Queens Film Fest recap

Whew! Just got home after the Queens International Film Festival. What a weekend. The festival was held at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, an incredible venue in Long Island City.

On Friday we scoped out some short films, then we met PK in Manhattan for the Bad Rabbit/Slick Rick/Goodie mob show at BB King's. Damn, Bad Rabbit (Boston) is the new band to watch. Anthony Hamilton meets Spank Rock. So fresh. Slick Rick was in classic form, backed up by Bad Rabbit, and Goodie Mob crushed, nuff said.

We woke up later than planned on Saturday morning and jetted over to the festival to watch some flicks and put up posters in inappropriate places (the ones in the urinals were a big hit). We saw a few really cool shorts. "You Will See Life" was made by two young babes from England; great actressing in that one. We also loved "Jenniffer and the Fish" and "Ice Breakers". Very unpretentionsly funny stuff. We stuck around for the world premiere of Buffalo Bushido. Wow. This is a feature length drama shot in Buffalo, NY. Very indie, very strong. Flawless acting, and highly engaging characters were the strong point of this film. Add in some dominant animation and this was easily the best film we saw at QIFF. I highly recommend it to everyone.

Our screening time was Sunday at 10am, so we had pretty much written it off as a private screening for ourselves and whatever crackheads we could pull in off the sidewalk. Much to our surprise, about 20 of our good friends from all over the city showed up to check us out. We were blown away, big thanks to everyone who fought through soul-crushing hangovers to show love. One guy that we had met at the opening night party even rode his bike out from Manhattan just to see the movie. Badass. Everyone really enjoyed the movie. Afterwords we all kicked it at the irish pub on the corner and caught up with friends and movie fans.

We met a bunch of cool people, and even got nominated for the Best Young Filmmaker award: http://queensfilmfestival.com/films/winners/2009/
We lost to a film that actually had some sort of socially redeeming value. What, milk-farts aren't award worthy? QIFF was a very cool festival, well organized and packed with cool movies. We hope to be back next year.