Baltimore filmmakers and audiences commingled in and around the historic Parkway Theater at the physical center and symbolic heart of the city from May 2 – 5 for the 25th anniversary edition of the Maryland Film Festival (MdFF). When MdFF announced in 2022 that they would be ceasing operations the following year, including all screening activity at the Parkway (its home since the renovations finished in 2017), I thought the fest could go the way of so many things in the city’s arts district, Station North: quiet abandonment and disrepair. It is a testament to the institutional strength of the […]
by Alex Lei on May 15, 2024A ten-gallon hat floating in the ocean and psychedelically patterned polypropylene western wear wandering empty hotel halls might not seem like images from a documentary about the changing nature of American commerce, but those costumes define the dreams at the heart of Emily Mackenzie and Noah Collier’s Carpet Cowboys. After becoming obsessed with the seemingly drug-induced carpet designs lining every banal conference room and casino floor in the United States, Mackenzie and Collier stumbled upon Dalton, GA, known then as the “Carpet Capital of the World.” The pair went in, Mackenzie holding the boom and Collier the camera, with little […]
by Alex Lei on Aug 25, 2023In November 2022, the Maryland Film Festival announced it would stop public-facing operations the following year, including the following year’s edition of the festival and new and repertory screenings at Baltimore’s Parkway Theater, in order to “prioritize a planning process to develop a new business model and plan that will chart the future trajectory of the organization.” Barely six months later, the New/Next Film Festival was announced, running from August 18 to 20 in the festival’s previous home, The Charles Theater, just a few blocks south of the Parkway. Leading the charge, or at the very least facilitating it, is […]
by Alex Lei on Aug 7, 2023