East of the River Film Festival, free, runs Saturday, Sept. 3rd
By John Muller, city reporter covering the Southside
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| Photo Courtesy John Muller |
Poot from “The Wire” fame is back, relapsing from hand-to-hands to armed robberies in Frank E. Jackson’s “Lorenzo & Monica, L.A.F.S.” The inner workings of the city’s family-owned Yellow Cab Company, in fewer than twenty minutes, are revealed in a manner that can’t be gleaned leaning late night twisted in the backseat of a hack riding a thirty-plus fare. The memory of the demolished Arthur Capper Carrollsburg and the displacement of the “501 Boyz” lives to be reminisced on for yet another day. And the city’s off-Broadway neighborhood serves as the backdrop for an urban chic relationship flick at the inaugural East of the River Film Festival.
As a warm-up to the DC Shorts Film Festival, the EOTR Film Festival features twelve films in one day. Anthony Greene, co-founder of Silent Code Features and brainchild of the festival, says free admission and a diversity of the projects should get both lay folk and reel aficionados from immediate and cross-town neighborhoods to spend their Saturday indoors. “We’re hoping this is the start of an annual event.”
For an area of the city last operating a theatre when Back To the Future Part II was released, the festival is blazing a new trail of sorts for the city’s independent film community, says Robert Epstein, director of “Adams Morgan: The Movie.” Epstein’s film and others shine a cinematic light on authentic city personas and “their relationships, living, working and struggling in a real part of DC.”
Apocalyptic invasions and national security intrigues will have to be queued up on NetFlix; this festival is not for the city’s politically dependent rank and file.
East of the River Film Festival runs September 3rd, 2011 from 12 noon to 10pm at THEARC, 1901 Mississippi Avenue, SE. Free. Nearest metro, Southern Avenue (Green Line)