The Golden Door Film Festival is a film festival in Jersey City, New Jersey, United States, which was inaugurated in 2011. The four-day festival shows features, documentaries, and shorts. The opening and closing night awards ceremony are located at the 1929 movie palace Loew's Jersey Theatre at Journal Square with many screenings and other events at various Downtown venues. The festival was founded by actor, producer, and musician Bill Sorvino. There are competitive awards for features, shorts, documentaries, student works, LBGT-themed films and the Women in Cinema-Alice Guy-Blaché Award for female directors.
The Statue of Liberty National Monument, comprising Liberty Island and Ellis Island, is located in the Upper New York Bay opposite Liberty State Park in Jersey City. "I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" is the last line of "The New Colossus," the poem by Emma Lazarus. Many immigrants passed through the city's Communipaw Terminal and it is sometimes referred to as "America's Golden Door". [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] The festival's name is inspired by the immigrant experience. [7] [8] [9]
The first festival took place on October 14 to 17, 2011. 43 films were shown [10] and there were 18 categories for competition. [11] Lifetime achievement awards were given to Academy Award winner Leon Gast [12] and Paul Sorvino. Night Club (2011) by director Sam Borowski won awards for Best Feature, Best Director of a Feature, Best Male Lead in a Feature (Ernest Borgnine), Best Female Lead in a Feature (Natasha Lyonne), and Best Acting by a Supporting Actor/Actress (Sally Kellerman). [13] Life! Camera Action... and Another Day Another Life also picked up several nominations.
Fiftythree films were screened during the 2012 festival held on October 11 through 14, 2012. [14] [15] [16] [17] Two new categories for competition were added: the Student Filmmaker Award and the Women in Film-Alice Guy Blache Award, named for Alice Guy-Blaché, the narrative film director whose studio was located in Fort Lee, the birthplace of America's first motion picture industry at the beginning of the 20th century. [18] [19] [20] Guy-Blaché is also considered a pioneer in the business. [21]
Michael Wolfe's Maybe Tomorrow won several awards including Best Director, Best Actor and Best Screenplay. Best Supporting Actor went to Dominik Tiefenthaler. [22]
The 2013 festival opened on October 10 [23] with the documentary Fall to Grace about former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey. Armand Assante was given a lifetime achievement award. [24] [25] Sorvino announced that he would be working with Saint Peter's University to develop a film institute. [26] [27]
The 2014 festival was held on September 16 through 21 throughout Jersey City, with its opening night and awards ceremony at the Landmark Loew's Jersey Theatre. [28] Autism awareness was now one of the philanthropic missions of the festival. Tommy Hilfiger, on the board of Autism Speaks, became a sponsor of the festival in 2014, [29] and kicked off the event.
The two opening films were Six Letter Word, a short about autism, and The Odd Way Home . 92 films were shown during the festival. [30] Best fFlm this year was African Gothic, which also won Best Screenplay (Damon Shalit), Best Director (Gabriel Bologna), Best Actress (Chella Ferrow), Best Cinematography (Massimo Zeri), and Best Editor (Pavel Savchuk). Garry Pastore's Destressed best documentary.
The festival took place from September 24 to 27. [31] Brute Force, a Jersey City native, performed with Daughter of Force at Brightside Tavern after a showing of a documentary about his life and work. [32] Many events took place at New Jersey City University.
The festival ran from September 22 to 25. It hosted the world premiere of Chris Robert's Another You, and screenings of Miles Doleac's The Hollow , Mara Lesemann's Detours , John Asher's Po, and Thomas Baldinger's Who's Jenna..?, starring festival founder Bill Sorvino. [33]
More than 175 films were screened over four days at the seventh annual festival, which took place on October 5–8. [34] [35] The Girl Who Invented Kissing won four awards: Best Feature Film, Best Director (Tom Sierchio), Best Actor (Dash Mihok), and Best Supporting Actor (Vincent Piazza). Brooklyn in July received three awards in the short film category: Best Feature, Best Director (Bob Celli), and Best Actor (Thaddeus Daniels). Lonely Souls of Microbes received the Best International Short Film award. [36]
The festival took place from September 20 to 23, 2018. [37] 265 films were screened [38] at different venues: Pope Lecture Hall and the Roy Irving Theater at Saint Peter's University, Communipaw Terminal in Liberty State Park, the Beacon Paramount Theater, Jersey City Theater Center's Merseles Studio, and White Eagle Hall. [39]
The festival ran from September 17 to 22, 2019. It included the New Jersey premiere of Cupid’s First Day and the world premiere of Last Rehearsal of the Dangerous Kitten, [9] by Bayonne-based Narrow Bridge. [40] Best Local Film was Like Us. [41] The Best Music Video Winner was Jahan Nostra for his video Embrace The Rain. [42]
The festival was scheduled to take place from September 19 to 26, 2020, but was postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. [43] Tango Shalom won best feature film.
