringing the finest in narrative, documentary and short film to the Chesapeake Bay community.”
CFF will be screening 45 films that can be accessed for free online. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival will be free of charge to the audience. “The Virtual Festival is our gift to film lovers in our community, and beyond, in the difficult times precipitated by CoVid-19,” the festival organizers stated in a press release.
This year’s 45 films were selected from over 200 submissions. The festival will be showing features and shorts in a variety of categories including narrative, documentary, and international films. This year there is a selection of 7 feature length and short films on environmental issues and 15 films on social justice issues.
There is no registration required for the event, all films are available at https://chesapeakeffvirtual2020.com/festival/ starting October 1st at 9 AM EST until October 4th at midnight.
Below are a few films to check out during the festival. The full program can be accessed on their website.
About Us
92 min., Narrative Feature
Director: Stefan Scwartz
Logline: In an effort to rekindle their troubled marriage, a young couple revisits the location where they spent their honeymoon eight years earlier. They navigate the beauty and the pain of love, culminating in a heartbreaking finale as truths are revealed.
You Don’t Know Nothin’ Bout Groove City
60 min., Documentary Feature – Made in Maryland
Director: César González
Logline: In the mid-1970s a musical revolution with roots in the emerging New York City hip hop scene explodes on Pine Street in Cambridge, MD. One block away on Race Street, nobody knows anything about it. You Don’t Know Nothin’ Bout Groove City includes such greats as Count Basie, Ella Fitgerald and James Brown, while exploring the racial tensions that continue to divide the town where Harriet Tubman was born.
Still from the film Balloon Man.
Balloon Man
98 min., Documentary Feature – Made in Maryland
Director: Chantal Potter
Logline: After being drafted by the Buffalo Bills, a life-threatening tragedy forces Bill Costen out of his dream. Saying goodbye to a career on the turf, Costen takes to the air to become the first African-American Master hot-air balloon pilot in the nation.
Imaginarius
67 min., Documentary Feature, International (Chile)
Director: Juan Ignacio Bello
Logline: A total solar eclipse draws thousands of astronomers and tourists to the Elqui Valley of Chile, where skies stand out as the clearest of the planet. Amid the unusual frenzy that surrounds their town, four friends take a journey of learning and friendship. A story filled with humor, fantasy and creativity.
The Abjurants
15 min., Narrative Short, International (Italy)
Director: Antonio De Palo
Logline: Vera and Roberta are abjurants, meaning women who refuse to adhere to the Eugenics Program imposed by the Government. They consequently are confined to an unknown location and used as test subjects. Their only purpose in life is recalling their lovers’ faces.
An Island Out of Time
30 min., Environmental Short – Made in Maryland
Directors: Sandy Cannon-Brown and Dave Harp
Logline: This is a film about a remarkable couple, Mary Ada and Dwight Marshall, whose lives personify Chesapeake Bay’s waterman, seafood-harvesting culture and history. It is also about the four children who chose to break with that tradition. The film, like Tom Horton’s 1996 book, An Island Out of Time, is both celebration and elegy for a place beset with rising sea levels and erosion, pollution and harvest restrictions, and young people seeking opportunities older generations of islanders never dreamed of – all this seen through the lens of the Marshall family of Smith Island.
Still from the film About Us.