The Great Neck Arts Center’s Gold Coast Film Festival ended on a high note this weekend, in the face of both meteorological and financial uncertainty.
The festival’s bevy of screenings and after parties was met with full attendance and popular support, according to arts center Executive Director Regina Gil.
“We’re now on the map,” Gil said, noting the attendance and accolades of Hollywood figures and rising filmmakers.
The arts center is also in the process of finalizing a financing deal with the Town of North Hempstead.
The plan, which was approved by the North Hempstead town Council last week, would see the town’s local development corporation pay off the arts center’s mortgage and assume control of the organization’s Middle Neck Road building.
Gil said the arts center’s board of directors plans on meeting with town officials and legal representatives within the next two weeks to discuss the details of the plan. Gil said the arts center would compensate the development corporation for use of the facility in some way, but was not certain if the arts center would pay rent, provide in-kind services or come to some other arrangement.
The festival also had the arrival of Hurricane Sandy to contend with, hosting its closing screenings and party even as the MTA was shutting down the Long Island Rail Road.
The festival’s organizers and guests escaped unscathed, but according to Gil it was a close thing.
“We decided worst comes to worst, we’ll just sleep in the arts center,” she said. “We’ll hunker down.
Organizers announced the winners of the festival’s film awards at the closing ceremony, which took place at the arts center’s offices.
Audiences selected “Silver Linings Playbook,” starring Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, for the best narrative feature award. “One Track Heart,” a documentary about musician Krishna Das, and filmmaker Lucas Martell’s animated short film Pigeon Impossibly also took home honors.
The festival’s jury also handed out awards, honoring Juan Pablo Zaramella’s stop-motion short “Luminaris” and student short film “Sight” – a cautionary tale about digital connectedness and augmented reality.
Gil said the festival faced budget constraints that limited film showings.
“This year, because were being conservative with our budgeting, we only gave people an opportunity to see a film once,” she said,
Among the weekend’s screenings was a documentary on ‘80s rock band Journey, which Gil said played to a full house in a Port Washington theater.
“We had young people, and then we had the generation a little older than that who remembered it a little nostalgically,” she said. “It was sort of a cult gathering for that film.”
Also drawing a big crowd was the festival’s short-film showcase, which Gil said put a spotlight on independent filmmakers.
“It’s extremely encouraging for the filmmakers,” she said. “We gave them the same respect that we gave the big studios.
Gil said another high point of the festival was a screening of the 1920 silent film the Mark of Zorro at Chaminade High School, backed by live accompaniment from the school’s theater organ.
The festival concluded on a somber note, with the documentary “Mother of Normany” – a 2010 feature about a French woman who for decades tended the graves of American soldiers who died on D-Day.
The film was attended by World War II veterans, who received a standing ovation from the audience, said Gil.
“To sit in that room… and watch the movie knowing that for these men, it wasn’t history, it was memory… it was just amazing,” Gil said.
The festival featured film screenings at the arts center and theaters in Manhasset, Roslyn and Port Washington.
