13th annual Coney Island Film Festival

This year I was a participant in the 13^th annual Coney Island Film Festival, which ran from September 20-22. While I always enjoy film festivals, I had an especially nice time at this small, intimate, warm, friendly, community oriented, independent minded and very cool festival, sponsored by Coney Island USA.  The opening night events included a very enjoyable, live burlesque show.  How many film festivals do that?

My documentary short, “Mad Santa,” was shown on Saturday, September 21 as part of a program of documentary shorts.  After seeing some of the other entries in this program, I realized I was in the company of some very talented filmmakers.  I was gratified to see my work get some (much hoped for) laughs in its first public screening and receive some nice compliments from audience members following the program.

As has always been my experience at film festivals, the documentaries are the best part, and Coney Island was no exception.  Maybe it is just my bias, but, at film festivals, the documentaries seem to have the most consistently high level of quality.