Rhode Island International Film Festival

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Guitar #1711

Sep 2014

Guitar #1711
2013 | Directed by Guy Benoit

Guitar #1711 is a beautifully filmed experience of one guitars construction. From raw materials to finished performance this film explores the tools, relationships and skills that go into building fine guitars.

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Donner Party: The Musical

Sep 2014

2013 | Directed by Andrew Migliori

In 1846, en route to California, the Donner Party became snowbound in the mountains for weeks without food. Amid hardship and escalating tensions, Eliza Donner seeks comfort from the handsome and mysterious James Reed, Jr., despite his appetite for secrecy. In time, the two sweethearts hunger for each other, but what is it they crave?

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Fallout

Sep 2013

2012 | Directed by Derek Dubois

Fallout is a film about two brothers hiding for their lives in an old family fallout shelter.

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Fight

Sep 2013

2012 | Directed by Steven Subotnick

A showdown between two motley characters.

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The Perfect Day for a Picnic

Sep 2013

2012 | Directed by Bob Lucas

Howard, a factory worker, returns home each evening to find that his bed-ridden wife is changing.

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It Is What It Is

Sep 2012

2011 | Directed by VP Boyle

A modern day contemporary movie musical with a completely original score, It Is What It Is explores the lives of seven young New Yorkers during a twenty-four hour period of near misses, tattered relationships and crumbling dreams.

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The Life Smugglers

Sep 2012

2011 | Directed by Dave Wells

Arnold is retired and nearly broke. In order to help pay for his sick wife’s health care costs he smuggles prescriptions across the Mexico border with his best friend Rocky. But things go from bad to worse one night when the shipment is not what they expected.

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Alex’s Halloween

Sep 2011

2008 | Directed by Daniel Persitz

Alex gets ready for Halloween by dressing up as iconic characters and imagining that he actually becomes them. With the big night fast approaching, he must convince his older brother to take him trick-or-treating so the two of them can sneak tons of candy past their health-nut mom.

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Inside the Outside: A Profile of the Top Drawer Art Center

Sep 2010

2008 | Directed by Leigh Medeiros

Inside the Outside: A Profile of the Top Drawer Art Center takes a look at an innovative Rhode Island-based arts center serving the developmentally-disabled population. Understanding that the Top Drawer Art Center is a microcosm of the larger ‘outsider art’ movement, the film reflects on the artists’ place in society and in the art world at large. The immediacy of the artists’ work, their lack of self-consciousness around making it, and the experimental use of materials become a source of inspiration for the artists and the people around them. Three of the art center’s nationally-recognized artists Brian Lamora, Emmitt Estrada, and Katrina Cathcart are featured prominently. This film won 2nd place in the 2008 Providence Film Festival.

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Insurgency of Ambition

Sep 2010

2009 | Directed by Anya Belkina

Insurgency of Ambition was conceived in the wake of short-lived US military successes in Iraq. Using the classic icon of victory—a Triumphal Arch—as a visual metaphor, the film questions the relevance of “victory” memes at the time of globalization. Operating on a more intimate level, it ponders the cost of unrestrained personal ambition.

The short opens with Zeus’s allegorical transformation into a Triumphal Arch, during which Athena violently erupts from his head. Athena’s association with both wisdom and war is oxymoronic, for what kind of wisdom is armed with weapons? She is Zeus’s mind disease, a chimera of conquest, all too eagerly revered and induced by the mortals. Infected by the idea of outward success, the main character is lured toward the Triumphal Arch, only to face its true, frightening nature as he gets within reach.