WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES MAY 27, 2021 25
Queens World Film Festival meets with fi lmmakers
and volunteers in Flushing Meadows Corona Park
BY GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
EDITORIAL@QNS.COM
@QNS
Queens World Film Festival (QWFF) invited
fi lmmakers, actors, volunteers and sponsors
for a get-together and photo-op in Flushing
Meadows Corona Park, home of the Queens Theatre
and the iconic Unisphere, on May 22.
This year, the festival, which runs from June 23
through July 3, is especially meaningful for Katha
Cato, QWFF’s executive director and board president,
who said that she was “feeling emotional and
feeling full as Queens will welcome the world back,”
referring to the COVID-19 pandemic which ravaged
the borough, which became the “epicenter” in the
early days of the crisis.
“We will be part of what heals. These stories will
be part of what heals you,” Cato said, adding that she
hopes that everyone who contributed to the festival
knows they are part of the healing process.
“When the lights are down, and you’re all in there
together and you all gasp at the same thing and the
light comes up, and you look to the right, and the left ,
and you realize you would have never spoken to that
person, but you felt the same thing,” Cato said. “So
perhaps you have more in common with each other
than you think. And that’s what it’s about.”
QWFF, named one of the 50 fi lm festivals “worth
the entry fee in 2021” by MovieMaker Magazine,
showcases 196 films from 33 nations ranging
from documentaries and fi ction to animation and
musicals.
One of the 42 features selected for the festival is
“Mouse,” which tells the story of a lonely groundskeeper
in a beautiful neighborhood who deals with
the crushing guilt of a local murder he witnessed.
Eventually, he loses himself as he desperately tries
to keep an innocence he never truly lost.
Filmmaker Adam Engel and his crew and production
assistant Kelly Noll, costume designer Christina
Andrevi and cinematographer Derek Mindler
were excited that their fi lm was not only admitted
to Queens World but that it’s also going to open the
festival on June 23.
Engel called it “a big deal,” especially since the fi lm
was entirely shot in Forest Hills in Queens by an
all-Queens crew, and the entire team agreed that
it was validating to fi nally see their fi lm on the big
screen aft er the unpredictability of the COVID-19
pandemic.
Engel said last year came with a lot of uncertainty,
as the pandemic stalled his fi lm and its release.
“It’s now a complete fi lm, sitting on my shelf on
my computer,” Engel said. “So for this to happen,
especially to get the reception it has so far, it’s very
validating.”
Jena Ellenwood, a fi lmmaker, who worked as a
bartender at Sparrow Tavern in Astoria for the
past 10 years, is featured in the documentary “Last
Call — The Shutdown of New York Bars” by director
Johnny Sweet.
Queens World Film Festival gathered with fi lmmakers, volunteers and sponsors in Flushing
Meadows Corona Park on May 22. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
The documentary showcases the psychological
impact of the coronavirus on a group of young,
single adults working in the hospitality industry
during the unprecedented crisis.
Ellenwood said what makes “Last Call” so special
is that it follows her and her coworkers through a
hard time for everybody.
“But it also shows how resilient we were,” Ellenwood
said.
She used the pandemic shutdown to start her
own business, fi lming cocktail videos featured on
YouTube and Instagram.
“Johnny got the moment where I actually said,
‘F— it, I’m gonna do it,’ and he got it on camera,” Ellenwood
said.
The documentary “Reclaim Idaho” by wife and
husband directing team Laura Wing-Kamoosi and
Jim Kamoosi from Brooklyn, tells the grassroots
story of Emily and Garrett Strizich, who, with a baby
in tow and no political experience, drove around
Idaho in a green 1997 RV with “Medicaid for Idaho”
painted on the side, campaigning for Idaho’s Medicaid
expansion bill.
Emmy-nominated director Laura Wing-Kamoosi
explained that they talked to every single person
that they could about the issue, and it ended up
passing two to one.
“So now, over 110,000 people in Idaho have healthcare
where they didn’t before this campaign,” Wing-
Kamoosi said.
Filmmaker Henry Arroyo was excited that he
has two fi lms featured at the festival: “Tea” and
“My Friend John,” a narrative fi lm about a young
boy named Gio, who imagines that an astronaut
named John will save him from his emotionally
abusive environment and take Gio to an imaginary
planet. The Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long
Island even donated an original astronaut costume
for the movie.
“I’m always very excited for people to watch the
work, you know? As many people as I can get to
watch a fi lm, I always get super excited about that,
because that’s why we do it, at least to me: It’s so that
people can come and watch,” Arroyo said.
“Couple of Guys,” a half-hour comedy/drama starring
Sal Rendino, Lukas Hassel and Abigail Hawk,
tells the story of newly divorced lawyer Richard
Durant (played by Sal Rendino), who unexpectedly
falls in love with a man, former rocker Jon Graham
(Lukas Hassel).
Producer Debra Markowitz, who is currently
pitching the show, merged the fi rst two episodes for
the fi lm festival and shared that the third episode is
a wrap and the fourth is in the works.
“I’m very excited. It’s been a long time, and we
didn’t want to play it during the pandemic because
we want people to come,” Markowitz said.
Two of the “Blame It on the Pandemic” category
fi lms are “Henrietta” by Jesse Holtermann and “Ordinary”
by Kim Cummings.
While quarantining alone in her studio apartment,
Jesse Holtermann befriended a spider she named
Henrietta and decided to make a movie, entirely
fi lmed on an iPhone, about a woman in quarantine
who makes friends with an arthropod.
“It’s a true quarantine fi lm. I did everything: I
wrote it, I shot it, I acted in it, I edited it, found music
for it,” Holtermann said.
For more information about the QWFF, visit
queensworldfi lmfestival.org.
2022
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