Coney Island Film Festival

Saturday, September 25, 2010 - 1pm
Coney Island Museum, 1208 Surf Ave. 2nd Floor

Tickets are $6. Tickets available during Festival hours at the Coney Island USA Giftshop box office, 1208 Surf Ave. Ground Floor, Cash Only. All tickets sales are non-refundable.

 

The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger

Bill Plympton, New York, NY , USA. Animation, 6:00

A tragic story of a bovine seduced by advertising led down the path of butchers and carnivores.

American Brooklyn

Michael Schloemer, Brooklyn, NY , USA. Documentary Short, 11:29

A story about Michael Schloemer; grew up in Park Slope Brooklyn in the 70s, found the mob, alcohol, bank robberies and crack. All while trying to attend college (for the last 20 years).

Ministry in the Subway

Dennis W. Ho, Brooklyn, NY , USA. Documentary Feature, 78:00, World Premiere!

At the beginning of 2007, perpetually unemployed pastor Brian and recent kidney transplant recipient Shawn create a display of Christian pamphlets in the subway station below Times Square, vowing to remain 24 hours a day, seven days a week until the Rapture.  A beacon for born again Christians, as well as subway dwellers, including the down and out, the homeless, and the mentally afflicted, the Ministry becomes a visible yet insular pocket of underground culture in New York.

Brian's recent marriage to congregation member Rose becomes precarious when a Columbia graduate student named Kaitlin catches his fancy. As Brian grows increasingly unreliable, Shawn is routinely stranded alone at the ministry for days on end. As controversy builds and religious notions are turned askew, life at the ministry illustrates the overlap between unquestioning faith and unexamined motivations.

In June 2007, an underemployed photojournalist began taking photographs at the Ministry as a pitch for a newspaper story.  Three years later, Dennis W. Ho's robust debut film, cut from over 350 hours of raw footage, offers an intimate rabbit hole journey through a small world tucked deep in the folds of New York City.  A timeless story of human flaws and pedestrian wisdom, Ministry in the Subway bridges documentary and narrative cinema, revealing in microcosm a modern day parable.