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The New York State Writers Institute launches its first Albany Film Festival this weekend. WAMC’s Jesse King spoke with Institute Director Paul Grondahl.
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, the first edition of the event will split its schedule between in-person screenings and online workshops, interviews, and panels with industry professionals. Grondahl says the main draw — a free, juried screening of shorts by Capital Region filmmakers — will take over the Malta Drive In on April 29 starting at 8 p.m.
"We're trying to remember that we have achieved great things here, and even greater things to come."
"And then we're doing two feature films: 'Cadillac Records' starring Beyonce, and directed by Darnell Martin, one of the outstanding filmmakers who is receiving one of our Ironweed Awards for exemplary achivement in film," says Grondahl. "And then we're showing a late, late, late show called 'The Honeymoon Killers.' It's a 1970 black-and-white film noir cult classic. It was written and directed by a UAlbany — he's passed away now — but at the time a UAlbany music professor, Leonard Kastle. It stars Tony Lo Bianco and an interesting cast. [It's] a true story, a murder spree in the 1940s called 'The Lonely Heart[s] Killers,' where this scam artist would entrap women by putting classified ads in newspapers. And it's a really interesting film that holds up really well. It's been named one of the top classic noir films by many critics, and we're looking forward to showing that.