The Black Maria Film Festival was named after the American birthplace of the motion picture—Thomas Edison’s West Orange, NJ, laboratory—a revolving photographic studio called the Black Maria because it resembled a police paddy wagon. Over the last twenty-five years, founding director John Columbus has overseen this alternative festival, which embraces the diversity and passion of the cinematic short form. It provides many directors with their earliest exhibition opportunities and discovers avant-garde and idiosyncratic talents. The festival also provides an important, one-of-a-kind distribution outlet for short films, traveling each year to over seventy sites and reaching audiences in the farthest corners of the USA and Europe. Through the years the festival has championed cinema that resides on the margins of popular culture and in the center of artists’ imaginations. All films presented by Columbus and the filmmakers, and from the USA, unless otherwise noted.
Organized by Sally Berger, Assistant Curator, Department of Film; with John Columbus, Director, Black Maria Film Festival.
Special thanks to Alvin Larkins, Associate Director, Kerrie Young, Program Associate, and Megan Kern, Office Manager, Black Maria Film Festival.