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Centenary University to host 2023 Thomas Edison Film Festival

HACKETTSTOWN, NJ (Warren County) — Centenary University will be hosting a free screening for the 42nd Annual Thomas Edison Film Festival.

This event will take place on Tuesday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m. in the Stinik Theatre of the Lackland Performing Arts Center located on the campus of Centenary University at 715 Grand Avenue in Hackettstown. The Thomas Edison Film Festival is free to attend and open to the public. Seating is limited and on a first-come-first-served basis.

This year the festival will include selected shorts including animation, experimental, documentary, narrative, and screen dance. More information about each of the short films being presented can be found online at CentenaryStageCo.org.

For over 40 years, the Thomas Edison Film Festival (formerly known as the Black Maria Film Festival) has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short form. The festival passionately embraces its mission to promote innovation and advocate for independent filmmakers through a juried international competition celebrating all genres and hybrids from filmmakers around the world. Thomas Edison Film Festival is a socially conscious, modern, fiercely independent traveling festival for short film. They reach out to diverse audiences with provocative, timely, edgy, and compelling new works by both accomplished and emerging filmmakers hybrids from filmmakers around the world.

The Thomas Edison Film Festival was founded in 1981 by John Columbus, an artist/filmmaker from West Orange, NJ. He felt that the roots of experimental film in the 1960s and 70s were in many ways linked to Edison’s early experimental films, and worthy of attention. The festival was originally named for Edison’s film studio in West Orange, NJ, the studio’s resemblance to the familiar black-box shaped police paddy wagons sparked the nickname “black maria”.

The festival’s relationship to Edison’s invention of the motion camera and the kinetoscope and his experimentation with the short film is an essential part of the festival’s history and mission. All of Edison’s early films were short, he made 75 of them, each about a minute long. Today the Thomas Edison Film Festival continues to celebrate short films in their own right – not as a sidebar to feature length film, but as a poetic, unique and compelling art for all its own.

This event is made possible through generous support from the Warren County Cultural & Heritage Commission. To learn more about the Thomas Edison Film Festival and the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium visit www.TEFilmFest.org.

For more information visit centenarystageco.org or call the Centenary Stage Company box office at 908-979 – 0900.  The Centenary Stage Company box office is open Monday through Friday from 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. and two hours prior to all performances. The box office is located in the Lackland Performing Arts Center.

Centenary Stage Company remains committed to the health and safety of our community and adheres to all requirements set forth by the State of New Jersey.  For more information regarding CSC COVID-19 policies and policy updates, visit centenarystageco.org/faq.

The 2022-23 Season of Performing Arts events at the Centenary Stage Company is made possible through the generous support of the NJ State Council on the Arts, the Shubert Foundation, the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, the Sandra Kupperman Foundation, the John and Margaret Post Foundation, the CSC corporate sponsors, including Platinum Season Sponsor the House of the Good Shepherd, Silver Sponsors Hackettstown Medical Center Atlantic Health System, Heath Village, Visions Federal Credit Union, and Fulton Bank, and Centenary Stage Company members and supporters.

Jay Edwards

Born and raised in Northwest NJ, Jay has a degree in Communications and has had a life-long interest in local radio and various styles of music. Jay has held numerous jobs over the years such as stunt car driver, bartender, voice-over artist, traffic reporter (award winning), NY Yankee maintenance crewmember and peanut farm worker. His hobbies include mountain climbing, snowmobiling, cooking, performing stand-up comedy and he is an avid squirrel watcher. Jay has been a guest on America’s Morning Headquarters,program on The Weather Channel, and was interviewed by Sam Champion.

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