Opening Night: Big Apple Film Festival
Come on down to Look Cinemas and make some friends!
If you’re inspired to swing by, here is the Spring festival schedule: May 12-15, 2025
When I was touring with my feature film, Stargazer, the Big Apple Film Festival was one of my favorite stops. We sold out two screenings, where I met several filmmakers with whom I have collaborated on projects since. That’s the whole point of attending a festival, right? Meeting people is easy when you have something to talk about.
It’s even easier when you create a new project. More on that later.
I decided to check in on this year’s festival, so I reached out to Jonathan Lipp, founder and director, to get some recommendations. Opening night was a blast - well attended with a packed bar and screenings, it was a joy to hear the hubbub of excited cinephile chatter filling the lobby. I even bumped into some friends by surprise, who were getting ready to premiere their movie (see below).
By chance, the first two films I saw both capitalized on building stories in limited locations, using lighting, camera angles, and soundscapes to expand the drama into off-screen space. What we saw projected helped us imagine larger worlds.
First up was Cinqué Lee’s NYC premiere of A Rare Grand Alignment, about three young American teenagers trapped in a cable car suspended halfway up a Norwegian mountain. Not a film for the claustrophobic crowd, I was impressed with how Lee and cinematographer John Christian Rosenlund built the drama and kept it visually stunning in such a confined space. The cable car has wrap-around windows, so every shot contains depth and natural light, moving from late afternoon cool tones to low-exposure moonlight. A power outage stops the car midair and kills any communication with the nearby town, so the boys must use their wits to survive the icy night.
The film makes great use of LED volume stages to create the environment around the cable car, which must have been helpful for the young actors to commit to their roles and the dire situation. Lee took inspiration from the science fiction film Oblivion (2013), which used giant screens projecting clouds and sky behind the glass and chrome Sky Tower set, since a green screen would have reflected on all the surfaces.
They initially planned to shoot plates in the mountains of Norway to be projected in an LA soundstage, but during prep, The Mandalorian was released on Disney+, which introduced the world to the immersive LED environment shooting style.
Lee, a longtime fan of practical effects, partnered with Fireframe Studios in Finland to create an immersive environment surrounding the cable car, which allowed total control of the time of day and lighting conditions throughout the shoot.
For more details, watch Jonathan Lipp’s interview with Lee on the festival podcast:
Secondly, I watched Voices Carry, an eerie psychological thriller directed by Ellyn Vander Wyden and Abby Brenker and shot by Mauricio Vasquez (disclosure: I have worked with all three filmmakers over the years). The film makes excellent use of its rural lake house location, which feels isolated and haunting, despite the proximity of other houses.
A couple (Sam and Jack) moves to the wife’s childhood home for a fresh start, but childhood trauma begins to take hold. Sam finds a necklace and an antique diary and believes that the spirit of her ancestor is trying to communicate with her. She begins to unravel as Jack needs to travel for work, which only accelerates her breakdown process.
Sam hears voices from the past calling to her and fights for her sanity, but can only muster so much strength against her family’s past. The soundtrack mixes score and whispered voices to excellent effect, creating an undertow of dread that draws Sam to the water night after night. The diary seems to be possessed.
Speaking after the screening, Cinematographer Mauricio Vasquez told me that they had shot with the Sony FX9 paired with full-frame Sigma cine prime lenses, taking advantage of their fast aperture for the low-light night work. He kept lighting minimal, using LED units on one side of the set and controlling the fill level by closing curtains or adding negative fill to increase contrast.
Even day scenes feel cool and dim, with exposure favoring the picture windows, so it feels like Sam has retreated into a cave. We see the seasons pass as the story progresses, the single location emphasizing her isolation and giving extra weight to the mental collapse as Sam slowly unravels.
Those little details help ground a film swirling with malignant spirits. Gia Crovatin carries the movie with her quietly unhinged performance, drawing the audience in and getting them to ask questions. Is this supernatural, or all in her head?
Come on down!
If you’re in New York and want to see some original films, the Big Apple festival is playing for a few more days.
These films might be available on streaming at some point, but it’s always better to see movies in the theater with an audience, and Look Cinemas has great projection and sound. I’ll be going back for more!