MMFF

Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival 2019

"Off Track"

The Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies is pleased to announce the 26th annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival, "Off Track".

The 26th annual Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival is pleased to go “Off Track.”  Contemplating the expressive potential of images, artist/scholar Nick Sousanis observed, “forgotten is the wonder of what might be, in its place, a single chorus…this is how it is.”  He may as well have been describing what is—too often—our relationship with the cinema, following an expected path, with story, character, visuals, edits, and information just where they ought to be.  But movies can do and be so much more! They can be unexpected, incomplete, and discomforting—they can move off the expected path, they can take us somewhere new, they can go off track.  This spring’s Festival presents a season of the unexpected, with orphaned, amateur, experimental, and underground films as well as narrative and documentary in which characters go off track and encounter what they never anticipated.  Together these films show us how filmmaking can be democratic and accessible and esoteric and extraordinary.  Now, more than ever, it is crucial to forge past how it is and recall the wonder of what might be.

Films will be screened on Wednesday evenings at 7:30PM starting on February 20, 2019, through April 24, 2019 in Isenberg Flavin Family Auditorium SOM 137 (unless otherwise noted). All events are accompanied by critical, contextualizing introductions by scholars and filmmakers and all are, as always, free and open to the public.

All events are free and open to the public.

Presented by the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Shawn Shimpach, Festival Director


Contact

Shawn Shimpach
Email: shimpach@comm.umass.edu