9 Greater Boston film festivals to check out this winter

This winter offers an abundance of chances to see movies in darkened theaters with friends and strangers. Some events come after postponement due to the Israel-Hamas war. The Boston Palestine Film Festival, which delayed its in-person screenings in October, returns with four film events in late January. A rescheduled screening of “Israelism,” a locally-made documentary that examines the movement among young Jewish Americans to question Israel’s stance on Palestine, takes place at Emerson College as part of the Bright Lights Cinema Series on Feb. 1. Emerson announced the postponement in November, citing the need to “hold space for internal conversations and dialogue.”

Winter also offers the chance to catch up on the best movies from the year prior. If you want to compete in the office Oscar pool with informed pride, I recommend the Brattle’s series, “(Some of) the Best of 2023,” and the annual Oscar nominated shorts programs at the Coolidge or Institute of Contemporary Art. Below are additional film offerings to consider this winter:

When: Jan. 13-21

Where: Apple Cinemas in Cambridge, West Newton Cinema in West Newton, Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Regent Theatre in Arlington and online

Highlights: This festival tailors its program to kids ages 3-12, along with the adults in their lives. In “Totem,” a girl growing up Dutch with Senegalese immigrant parents finds solace in a giant porcupine. Afterward, a discussion about navigating multiple cultural identities will take place. A discussion with ASL interpretation follows “OkThanksBye,” which follows two hearing impaired adolescents on a raucous road trip through Europe. More and more elementary students are learning about civil rights activist Ruby Bridges on the annual Ruby Bridges Walk to School Day, held on Nov. 14. A short film adaptation of her children’s book, “I am Ruby Bridges,” told in her words at age six, makes its US debut as part of this festival’s annual tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. In addition to taking in movies, budding filmmakers (ages 10 and up) can explore the form with an intro to film camera techniques on Jan. 21 at the Belmont Media Center.

Good to know: Don’t worry if the child in your life can’t read. Headphones will broadcast subtitles for all films not in English.

When: Jan. 19-25

Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and MassArt Design & Media Center

Highlights: Amidst the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, this festival decided to postpone in-person screenings originally planned for last October. The festival resumes with four events. Firas Khoury makes his feature debut with “The Flag (Alam)” about an attempt to fly a Palestinian flag within Israeli borders; a short by Khoury previously screened at this festival. In “A House in Jerusalem,” a girl encounters mystical forces after relocating from the UK to Jerusalem just after her mother’s death. The feature “Medditerean Fever” reveals the dark side of a new friendship while the documentary “Notes on Displacement” follows one family’s flight from Damascus through Lesbos and on to Germany. A statement the festival sent by email says, “While the onslaught of Israeli violence continues and weighs heavily on our hearts and minds, we believe that it is more important than ever that the festival provides both a space for the Palestinian community and allies to gather and provide a space for Palestinian voices to be heard.”

Good to know: For an immersion into contemporary Arabic music, a full band will accompany virtuoso oud player and vocalist Basel Zayed at the Somerville Theatre’s Crystal Ballroom on Jan. 18.

When: Jan. 19-Feb. 25

Where: Harvard Film Archive

Highlights: HFA can always be counted on for rare offerings. This comprehensive retrospective ramps up the hard-to-see quotient by showing nearly all of Ousmane Sembène’s titles, including four recent restorations by Janus Films. Credited as the “father of African cinema,” the Senegalese filmmaker and novelist (and mason, mechanic, construction worker, soldier…) made anti-colonial films from the 1960s through 2004. Among his many firsts, he made the first feature film shot entirely in an African language, “Mandabi” (1968). He also advocated for pan-African production, distribution, and exhibition. He had plans to finish off a trilogy (2001’s “Faat Kiné” featured a single mother and 2004’s “Moolaadé” challenged female circumcision) when he died in 2007.

Good to know: In the retrospective’s supporting notes, Kelley Dong writes that Sembène called cinema "the people's night school."

When: Thursday nights, Jan. 25-Apr. 18

Where: Emerson’s Bright Family Screening Room

Highlights: Always free and open to the public, this series coincides with the academic calendar and includes post-film discussion with film talent and/or faculty members. Delayed by college officials to allow community members to have time for “internal conversations and dialogue,” the documentary “Israelism” screens on Feb. 1 with local filmmakers Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen planning to attend. Film titles often have a tie to Emerson and have release dates of the last year or so. Alumnus Amanda Karmer will be present with her 2023 documentary about cyberspace cinema, “So Unreal,” on Feb. 8, for example; alumnus Elaine McMillion Sheldon will be present with her 2023 documentary about coal country, “King Coal” on March 28. RoxFilm’s Lisa Simmons kicks off a new programmatic addition as a guest community curator. She put together a collection of shorts, “Sacred Nations: Short work by contemporary Indigenous storytellers” for March 7 and will lead a post-film conversation.

