2010 Brooklyn International Film Festival

The 13th Brooklyn International Film Festival (BiFF) took place June 4th to 13th, 2010. The festival presented over 100 films from 26 different countries. As the Director of Programming for the festival, I led a team of screeners and programmers to select these films from a field of more then 2,400 submissions coming from 92 different countries.

While all of the selected films merit equal attention, several had subjects related directly to this website's themes, especially in the documentary category. Locally, Our House documented an illegal Christian Anarchist squat in an abandoned Williamsburg warehouse, while Freddy's told the story of a historic bar in Prospect Heights that was recently closed by the controversial Atlantic Yards development. On the international level, Survival Song captured the lives of Chinese boar poachers squatting in an abandoned logging camp threatened by a impending dam project, while The Flag Bearer documented Northern Albanian blood feuds in half-empty tribal villages.

On the fiction side, many of the films at the festival were shot in Brooklyn's post-industrial landscape, including Disposable and The Prospects, which filmed scenes along the Gowanus Canal. With 16 films made by Brooklyn filmmakers, and 12 films shot in Brooklyn, the 2010 festival was described as "The Most Brooklyn-y B’klyn Int’l Film Fest Yet" by the Brooklyn Eagle.

View the complete lineup of films here.