New Jersey Stage Issue 70 | Page 65

For 39 years the Thomas Edison Black Maria Film Festival has been advancing the unique creativity and power of the short form.  The Festival was founded in 1981 and is named for Thomas Edison’s orig- inal West Orange, New Jersey film studio, whose resemblance to the familiar black-box shaped police paddy wagons sparked the nick- name “Black Maria.”  The Festival is an international juried competition open to all filmmakers across the globe.  The online includes shorts in animation, documentary, experi- mental, and narrative categories. These film shorts are avail- able online for the first time ever thanks to the generosity of Princ- eton University and The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton, NJ State Council on the Arts, the Charles Edison Fund, the Hud- son County Office of Cultural and Heritage Affairs and Tourism, the Hoboken Historical Museum, WithumSmith+Brown, Lowenstein Sandler LLP, Monster Remotes, Big Sky Edit, the NBA, Citrin Cooper- man, Tarter Krinsky & Drogin LLP, Fairleigh Dickinson University, corporations and private donors. Watch a trailer for New York City Sketchbook NJ STAGE - ISSUE 70 INDEX NEXT ARTICLE 65