NJ Film Festival | Spring 2011 Preview

For those who can no longer stand the melancholy of winter, fear no more. The New Jersey Film Festival is offering a wide variety of stimulating documentaries, intriguing features and clever shorts.

This weekend features a great selection of films, such as Risen, a feature film about an amateur boxer, set in 1960's Britain; Charlie and the Rabbit, a short about a little boy who, inspired by the Bugs Bunny cartoons, endeavors to find a rabbit of his own; Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone, a feature about the punk and funk band Fishbone, during the Reagan Administration; Atlantic Crossing: A Robot's Daring Mission, a documentary about a team of scientists and engineers from Rutgers University's Coastal Ocean Observation Lab launching the first transatlantic underwater robot nicknamed "Scarlet"; The Red Machine, a spy thriller set at the height of the Great Depression, starring Rutgers alumnus Donal Thoms-Cappello.

For the foreign film aficionados, Estacio de l'oblit (Station of the Forgotten) will be showing on Feb. 12. This Spanish and Catalan-language English-subtitled feature centers on three unlikely traveling companions — an elderly sailor, his granddaughter and a troubled boy. The last showing of the film festival is an Arabic-language feature, Salt of this Sea, about an American-Palestinian who returns to her motherland to reclaim her family's fortune, but in turn discovers her culture; it will be shown on March 5.

Other interesting films include Cash Crop, a documentary about the production of marijuana, Jan. 30; I Love My Woman, a short Valentine's Day documentary in which a variety of men talk about the women they love, Feb. 13; Beauty #2, Andy Warhol's film about New York's "It girl" of 1965, Edie Sedgwick, Feb. 24; and Seconds, a 1966 psychological thriller about an American businessman who is given the opportunity to start his life over with a new face and body, March 3.

These are only a few highlights of the many films being offered throughout the semester by the New Jersey Film Festival. With a scintillating medley of films, there is surely something for anyone who is looking for excitement in the middle of the humdrum winter blues.

Films are (unless otherwise noted) shown either at 6 p.m. in the Ruth Adams Building Room 001 on the Douglass campus or at 7 p.m. in the Voorhees Hall Room 105 on the College Avenue campus. Tickets are $8 for Rutgers Film Co-Op/NJMAC friends, $9 for students and seniors, and $10 for general admission. For more information about tickets, times, location, and the entire semester's schedule, check out the Rutgers Student Center on the College Avenue campus or the Douglass Student Center or visit njfilmfest.com.