The festival took place in May 11-14. [44] Scrap, by Vivian Kerr won best feature and best director. Anthony Rapp won bet actor in a short.
The 12th season ran June 22-24, 2023. Seventy-two films were screened at two venues: Art House Productions and Nimbus Arts Center. The nearby Canopy Hotel was the filmmakers hub. [45]
The 13th annual GDIFF will take place June 22-24, 2024.
Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark. It is the county seat of Hudson County, and is the county's most populous city and its largest. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 292,449, an increase of 44,852 (+18.1%) from the 2010 census count of 247,597, in turn an increase of 7,542 (+3.1%) from the 240,055 enumerated at the 2000 census. The Population Estimates Program calculated a population of 291,657 for 2023, making it the 72nd-most populous municipality in the nation.
Fort Lee is a borough at the eastern border of Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, situated along the Hudson River atop The Palisades.
Mira Katherine Sorvino is an American actress. She won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995).
James Edward McGreevey is an American politician who served as the 52nd governor of New Jersey from 2002 until his resignation in 2004.
Paul Anthony Sorvino was an American actor. He often portrayed authority figures on both the criminal and the law enforcement sides of the law.
Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché was a French pioneer film director. She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film, as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world. She experimented with Gaumont's Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.
High Tech High School is a full-time public magnet high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades in Secaucus, in Hudson County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Hudson County Schools of Technology. Since its establishment in 1991, High Tech High School has been named a Top Ten High School, a Governor's School of Excellence, a New Jersey Star School (twice) and has been cited by New Jersey Monthly magazine as one of the state's great public high schools. The school is noted for success in the sciences and in the performing arts, winning several awards in both fields.
Greetings From The Shore is a 2007 American coming-of-age romantic comedy film directed by Greg Chwerchak. The movie has played over 60 festivals, winning over 20 awards. It had its American theatrical release on September 12, 2008, on a limited basis.
There is a long history of television and film in New Jersey, which is considered the birthplace of the movie picture industry.
David France is an American investigative reporter, non-fiction author, and filmmaker. He is a former Newsweek senior editor, and has published in New York magazine, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ, and others. France, who is gay, is best known for his investigative journalism on LGBTQ topics.
Life! Camera Action... is a family-drama film directed, written, edited, produced by Rohit Gupta, in his feature-length directorial debut. Starring Dipti Mehta, Shaheed Woods, Noor Naghmi, Swati Kapila, John Crann, this ninety minutes quasi-autobiographical film follows a girl in pursuit of her dreams of becoming a filmmaker against all odds. The film received several awards and nominations. Its theatrical release was limited to film festivals. The film received direct-to-DVD release and subsequently on other video on demand (VOD) platforms.
Another Day Another Life is a 2009 American suspense thriller film produced, edited, and directed by Rohit Gupta. It's about a man, Jason, played by Benjamin Jacobs, who struggles to repress his killer instinct as he approaches the planned killing of his lover. The film was selected to showcase at the Short Film Corner - Cannes Film Festival 2009. It received critical acclaim at its festival run winning awards & nominations.
Jackson Hill is a neighborhood in the Bergen-Lafayette and Greenville sections of Jersey City, New Jersey. It is part of the city's Ward F. The neighborhood is situated on Bergen Hill which also lends its name to the Bergen Hill Historic District just north of Communipaw Avenue.
Fall to Grace is a 2013 documentary film produced, filmed and directed by Alexandra Pelosi.
Lucio P. Fernandez is a Cuban-American politician and entertainer, who works as the Commissioner of Public Affairs in Union City, New Jersey, where he serves under Mayor Brian P. Stack. He is also an artist, author, singer, actor, dancer, playwright, screenwriter, producer and film director who has been credited with being instrumental in reviving the arts in Union City.
Garry Pastore is an American actor, stuntman, writer, and filmmaker.
The Hudson Shakespeare Company is a regional Shakespeare touring festival based in Jersey City in Hudson County, New Jersey, that produces an annual summer Shakespeare in the Park festival and often features lesser done Shakespeare works such as The Two Noble Kinsmen and Timon of Athens. The company also produces several modern-day productions in non theatrical venues such as their courtroom shows of Inherit the Wind and A Few Good Men in the Hoboken Municipal Courtroom. It produce a yearly educational program that ranges from student workshops to full length Shakespeare productions.
The Northeast Film Festival is a film festival founded in 2013 in Teaneck, NJ at the historic Teaneck Cinemas. Held annually in September, the festival features both US and international films with competition in feature length and short fiction as well as documentaries and student films.
Bill Sorvino is an American stage and screen actor, writer and producer. He attended William Esper Studio. Sorvino's acting has been recognized on regional and national levels. Most Notably the Accolade Global Film Competition Named one of 50 most influential people in Hudson County by the Hudson Reporter in 2012 and 2013. He is also the founder of the Golden Door International Film Festival in Jersey City.
Night Club is a 2011 American comedy film starring Ernest Borgnine and Mickey Rooney. It is the directorial debut of Sam Borowski.
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