On Wednesday January 4, the non-profit Bronx World Film, Inc. is launching its flagship world art house cinema program, the Cycle, in the Bronx for the first time ever at the recently founded 50-seat arthouse venue Cinema on the Sound, on picturesque City Island. The Cycle, a carefully curated program of contemporary film from all over the world in all genres and styles, casts a spotlight on filmmakers of color, youth and women, particularly local Bronx filmmakers. It is also the pioneer in the United States of the burgeoning Central American arthouse film movement.
The launch event features two main attractions. Devils Among Angels is a feature documentary produced in 2018 by Bronx filmmaker Jerry Landi, also Founder and Executive Director of Cinema on the Sound. Its subject is world-class violinist and Holocaust survivor Samuel Marder, who spent his youth in a concentration camp and, upon release, spent the rest of his life playing violin for the world’s élite and teaching tolerance to school children. Landi calls this his most important work. 1979 is a short historical drama, also produced in 2018 and first screened at Festival de Cannes, by late Cambodian filmmaker Vanna Seang. It tells an intimate story of the massive exodus, under the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, of the people of Cambodia, who fled to The Bronx in large numbers and made this borough their largest US settlement in the US during the 80s.
Bronx World Film Cycle, Winter 2023 marks the second collaboration with Cinema on the Sound, after the November Bronx premiere of award-winning short Il Moro – The Moor, a period piece by Daphne Di Cinto about the rise to power in the 1500s of Alessandro de’ Medici, Medici dynasty heir born out-of-wedlock to Pope Clement VII and an African slave. Check https://www.bronxworldfilm.org for additional films at the launch event, and more program information to be rolled out in the coming days.
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