Good to know: According to Bright Lights curator Anna Feder, the spring 2024 lineup includes five queer stories, five BIPOC stories, two programs of indigenous cinema, and nine programs with at least one gender diverse filmmaker. Half of the films have descriptive audio available.

When: Jan. 27-Feb. 4

Where: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Highlights: Documentaries about artists and their process typically get an unofficial showing at the Peabody Essex Museum as part of the annual Salem Film Fest. At some point, the MFA, Boston slyly started an “ongoing series” with the same focus. Klimt, Hopper, and Cassat are respectively on the upcoming docket as well as an unexpectedly dark take on pop phenom Thomas Kinkade, the supposed “Painter of Light.” As “Art is for Everybody” shows, Kinkade’s incandescent, almost campy oils may not hang in the halls of the MFA but they grace a lot of Christian Americans’ mantels.

Good to know: Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) sought to become a professional painter despite her family’s objections. She attended Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, when about only one in five students were female.

When: Jan. 28 & Feb. 11

Where: Brattle Theatre

Highlights: This festival “dedicated to short-form poetic, personal, experimental film, essay film, animation, documentary, video and audiovisual performance” has two winter screenings planned at the Brattle. The Jan. 28 event features 10 shorts made between 2007 to 2023 by animator Kelly Sears, with Sears planning to attend. Her work critiques mid-century American cultural and political institutions by sampling old newsreels, high school yearbooks, exercise and massage manuals, and more. As the Boston area’s unofficial film school, the Brattle is the right place to become acquainted with experimental classics by Stan Brakhage and Barbara Hammer, whose work screens on Feb. 11. Additional RPM Fest events have placeholders at Boston City Hall Plaza and Harvard CAMlab through late winter with more info forthcoming.

Good to know: Kelly Sears assembled her climate conscious short “The Lost Season,” from thousands of still images taken in the woods. It premieres at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, her fifth film to screen at the festival.

When: Feb. 2-3

Where: The Cabot in Beverly

Highlights: RoxFilm and Cinefest Latino Boston have teamed up again (the fests also partner on the Shared Stories series) to bring highlights from their 2023 fests to the North Shore’s best kept cinematic secret — The Cabot. Glorimar Marrero Sánchez’s feature, “La Pecera (The Fishbowl),” about coping with the return of cancer, opens the weekend. The documentary “A Story of Bones” uncovers a mass burial traced to the slave trade and closes out the weekend. Producer Peggy King Jorde will attend to discuss. In between are two shorts programs. One focuses on animation and the other on “artists in their own words” (I recommend “The Mural Master” for its inside scoop from Boston muralist ProBlack on his Rose Kennedy Greenway mural).

Good to know: Opened as the Ware Theater in 1920, The Cabot was designed by the same architects as the Boston Athenæum and the Strand Theatre in Dorchester. Only about 250 of 20,000 similar movie palaces built in the 1920s remain.

When: Feb. 14-20

Where: Somerville Theatre and online

Highlights: Forget Valentine’s Day. This Feb. 14, help kick off 49 years of sci-fi movies and culture by meeting your soulmates at the Cyberpunk Sweethearts Ball. At the Crystal Ballroom of course, complete with an arcade recreation by Jackie Kearn. The annual 24-hour movie binge marathon runs from noon Feb. 18 to noon Feb. 19. And promises “13 features plus cartoon, sing-a-long, guests, paper airplane contest, Tin Foil Hat Deliberation and more.” The festival will showcase the theatrical premiere of "Shatter Belt," by director Jim Byrkit. Special guest Lisa Downs attends with two behind-the-scenes documentaries, “Life After the Navigator” and “Life After the NeverEnding Story” on Feb. 15. The producer/director hails from the UK and these projects are part of a bigger series, “Life After Movies,” where she catches up fans with the cast and crew of some of her favorite movies from childhood.

Good to know: Filmmaker Lisa Downs spent a day at the Berlin Film Archives while making “Life After the NeverEnding Story.”

When: March 1-3 in person; March 4-18 online

Where: ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Center and online
Highlights: From the didactic (“The Story of the Baltic University,” a documentary shown in 2023) to the goofy (“Accidental Santa,” also shown in 2023) this festival showcases contemporary films from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Between 1959 and 2007 Latvian director Rolands Kalniņš (1922-2022) made 14 feature films, including “Four White Shirts,” shelved for decades because of its criticism of Soviet censorship. It screens this year as part of a tribute on March 3. Also showing is the documentary, “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” a critical favorite from 2023 that situates women’s revelations about their bodies and shame inside the traditional saunas of Southern Estonia.

Good to know: Festival organizers prioritize having guests in person if at all possible. This year at least 10 filmmakers plan to attend.

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