(March 23, 2007) Now in its 41st year, the BAC International Film and Video Festival (May 5 – 12, 2007) screens 58 films over 6 days at 4 venues with three feature narratives having their World or New York premieres at the festival. Keeping with Brooklyn Arts Council’s tradition of showcasing a wide variety of high quality films directed by emerging artists from around the world, this year includes 8 award winning short documentaries, 15 short narratives, 8 animation and 5 experimental pieces, plus 6 innovative installation videos by filmmakers from Brooklyn to China to Botswana. 11 films shot and directed by youth filmmakers will also be screened.

This year’s festival kicks off on Saturday, May 5 from 2 – 5 pm at the Brooklyn Museum with “Brooklyn Filmmakers,” a screening of shorts and feature works. This year Brooklyn Arts Council partners with the Brooklyn Museum in conjunction with the museum’s new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art by curating Pharaohs, Queens and Goddesses, a wonderful selection of films that deal with Global Feminism that screens on Saturday, May 5, 2007 from 6:30 – 10:30pm during Brooklyn Museum’s acclaimed Target First Saturday series.

We’ve expanded our ability to meet and support the ever increasing number of films shot, produced, directed and serviced by Brooklyn artists with additional collaborations. New initiatives allow screenwriters, for example, to benefit from our “Story Structure and Creative Explorations” professional development seminar and to compete for prizes generously donated by Writers Boot Camp. Filmmakers can enjoy wider, more diverse audiences at the Target First Saturday screening at the Brooklyn Museum, and network with each other at our closing party at Bar Sepia, on Friday, May 11th. The “Independent Filmmakers” screening, also at the Brooklyn Museum, showcases Independent talent from as far as the Chech Republic, while the “New Visionaries” screening at Long Island University focuses on fresh, new films by local and international college students. Sony Wonder hosts our seventh “Youth Shorts” screening at the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in Manhattan on Thursday, May 10. And on Friday, May 11 the festival features provocative new films during the “After Hours” screening at the Brooklyn Museum. We wrap up our festival week with the Sixth Annual Women of African Descent Film Festival, hosted by the Brooklyn chapter of the Links at Long Island University, which showcases films directed or produced by women of the African Diaspora.

BACKGROUND

Each year, Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC) hosts the International Film and Video Festival to give film and video artists an opportunity to show their work to critics, the media and an enthusiastic New York audience. In operation since 1966, the festival is the longest running event of its kind in Brooklyn.  For some young filmmakers, the BAC Film Festival is an important first step in launching a successful career. In 2002, a recent college graduate named Ryan Fleck screened a short film at the BAC Film Festival. Ryan went on to write and direct the critically-acclaimed feature Half Nelson, which won the New York Film Critic’s Best First Feature Award, among others. Binta and the Great Idea (Binta Y La Gran Idea), directed by Javier Fesser, was shown in our festival last year and was recently nominated for an Academy Award in the “Best Live Action Short Film” category.