Tickets are now on sale for the 2012 Montclair Film Festival running May 1 – May 6, 2012 in Montclair New Jersey. The festival will present over 45 films with live participation by over 50 special guests including Kathleen Turner, Olympia Dukakis, Michael Moore, Patrick Wilson, and Oliver Platt.
The Opening Night Gala (May 1) will present the New Jersey comedy, The Oranges. Set in suburban New Jersey, Hugh Laurie (House M.D.) and Catherine Keener (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) play a couple whose best friends and neighbors are Oliver Platt (Love and Other Drugs) and Allison Janney (The West Wing). Their comfortable existence goes awry when a prodigal daughter played by Leighton Meester (Gossip Girl) returns and sparks an affair. The ramifications affect all of the family members in unexpected and hilarious ways.
Other highlights of the festival include the drama Tiger Eyes, based on the novel by New Jersey native Judy Blume directed by her son Lawrence Blume, and An Oversimplification of Her Beauty, the debut of African-American director Terence Nance.
Born and raised in New Jersey, Judy Blume belongs to the pantheon of American storytellers, yet none of her books have been adapted for the big screen – until now. Her son Lawrence Blume directs this touching story of a 17 year-old girl played by Willa Holland (Gossip Girl; The O.C.) who suffers a family loss. She’s uprooted from her home in Atlantic City and transplanted to New Mexico where she meets a young man who helps her find new strength.
In An Oversimplification of Her Beauty which premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, Terence Nance in his directing debut chronicles his relationship with a lovely young woman (Namik Minter), teetering between platonic and romantic. Utilizing a tapestry of live action and animated styles, Nance explores his fantasies, emotions, and memories for a vibrant expression of young love.
Documentaries at the festival include the world Premiere of The Prep School Negro and a screening of About Face.
In The Prep School Negro, André Robert Lee revisits the life-changing events of his adolescence when he gained a way out of Philadelphia’s ghettos with a scholarship to an elite prep school. As he moved into a different world, he grew distant from his sister and mother. In this poignant film, he explores thorny questions of race, education, opportunity and family. He also spends time with current day prep school students of color to see if anything has changed inside the ivory tower.
About Face features esteemed portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders interviewing fashion’s top supermodels on their lives, careers, and lifelong relationship with beauty. From youth to cosmetic surgery, addiction to self-esteem, overnight stardom to reinvention, this HBO documentary reveals the extraordinary women behind the famous faces. The memorable testimonies include Paulina Porizkova on her insecurities; Pat Cleveland on breaking boundaries for African-American women; and Carol Alt on posing for Playboy in her late 40s. Not to mention Christie Brinkley, Beverly Johnson, Jerry Hall, Isabella Rossellini and more. Courtesy of HBO Documentary Films.
The festival will host the world premiere of David Bromberg: Unsung Treasures and Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Story.
In David Bromberg: Unsung Treasures, David Bromberg is a musician’s musician who collaborated with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jerry Garcia and other greats. But Bromberg stopped performing publicly in the 1980’s and turned to violin making. New Jersey director Beth Toni Kruvant, who won acclaim for Heart of Stone about Newark’s Weequahic High School, follows Bromberg as he helps to revitalize an urban community and makes a musical comeback with esteemed friends such as Dr. John and Levon Helm.
Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Story, looks at Morton Downey Jr., dubbed the “Father of Trash Television,” who pushed the boundaries of controversy and confrontation from his New Jersey studio and became a media sensation in the late 1980s. Évocateur gains access to never-before-seen footage and takes us behind Downey’s cult of personality while charting his rise and fall. Interviewees include Pat Buchanan, Sally Jessy Raphael, Alan Dershowitz, as well as Downey’s former colleagues, critics and fans. Their testimony brings new insight to a bizarre chapter of TV history.
Visit the festival website to see the full film lineup and to purchase tickets
credit: Film description from the festival’s website.