02/07/2015 1pm-4pm
Anthology Film Archives Courthouse Theater, Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue, New York, NY 10003
On February 7, EnMaze Pictures will present Shorts Go Beyond: “Stories in New York”, a collection of seven short films that reflect the diversity, charm, character, and characters of this city of 800 languages and 8.4 million lives.
Hopping between comedy, romance, drama, and documentary, the program’s “seven narratives, seven microcosms” are universal but are markedly New York stories. Everybody wonders if he or she could fall in love, but in New York the what-if romance happens only on the train. People have unexpected life histories, but in New York they almost seem fantastic. There is always some commotion happening in public, but in New York it involves people dressed up in character costumes.
Curator Bingqiao Zhou says, “Living in New York, we feel the heartbeat of the city everyday…We’ve always wanted to gather the one thousand New Yorks in one thousand people’s eyes and to share them as widely as we can”. Paring down from hundreds of short films, seven were chosen for their “unique focus and angle,” Zhou tells us, also noting the variety in the directors’ backgrounds.
While EnMaze’s ambitious and successful 5-city North American tour last October that showcased young Chinese filmmakers educated and trained in the United States might have given the impression that they are primarily focused on Chinese filmmakers, Executive Editor Ting Li explains that EnMaze wants to be “recognized as a storyteller who delivers universal content because [they] believe that amazing stories should not have boundaries”. With this afternoon of films, many which have screened at domestic and international film festivals and awards, EnMaze certainly found the right place for amazing stories.
For more information, please visit http://www.beyondchinatown.com