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6th Annual Best of Fest!
Celebrating another amazing year of films & filmmakers!
IndieWorks screens short films every month produced by emerging filmmakers throughout New York. It provides a platform for those filmmakers to showcase their work in front of an audience and to network with individuals in the local film community. We aim to create a space that sparks discussion & collaboration and pushes our peers and ourselves to find inspiration from each other.
Our annual season runs June through March, culminating in our Best of Fest Finale every April. Out of 166 submissions during our 6th year, we were able to screen 49 fantastic films and new media content. Tuesday, April 23rd, all 8 of our monthly Silver Whiskers Award winners of the year, along with 1 lucky Audience Chosen winner, will screen again and be eligible for monetary prizes! The top prize comes with winning the Golden Whiskers Award, our version of Best Picture; but we'll also be awarding Best Writer/Director, Best Ensemble, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, and the audience will vote for the Ultimate Audience Choice winner! Best of Fest will be held at our usual The Local in Long Island City, but with more of a party-vibe! As always, there's no entry fee, so bring all your friends and film enthusiasts out to watch these 9 fantastic films and close out this season in celebration!
Evening's Line-up (screening order subject to change):
Unwelcome (15:00) Written & Directed by Ida Theresa Myklebost
November Winner
Nominated for Best Editing. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
Greater Good (8:13) Directed by Andrea Ashton, Written by Candace Little & Allison Yuen
August Winner
Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
Goodbye Old Friend (5:58) Written & Directed by Rafael De Leon
October Winner
Nominated for Best Writer/Director, Best Cinematography & Best Editing. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
AMYDEE (15:00) Written & Directed by Amy DePaola
December Winner
Nominated for Best Writer/Director & Best Editing. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
Future Unknown (8:50) Written & Directed by Makeba L. Ross
January Winner
Nominated for Best Ensemble. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
We Were Kids (16:00) Written & Directed by Adam Taylor
July Winner
Nominated for Best Writer/Director, Best Ensemble & Best Cinematography. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
Her Being Home (21:00) Directed by Ellie Gravitte, Written by Sophia Maro
June Winner
Nominated for Best Ensemble. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
Metamorphosis (8:48) Written & Directed by Natalie Harris
February Winner
Nominated for Best Cinematography. Eligible for Golden Whiskers & Audience Choice
Adult (12:00) Directed by Cynthia Silver, Written by Tatienne Hendricks-Tellefsen
September (Audience) Winner
Eligible for Audience Choice Award
All 8 Silver Whiskers Award Winners are eligible for the Golden Whiskers Award. And all 9 screening films can win the Audience Choice Award. The other nominees are:
BEST WRITER/DIRECTOR
AMYDEE (Amy DePaola)
Goodbye Old Friend (Rafael De Leon)
We Were Kids (Adam Taylor)
BEST ENSEMBLE
Future Unknown (Victoria Bermudez & Rachelle Clark)
Her Being Home (Stella Akua Mensah, Gloria Essien, Keston McMillan & Angela Nash Wade)
We Were Kids (Duane Nakia Cooper & Marquis Wood)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Goodbye Old Friend (Brendan Engle)
Metamorphosis (Simona Ivanova)
We Were Kids (Adam Volerich)
BEST EDITING
AMYDEE (Amy DePaola)
Goodbye Old Friend (Rafael De Leon)
Unwelcome (Ida Theresa Myklebost)
Golden Whiskers Award Winner:
Winning filmmaker gets $200 towards a future crowdfunding campaign should they choose Seed&Spark as their platform. And the filmmaker gets a free one-year subscription to Seed&Spark’s streaming platform.
A 1TB G-drive
A 1 hour production, post-production, or marketing phone consultation from 4milecircus.
CongestedCat Productions will offer free script coverage for the director's newest short, and devote a day of our social media shares to the winning project and its latest updates.
Category Winners & Audience Choice Award:
Each winner gets $50 towards a crowdfunding campaign should they choose Seed&Spark as their platform. And the filmmaker gets a free one-year subscription to Seed&Spark’s streaming platform.
CongestedCat Productions will offer free script coverage for each director's newest short.
NOW WHAT?
RSVP for Best of Fest on Facebook.
Read about & see photos from the year in our monthly Recaps.
Watch interviews with the winning filmmakers throughout the year(s) in our Insider Series.
Submit your film for Year 7 through FilmFreeway.
See you on April 23rd!
