Film-lovers and filmmakers will converge in old Greenbelt on Saturday, November 19 to launch a weekend of fine independent movies, shorts and animation. Works from across the U.S., Iran, Norway, France, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Italy and the United Kingdom will be screened. The festival runs through Monday, November 21.
Utopia is an all-volunteer event sponsored by the nonprofit Greenbelt Access Television, the city’s community television station. Works about the environment, religion, building a racially fair society, Ukraine, the psychedelic substance ayahuasca, the destructive power of social media and other subjects will screen at the historic Old Greenbelt Theatre, the New Deal Café and the Municipal Building.
One of this year’s compelling features, Sandstone, examines the impact of social media on an auto mechanic who faces community disgrace after a disturbing social media post. Sandstone and Tangent, a futuristic animation, will screen at the Municipal Building (Saturday, 7 to 9 p.m.).
Another intriguing offering, Huni, is about an Amazon rainforest tribe that regularly uses the psychedelic substance ayahuasca (New Deal Café, Saturday, 1 p.m.). The same program includes Our Fractured Life, a short by Greenbelt artist and filmmaker Sally Davies, and Be Water – Andes to Amazonia, about the dangerously polluted rivers of Bolivia.
Closer to home, State of the Unity (Old Greenbelt Theatre, Saturday, 3:30 p.m.) hits the road to all 50 states with Brooklyn’s Bergamot Band, on a quest to explore how music might help unify a diverse nation.
Religious prejudice is examined in The Wandering Jew: A Historic Tale (Old Greenbelt Theatre, Sunday, 11 a.m.), which explores the social history of the “Wandering Jew” a mythical figure forced to atone for Jesus’ crucifixion by wandering homeless throughout the world until Jesus returns. Two films about Ukraine – Train to Budapest and Kharkiv, Ukraine: My Beautiful Suffering City – are part of the same program.
Racial issues are explored in two excellent Utopia documentaries. Her Name was Hester, a film about a woman who inherits her slave-holding ancestors’ family farm and seeks to exorcise the farm’s grim past (Old Greenbelt Theatre, Saturday, 1 p.m.). Mr. Emancipation: The Walter Perry Story (Old Greenbelt Theatre, Sunday, 3:30 p.m.) is about a Black Canadian who, in 1936, launched a ground-breaking series of racially integrated festivals.
Tickets can be purchased at utopiafilmfestival.org or at the venue door until sold out. Tickets for each block of films or an all-weekend pass can be purchased on the Festival website at utopiafilmfestival.org.
