Legendary actress Jacqueline Bisset and Oscar-winning filmmaker James Ivory headline the 4th annual Albany Film Festival.

The all-day event, free and open to the public, will take place from 10:30 a.m. through 7 p.m. Saturday, April 6, at the UAlbany Campus Center, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222.

Actors, authors, directors, producers, screenwriters, and movie critics come together for a day of screenings and discussions capped by an awards ceremony.

The Ironweed Award will be presented to Jacqueline Bisset, who achieved superstardom in films of the 1960s and ‘70s beginning with Roman Polanski’s Cul de Sac (1966); Bullitt, opposite Steve McQueen (1968); Airport (1970); Francois Truffaut’s Day for Night (1973); Peter Benchley’s The Deep (1977); The Greek Tycoon (1978), opposite Anthony Quinn; and John Huston’s Under the Volcano (1983).

A second Ironweed Award will be presented in absentia to Luis Guzmán, a familiar face on the screen with roles in some of the most acclaimed films of the last 30 years, including three directed by Steven Soderbergh, Out of Sight (1998), The Limey (1999), and Traffic (2000), and three directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, Boogie Nights (1997), Magnolia (1999), and Punch-Drunk Love (2002).

In addition to the Ironweed Awards, the Short Film Contest screenings/awards, and the Bisset and Guzman events, the film festival will feature:
• A discussion on the future of movie criticism, with New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson and Matt Singer, author of Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever (2023)
• A discussion of the legacy of the 2004 cult favorite Mean Girls with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, author of the 2024 book, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls (And Why We're Still So Obsessed with It)
• A screening of The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales and a discussion with filmmaker Abigail Disney.
• A screening of Swedish Erotica (a comedy) (2023), Richard Roundtree’s final movie, and a conversation and Q&A with the film’s producer Bob Wishnoff and executive producer Larry Hummel.
• A screening and discussion of Stephen Soucy’s 2024 documentary Merchant Ivory followed by a discussion with Soucy and Oscar-winning filmmaker James Ivory, winner of an Ironweed Award in 2021.
• A discussion with David Rosenthal, editor of Paul Newman’s posthumous memoir, The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man (2022), a candid autobiography of one of Hollywood’s most iconic movie stars.
• A discussion with Lizzie Gottlieb, director of the 2022 award-winning documentary, Turn Every Page (2022) which explores the remarkable 50-year relationship between two literary legends, writer Robert Caro and his longtime editor (and Lizzie’s father) Robert Gottlieb.
• A screening of Spencer Sherry’s The Monkey, based on a Stephen King short story. Sherry will discuss how he received the rights from King to make the film as a participant in King’s “Dollar Baby” program, which offers filmmakers the chance to adapt one of his lesser-known stories for $1, with the stipulation that the films cannot be shown commercially or for a profit.
• A screening of the 2023 Oscar-nominated documentary short, Black Girls Play: A Story of Hand Games. The film earned Best Documentary Short at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. Kyra Gaunt, Ph.D., UAlbany professor, ethnomusicologist, and leading expert on the pastimes of Black girlhood, is featured prominently in the documentary. She will lead a discussion following the screening.
• A screening and discussion of short films by two emerging filmmakers. Deni Cheng (Sucker) and Cindy Chu (Bayard Street). Sucker was featured at the 46th Asian American International Film Festival in New York City. The script for Chu’s 2022 film, Bayard Street, was a grand prize winner of Pitch Royale, judged by Oscar winners Baz Luhrmann and Jason Blum.
• Film and media scholar Joshua Glick will examine the growing impact of “deepfakes” and AI-generated content on visual culture, American politics, journalistic truth, and our understanding of reality itself.

For more details and a full lineup, visit the https://www.albanyfilmfestival.org/
Events are subject to change.

4th Annual Albany Film Festival
10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, April 6
University at Albany Campus Center
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany NY 12222
Free and open to the public

The NYS Writers Institute would like to thank our sponsors who made the Albany Film Festival possible:
Premier sponsor:
The Towne Law Firm, P.C.

Presenting sponsors:
The Opalka Endowed Directorship
Times Union
University Auxiliary Services

Supporting sponsors:
The Brendan Fahy Bequette Fund, sponsored by Patricia Fahy & Wayne Bequette
The Foy Fund
Annette Nanes
NYS Writers Institute Classic Film Series Endowment
The Swyer Family Foundation