ShareSundance at the Shore
The Garden State Film Festival brings its talents down-the-shore for a three day movie event.
When the Garden State Film Festival (gsff.org) kicked off in 2003, executive director Diane Raver was astounded at the turnout of 3,000 guests. Last year, her “little festival that could” brought in 10,000 people, including famous faces such as James Gandofini, Celeste Holm, and Michael Uslan. “We just keep getting bigger,” she says, “and all these people keep coming back.”
On April 4, the annual three-day festival will return for the sixth time to Asbury Park, showing about 150 films from around the world, ranging from features to shorts. Chosen among more than 700 entries, each of the selected films gets Raver gushing excitedly. “I know the festival is only as good as the films we show, and these are amazing,” she says, citing recent Oscar-winning short documentary Freeheld. Another documentary highlight is the world premiere of Nuremberg, a long-suppressed work by the late Pare Lorentz compiled from captured Nazi footage. Fiction touts include The Flyboys, an adventure about two stowaway boys, a plane, and a mob heist. “These are all current films, and the public is welcome to attend every single thing we have going on here,” Raver says.
"Every single thing" doesn’t just include film screenings, about half of which are world premieres. Discussion panels, an open-talent casting call, elementary-school programs, and, of course, awards are all part of the scene, which spills out from the Paramount Theatre to include the Fifth Avenue Paviolion, the Berkeley Hotel, Synaxis, Mattison Park, the Youth Temple, the Stephen Crane House, and VFW Post 1333. Even the Stone Pony gets in on the action, where, in addition to several music video premieres, the screening of A Good Life: The Joe Grushecky Story will be followed by a performance from the rock musician (a Springsteen sidekick) and special-education teacher himself.
For Raver, getting the festival to this point has been a whirlwind, with distinct moments of kismet. A lifelong film lover from Sea Girt who owned her own commercial filming company, the 54-year-old was intrigued by Cannes during a stint living in southern France, and put the idea of a film festival in the back of her mind. A chance Foodtown meeting with Robert Pastorelli (Eldin on the sitcom Murphy Brown) eventually led to a partnership that made the film festival a reality.
Pastorelli has since died, but lives on through the Robert Pastorelli Rising Star Award for those born and raised in New Jersey. (The festival also celebrates Jersey talent with its “Home Grown” category.) This year, the GSFF also commemorates Raver's husband, who passed away of a short illness soon after the festival ended last year. "He lived for the festival, and we got a few extra months out of him," Raver says, adding that the support from the GSFF community—all volunteers—got her through that turbulent time. "It was brutal, and my film festival family really gave me everything."
Altogether, Raver sees the event as the perfect mix of film excellence and Jersey pride—and she expects it to keep getting bigger. "You need to be here to feel it," she says. “It’s absolutely electric."
