The Long Beach International Film Festival returns Aug. 1 to Aug. 4 for the seventh year of full-length features, short films, eats, and boardwalk fun.
The four-day film fest will team up with the Regal Lynbrook 13 to showcase 13 different feature films. Long Beach and Lynbrook have a history of supporting each other since after Hurricane Sandy, when Lynbrook helped LBIFF continue.
“People weren’t even living in their homes, and there was a lot of destruction in Long Beach, but the show must go on,” says LBIFF co-founder Craig Weintraub.
Weintraub, a filmmaker himself, was inspired to create a film festival on LI after his seeing his own films showcased nationally.
“I had my films in festivals around the country and going to these festivals and seeing what a great opportunity it was, Long Beach is the perfect spot for that,” he says. “And that was the exciting moment in 2011.”
The LBIFF committee received nearly 400 submissions from filmmakers from more than 20 countries for festival consideration; 50 of those films will be screened at the festival. All feature films will be shown at Regal Lynbrook 13 and will require tickets, but short films that screen on the beach at Long Beach are free and open to the public.
Kicking off the fest on Aug. 1 is the drama, Change in the Air, at Regal Lynbrook 13. Aug. 2 will see animation shorts at the Beach Theater (free) on the beach, as well as four different feature films in Lynbrook.
LBIFF will also team up with Devour! at the Allegria hotel for a movie-dining experience dubbed “Chefs and Shorts,” where guests watch a short film and eat a course based on the movie.
“We introduced a new event last year and reinvented the whole ‘dinner and a movie’ concept” says Weintraub. The Chefs and Shorts event is highly anticipated this year and will require tickets that can be purchased online.
The latter half of the festival will consist of a “Taste on the Beach” on Aug. 3, where guests can sample food, wine, and craft beer, and “Concerts on the Beach,” an outdoor music event featuring local artists. That night will also showcase dramatic shorts on the beach, and three feature films in Lynbrook.
The fest will close Aug. 4 with comedy shorts and four feature films, including the award-winning ROCKAWAY, a drama directed by John Budion that takes place in East Rockaway.
The coming-of-age drama tells the story of the director’s childhood growing up on Long Island and was filmed entirely in New York. It’s expected popularity added an encore showing of the film Aug. 5. The movie’s success and impressive amount of awards (Best U.S. Feature Film at the Catalina Film Festival and Audience Award for Best Feature Film at the Flickers’ Rhode Island Film Festival, to name a few) is attributed to the story’s nostalgia and brotherly chemistry between the child actors.
“All the boys I wrote about grew up going to Long Beach,” says Budion, whose film is based on his brother and childhood friends. “It’s our South Beach home.”
Tickets for the feature films as well as for Chefs and Shorts and Taste on the Beach, can be purchased at the LBIFF website, longbeachfilm.com, where moviegoers can also checkout showtimes and more info on what will be shown. For questions, contact contact@longbeachfilm.com.
