Panache
Nicole Emmons, Val Verde, CA, USA. Experimental, 3:00

Panache is a short film made up of several different visual elements. Archival footage of Coney Island cerca 1940s and '50s, director produced footage of peacocks, and a woman walking past the Cyclone roller coaster ride in modern day Coney Island, shown as shot and as manipulated via the optical printer. The theme is vertigo, and here is shown in terms of the fall on a roller coaster ride, but the premise is a metaphor for the vertigo one experiences in daily living, ie forming new relationships, starting a new job, or simply walking down the street. The desire to screw things up, or fall, in one's own life, but fighting that, remembering to have pride and deciding instead to develop one's own panache.

Coney Ideal
Anthony Simon, Brooklyn NY, USA. Short, 2:50

A struggle for control. Shot at Coney Island.

Springtime in November
Jane Dorogoyer, Brooklyn NY, USA. Documentary Short, 8:07, World Premiere!

A “Springtime in November” is a pastiche of playful images and heartfelt emotions from a Coney Island Polar Bear Club wintertime swim off the beach of Coney Island.

This documentary film by Brooklyn’s Jane Dorogoyer captures the participants’ joyful celebration of the ocean, the winter weather and the uniqueness of Coney Island. Through the use of cinema verite’ techniques, juxtaposed images and the words of the “Polar Bears” themselves, Ms. Dorogoyer provides the audience with an amusing tour of one of New York City’s distinctive communities and the iconic place where that community gathers.

This debut short film includes a soundtrack of The Crazy Piano Guy street performances recorded by Ms. Dorogoyer.

The Sparrow and the Tigress
Billy Sharff, Cornish New Hampshire, USA. Feature, 62:00, New York Premiere!

With a haunting soundtrack from Pulitzer Prize winner Ornette Coleman, and striking black and white photography from first-time writer/director Billy Sharff, The Sparrow and the Tigress takes us into the shadows of a Coney Island underworld where past, present, reality and fantasy collide.

A young man, Aiden Burroughs, moves to New York to pursue a dream of acting but soon finds himself cast in a play and a part he could have never imagined. Aiden (David Langford) quickly falls for the playwright's daughter (Jennifer Angela Bishop) and is led through a labyrinth of love and madness until a shocking revelation sends him back to his childhood home. Pulling the strings is eccentric playwright Ernest Tanning, brought to life in a tour-de-force performance by Hollywood veteran James Rebhorn (Independence Day, Scent Of A Woman). Also featuring Rusty DeWees (Disappearances, Where the Rivers Flow North), Andrea Leigh (Slingshot, Mo) and James Warke (Plague Town).

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