UPDATE (October 14, 2020): Festival to be postponed from October 3, 2020 to Saturday April 24, 2021 due to COVID-19 virus.
See message below:
Following guidance from The Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the New Jersey Department of Health (NJDOH) for at-risk populations to avoid mass gatherings, in consultation with health officials in the Township of Cranford, and with an abundance of concern for the health and safety of our students, festival going patrons, sponsors, volunteers, and Cranford Theatre staff related to the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the inaugural Cranford Film Festival scheduled for October 3, 2020 is being postponed. The festival committee has decided not to do a virtual film festival in October. The festival committee would like the films chosen as official festival selections to be screened at the Cranford Theatre. As such, we will look to reschedule the festival for Saturday April 24, 2021 from 10 am- 4 pm.
For those who have bought tickets to the festival please hold to them until the spring date. Those individuals who have purchased tickets in advance , we thank you and want to alert you to the new date, for which your tickets will be valid.
Sponsors: for those individuals/sponsors who wish to be a part of the festival we are extending our deadline to March 1,2021.. Please go to our site cranfordfilmfestival.org for more information on sponsorship. For those who have already contributed as sponsors, we thank you and appreciate your contribution for the new tentative festival date of April 24, 2021.
Festival Director Lew Goldstein said: “We are appreciative of the community support for this inaugural festival and want everyone to be able to fully enjoy the Festival. Therefore, as a matter of overall public health and safety we are postponing the festival at this time until April 24, 2021. We will continue to monitor health updates on the COVID-19 virus during the upcoming months.”
Watch for updates on our website at cranfordfilmfestival.org and on our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages for the rescheduled date.
Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to seeing you at the Cranford Theater and celebrating the inaugural Cranford Film Festival in April of 2021.
Stay healthy everyone!
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The inaugural Cranford Film Festival celebrating the best in short films will be held Saturday April 24, 2021 at the historic Cranford Theatre located in downtown Cranford, NJ. Downtown Cranford has been rated as the best downtown in New Jersey for the last two years. The theatre opened in 1926 with 1300 seats and a Wurlitzer 2 pipe organ. The theatre was redone several times over the years to accommodate multi screen features. In 2019, the theatre was refurbished and highly modernized.
The festival focuses on screening short films ( less than 20 minutes in length) in the categories of fiction, documentary, animation, music videos and student films.
Best of Festival awards are given in each of the categories and attendees have a chance to interact and network with filmmakers, actors, actresses, directors and directors of photography during the festival. Audience members will also have the opportunity to participate in a question and answer panel discussion with filmmakers whose films are selected to screen at the festival.
Filmmakers will be notified as to whether or not their films will be screened as official selections at the festival after the review of all films by a panel of judges concludes. Award winners will be notified after the conclusion of the festival. The Best of Fest award recipients, as judged by the festival goers and audience members attending the Festival, in each of the five categories will receive recognition for their achievements. The Cranford Couger award is a judges award give separately to films which conveyed the message of their film in a superior manner. Recipients of this special award will also be able to access a laurel after the Fest on FilmFreeway.
For the panel discussion at the Festival, directors are expected to attend to discuss their films with festival goers and/or may bring or send a representative(s) on their behalf.
The final schedule of films that will be screened showing time will be posted by or before April 10.
Notification of selection to filmmakers will be made on or around February 24.
Go to cranfordfilmfestival.org for submission information or to the Cranford Film Festival site on filmfreeway.com).
Tickets to the festival may be purchased at the festival’s website page www.cranfordfilmfestival.org Tickets may also be purchased on FilmFreeway at the festival’s site. Tickets sold will benefit the Cranford Schools Friends of the Performing Arts (@fopachs)
https://filmfreeway.com/CranfordFilmFestival/tickets
Sponsorship: Sponsors are directed to the festival website cranfordfilmfestival.org for more information on how they can participate in this inaugural event.
Best of Festival Awards in each of the following five categories: fiction, documentary, animation, music videos and student films.