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Queens World Film Festival Recap
Queens World Film Festival is my favorite festival. Not just because it happens in my community of Queens. But also because, now in its 9th year, I can honestly say it’s one of the most well-run, supportive and lovingly programmed festivals out there. I travel the country attending festivals regularly, for my own work and my job with Seed&Spark, and Queens World is truly top notch. Katha and Don (the lovely festival directors) curate content that reflects the diverse voices and stories in Queens (and thus from around the world), and they make it a point to get the local community involved through a variety of events surrounding the screenings. They have so much heart and integrity; it's clear that they care about every film and filmmaker that's part of the festival. Don shows such thoughtful nuance in his programming and Katha makes every filmmaker feel seen and appreciated. Their welcoming and encouraging energy is contagious. Being part of the festival really feels like being part of a movement, not just showing up for a screening.
I’ve written many recaps about QWFF because this was my 5th year with a film at the festival (though my first with a feature). I'll keep this one short because I’ve already said so much and because it’s a little different from my usual festival experiences where I show up in a city for that specific event and spend all my time engaging with the festival. QWFF is 11 days long, and this year screened over 200 films. I don’t get to experience it as much as I’d like every year because my daily life is still going on around me. That said, I always attend opening & closing night. And this year I was able to spend 4 of the 11 days at the festival, getting to meet new filmmakers and see & support a few local friends with their films also in the festival. I can confidently say that the lineups are consistently compelling and well-organized. The Q&A hosts did a great job this year in particular of having specific questions for each film, as well as encouraging questions from the audience. And many screenings were packed. It’s really one of the only NYC festivals (other than the top tier ones like Tribeca and NYFF) that get actual audience attendance of not just the screening filmmakers.
As for our About a Donkey screening, we had a solid slot at 5:30pm on a Sunday. Our theater sat 68 people and it was completely sold out. Mostly friends, family and early supporters of the film were there, but also some other filmmakers of the festival and a couple strangers from the local community filled the room. The film looked and sounded spectacular, truly it was maybe out best screening in terms of quality; and it got a lot of laughs and wonderful reactions. Many comments after complimented the ensemble and the hopeful message of the film. One woman in particular thanked us for the non-stereotypical portrayal of struggling with depression, and another highlighted how wonderful it was to see women of different generations onscreen with fully-realized personalities and story-arcs (because it’s still such a rarity in mainstream movies, unfortunately). We also got a great review out of the screening on Unseen Films.
Our Q&A was fun, with a lot of great questions. Watch it below.
And to my surprise and great honor, the festival awarded me the Lois Weber Pioneer Award for leadership . I was genuinely not expecting it and got a little emotional as I gave a probably awkward speech. (See below)
Thanks again to Katha, Don, and the entire Queens World team! I hope to be back again next year with a new project. <3
P.S. If you don’t know who Lois Weber is, fix that here. Also, if anyone has video of Katha’s introduction for the award, I’d love to see it. Her words were really lovely and I feel like I didn’t fully process the end of what she said after my name came onscreen.
Catch the film next at:
We screen in Michigan in 2 weeks at Capital City Film Festival on April 13th at 5pm.
That’ll be it for festival screenings. You can already pre-order the film on Vimeo on Demand!
A lovely, personal piece of press
"The team at CongestedCat Productions just seem like really amazing people who want to make art that helps people and heals people and helps bring us all together for a better future, a better planet." We reached out to Ali Naro of Movies OVER The Rainbow about writing a review of About a Donkey. She ended up watching it and enjoying it enough to say she wanted to write a post about our production company as a whole. She just sent us her incredibly moving post with this message, "I sweated for 3 days trying to figure out what your films did to my brain while I struggled to write, but I ended up discovering that you did good things. The blog ended up being more a piece about how your films have helped to heal my past than about your actual films themselves. Hope you don't mind. I just wrote where the muse of your work was taking me and it was taking me on a journey to just heal." We definitely don't mind, and we’re incredibly touched by her words. Give her post a read HERE.
Vote for the 9th film to screen at IndieWorks Best of Fest!
March 12th concluded our monthly screenings for the 6th year of IndieWorks, and our Best of Fest is just around the corner on April 23rd. The event will feature the 8 Silver Whiskers Award Winners of the year, plus a 9th Audience Chosen film.
Before each Best of Fest, we select three films to compete for the last spot at the screening and encourage the audience to choose the winning film. This allows the community to participate in our selection process and the public to see a few of the all-around excellent 49 films screened this year, building up to our celebratory screening!
All three won the Audience Choice Award and were high contenders for the Silver Whiskers Award at their respective screenings. We also feel that they reflect the diverse & innovative approach to narrative storytelling that we aim to support and showcase at IndieWorks.
Please watch all three films and VOTE BELOW for the ONE you'd like to see screen with the Silver Whiskers Award winners of the year at Best of Fest. Voting ends on April 1st at 7pm EST.
The contest has ended. Find out which film won very soon! See you on April 23rd!