Tickets to the first of 113 flicks will be ripped on June 1, kicking off four days of screenings and events at nine venues. It will culminate with an awards ceremony, cocktail reception and 15-minute fireworks display during a three-hour ride on one of the borough's new ferries. If the festival attracts 3,000 to 5,000 people, as organizers hope, it will be held again next year and maybe every year.
A recent test screening bodes well: 325 people showed up to see The War Within, and nearly all stayed for a question-and-answer session with its co-writer, Ayad Akhtar.
"It's all part of a renaissance here in St. George," says Ed Burke, executive assistant to Borough President James Molinaro, referring to the area where the festival will be concentrated. "We feel Staten Island is ripe to be rediscovered."
He says the film festival will piggyback on other improvements, including the new ferry terminal, the revitalized South Beach boardwalk, a new ballpark and the spruced-up Snug Harbor Cultural Center.
Tickets will be $5 per film at five sites; ballpark screenings will be free. Passes for all screenings are $25, and passes that cover other events as well are $100.
The Staten Island Economic Development Corp. is managing the event, with help from the Staten Island Board of Realtors, the Building Industry Association of New York and the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island.
The Richmond County Savings Foundation is the presenting sponsor. In-kind donations and the efforts of 100-plus volunteers will be at least as valuable as the $300,000 organizers have raised, says SIEDC Executive Director Cesar Claro.
The festival will be marketed throughout this month in the Staten Island Advance, which is a sponsor, and in daily cable television commercials starring Grand Central Partnership President Fred Cerullo, a former city councilman from Staten Island. Time Warner Cable, another sponsor, donated the airtime.
Volunteers have distributed 10,000 program guides, 10,000 festival schedules and 5,000 postcards promoting the festival and directing traffic to its Web site, www.sifilmfestival.org. Festival director Jeannine Marotta says, "This is going to help put Staten Island on the map."