#PickoftheWeek | Reelabilities Film Fest in Astoria, Forest Hills + Jamaica
BY QEDC It's In Queens
The Reelabilities Film Festival will take place at more than 30 venues around NYC and surrounding counties – including four spots in Queens – from March 8 through March 14. The general goal is to promote awareness and appreciation of what the organizers call “the most underrepresented minority in the American media.”
Along with some live events, this tenth annual extravaganza will screen more than 100 movies about people with disabilities and their families and caretakers. Attendees can expect shorts, features, documentaries, and animation on everything from cerebral palsy to dwarfism to mental illness.
The festival will open on March 8 at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan at 334 Amsterdam Ave. with the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival-winner Keep the Change, which tackles friendship and romance among those with autism and intellectual disability. Oscar winner Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, will receive an award from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, too.
This blog is proudly regionalist, so here is information on participating Queens venues.
Central Queens Y, 67-09 108th St., Forest Hills.
- Perfectly Normal for Me, a 2017 documentary about a Bayside public school that has a dance program for children with physical and developmental challenges, shows on March 11 at 10 am. Unstuck: An OCD Kids Movie, a 23-minute documentary featuring children discussing their experiences with obsessive-compulsive disorder, will also show.
- Shorts on mental illness and other issues screen on March 11 at 1 pm. The lineup includes Heaven Is a Traffic Jam on the 405, a documentary on Mindy Alper, who has battled devastating depression and anxiety throughout her life and created a body of artwork that depicts her journey through years of difficult treatments; The Barber of Augusta, which follows a barber with mental illness who sets up a salon on a busy Toronto street and gives free haircuts to homeless people; and Mr. Connolly Has ALS, which is about a beloved high school principal who soldiers on despite his developing ALS.
- Scaffolding, an Israeli feature about a 17-year-old male with learning disabilities and his troubled relationship with his father, who expects him to take over the family scaffolding business, shows on March 12 at noon.
Museum of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave., Astoria’s Kaufman Arts District.
- Reel Shorts, which includes Unstuck: An OCD Kids Movie; Partially Compensated, a stop-motion animated film illustrating a child with dyslexia’s experience in the classroom; and Alphabet Mission to Mars, an animation about autism, is on March 10 at 2 pm.
- Keep the Change, which is mentioned above, is on March 10 at 4 pm.
- Out of My Head, which looks at migraines and neurological disease, is on March 11 at 2 pm.
- Scaffolding, which is also mentioned above, is on March 11 at 4:30 pm.
St. John’s University School of Education, 80-00 Utopia Pkwy., Jamaica.
- Reel Shorts, which includes an animated short, The Milky Pop Kid; Unstuck: An OCD Kids Movie; Partially Compensated; and How We Met Laurel, which is about a blind Syrian immigrant, is on March 13 at 5 pm.
York College Performing Arts Center’s Little Theater, 94-45 Guy R. Brewer Blvd., Jamaica.
- The Barber of Augusta and Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw, a documentary of the basketball star who grew up in Queensbridge Houses, show on March 8 at noon.
- Mad to Be Normal, a British feature that deals with science, social issues, mental health and multiple disabilities, is on March 9 at 1 pm.
Image: Reelabilities Film Festival
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