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Small touches give the film festival a Zagottis and his foster dog, Fred more official feel. there might be news about the incidents. But there wasn’t any problem; instead, the police officers told him that they were on their break and wanted to watch the movie for a while. MOVIE MAGIC Since the film festival’s first year, Zagottis has been making upgrades. He grew tired of watching movies with a stitch going down people’s faces, so he ordered a large piece of fabric, and his father, now age 84, created a 12-by-9- foot movie screen. (During the opening reel, you’ll see a short film documenting his father sewing the screen with his old sewing machine.) Before every showing, Zagottis irons the screen on an old-fashioned ironing board, a process that takes about an hour. Zagottis adds little touches to make his film festival more official: His friend who has an audio recording studio did the voiceover for the opening curtain sequence. Additionally, Zagottis hangs up a movie poster during each screening; he either orders a poster or prints it out on several sheets of paper that he pieces together. He also created a Facebook group in 2008. At the time, it had 20 members; it now has 635 members … and counting. “And that’s how it began to grow,” Zagottis said. “People began joining the group, and I began to get into it. I began to say, ‘Wow, I got a film festival going on—this is cool! I can actually come up with themes and stuff.’” This year’s theme is Ordinary People in Extraordinary Circumstances. Zagottis always tries to have a mixture of contemporary and classic films that “haven’t had their due diligence projected on a big screen in a long time,” he said. “For example, so many people have seen ‘Gone with the Wind’ over the years on TV, but how many people have had a chance to see it on the big screen? So that was one of the films I showed a couple of years ago.” The most popular film ever? “The Godfather.” Thirty-five people can fit comfortably in Zagottis’ yard, and for this screening, there were 42 audience memmore films and call it a film festival.” He chose his first film, “Cinema Paradiso,” about a small Italian village brought together by a movie theater, because “it epitomized what I felt films could do for communities and for people,” Zagottis said. “I was trying to find a way to bring folks together and I thought that having a movie in the backyard could do that,” said Zagottis, who has lived on Newtown Road for 30 years. During that showing of “Cinema Paradiso,” a police car drove past the backyard, backed up, and then rolled down the window. The police asked Zagottis what he was doing, and Zagottis said that he was showing a movie for anyone in the community who wanted to come. “If you have any problems, give us a call and we’ll take care of it,” one of the officers told Zagottis. Years later, in 2014, there was a series of hate crimes in which things were thrown at Zagottis’ home, which has a gay pride flag on display. Zagottis got to know the 114th Precinct as they worked with him to solve the issue. That September, while Zagottis was showing “Chicago,” a squad car pulled up by the backyard, and Zagottis went over to ask if everything was okay, thinking Zagottis welcomes his neighbors to a screening. Photo courtesy of Frank Zagottis AUGUST 2016 I BOROMAG.COM I 19


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