Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival
SAVE THE DATE!
25th Anniversary – Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival
Planning has commenced to produce the Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival – 25th Anniversary on Monday, November 6 – Sunday, November 12, 2023. More specifics will be forthcoming but for now please mark your calendar.
RBIFF
November 7 – 13, 2022
A special thank you to all our patrons and visitors that came out to attend the 2022 Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival (RBIFF) – 24th Anniversary. It was so important to the Society to bring the Festival back after a two year hiatus due to the Pandemic.
We programmed 14 films that included documentaries, features and international titles which screened 33 times at our Cinema Art Theater in Lewes with an added two-day limited showing at the Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware also in Lewes.
Our Festival underwriters and Film Host sponsors provided the much needed support to enable us to acquire a fabulous line-up of films.
The RBFS remains steadfast in its efforts to fulfill its vision of sharing great cinema with people of all-ages and backgrounds here in Sussex County.
VIEW 2022 REHOBOTH BEACH INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAM
Thank you to our RBIFF 2022 Sponsors:
Special thank you to our Film Hosts:
Betty & Gary Grunder • Ida & Jeff Rowe • Rhoda Ganz • Susan Goekler • Beth Hochholzer & Alan Barthelman • Hole by Hole (Fritz Schrank) • Pinky & Mike King • Jim Lesko • Arthur & Sallie Melvin • Jeanine O’Donnell • Sally Packard & Dinah Reath • The Book Club • Tina Samson • Allen Stafford & David Cristy
Look Back at the RBIFF 2022 films:
Broadway Rising
Broadway Rising is a hopeful documentary that tells the story of the industry’s journey back to the stage and the Pandemic’s toll on this community after the two-year historic closure. As the title suggests, resilience is on full display.
Directed by filmmaker Amy Rice (By the People: The Election of Barack Obama) the film follows theatre subjects, ranging from door men to actors, as they worked to reopen. The program synopsis teases that it will "paint a full picture of the strength and diversity of the people on the stage and behind the scenes and their resilience, hope and dedication of being part of Broadway’s reopening.” [2022, USA, 93 min, Rating: NR ]
Broadway Rising (Thu. at 5 pm) Ticketholder’s post reception – CAT Lobby
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Imagining the Indian
Imagining the Indian is a timely documentary that examines the U.S. movement to end the use of Native American mascoting in the world of sports.
The film details the current uprising against the misappropriation of Native culture in a national reckoning about racial injustice that has succeeded in the removal of Confederate imagery, toppling statues of Christopher Columbus and forcing corporate sponsors of Washington’s NFL team to demand it change its most-offensive names. Through beautiful historic photos, the film examines the origin and proliferation of the words, images, and gestures that many Native people and their allies find offensive. Imagining the Indian enlightens viewers to the impact that stereotyping and marginalization of Native history has had on Native American people. [2021, USA, 95 min, Rating: NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
All Male: The International Male Story
All Male: The International Male Story is an intriguing documentary that explores the history of one of the most ubiquitous and sought-after male order catalogs of the ‘80s and 90’s. A celebration of all things male, the film demonstrates the cultural shift.
Narrated by Matt Bomer and featuring an all-star cast of celebrity stylists, fashion influencers, and comedic actors the film follows a small-town dreamer with a big idea which leads to the creation of the International Male catalog, changing the way men would look at themselves, at each other and how the world would view them. [2022, USA, 83 min, Rating: NR]
All Male: The International Male Story (Wed. at 11 am) Ticketholder’s post party – CAT Lobby
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Crows Are White
Crows Are White is a deeply personal documentary filmed over five years across three continents that explores the intersection of truth, faith and love.
For over a thousand years, a secretive Buddhist sect has lived in an isolated monastery in Japan performing acts of extreme physical endurance in their pursuit of enlightenment. A first time filmmaker, Ahsen Nadeem, is struggling to reconcile his desires with his faith, sets off to the strict monastery in search of answers. When he arrives, his presence isn’t welcomed and the only monk who will speak with him is an outcast who prefers ice cream and heavy metal music to meditation. Together they forge an unlikely friendship that leads them to higher truths and occasionally, a little trouble. [2022, USA, 97 min, Rating: NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
44 Lights: Music from Ground Zero
44 Lights: Music from Ground Zero is a memorial documentary dedicated to friends lost on 9/11 and the heroes we did not know but wish we had. The personal friends and the close proximity to the World Trade Center Towers set in motion a journey of self-discovery, remembrance and finding a path forward through the songs, written and recorded by Tim Tuttle and published by Extreme Girl.
Music From Ground Zero was created by Tim Tuttle and Jeremy Slansky just two weeks after 9/11 when they headed into a local recording studio in Tribeca NYC (owned by Mark Dann) to lay down only one track. The first song turned into 50 songs and 20 concerts – a journey of healing, finding peace through creativity and helping in some small way to bring people together. The documentary encapsulates this creative journey an continues as a labor of love, pain, and ultimately healing. [2022, USA, 67 min, Rating: NR]
44 Lights: Music from Ground Zero (Sat. at 7 pm) Post Panel Discussion with Tim Tuttle and Ticketholder’s post reception – CAT Lobby
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Love, Charlie
Love Charlie is a moving documentary that follows the rise and fall of legendary Chef Charlie Trotter.
In the 2000s, Chef Trotter was the toast of Chicago, his eponymous restaurant was one of the world’s top fine-dining destinations. A gastronomic revolutionary and a culinary bad-boy, Trotter paved the way for the likes of Anthony Bourdain and Gordon Ramsay, yet his tempestuous, competitive nature alienated many. With never-before-seen archival material and new interviews with Grant Achatz, Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck, a thin line is formed between those who loved and loathed him. Trotter, died from a stroke in 2013 at age 54 and the documentary is an absorbing, unvarnished profile that chronicles the passions of a master chef and the consequences of pursuing perfection at all costs. [2021, USA, 96 min, Rating: NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Dealing with Dad
Dealing with Dad is a comedic drama about a difficult father and a family coping with his illness. A common struggle for families of all shapes and sizes, Dealing with Dad presents a comic cultural view of one’s final stage of life.
Margaret Chang (Ally Maki) reluctantly returns to her hometown along with her hapless brothers (Hayden Szeto, Peter S. Kim) to deal with the sudden depression of their complete-jerk father (Dana Lee). It turns out Dad is nicer depressed than well, and the siblings wonder if they should leave him be as they struggle to find a solution. [2022, USA, 106 min, Rating: PG-13]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Juniper
Juniper is a drama with black comic edges about a fragmented family dealing with a spunky matriarch.
Seventeen-year-old Sam has been on a self-destructive spiral that could lead to his death. He returns home from boarding school to find a new roommate, his wheelchair-bound English grandmother, Ruth (Charlotte Rampling). Ruth is an ex-war photographer with a lust for life and a love of the bottle. Sam soon finds himself deeply confronted by her alcoholic wit and nerve. Their first meeting is awkward but their second meeting is kind of violent. Things get worse when Sam finds himself stranded alone with her and her nurse Sarah for the school holidays. Both strong-willed characters battle for supremacy that enables Sam to embrace life again and for Ruth to face her mortality. [2021, New Zealand, 94 min, Rating: NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Voodoo MacBeth
Voodoo MacBeth is a compelling drama based on a true story about a struggling theater production and a young director.
The Film begins in 1936 Harlem, a neighborhood battered by economic strife and hardship. With FDR’s New Deal providing funding for the Federal Theatre Project’s Negro Unit, director Rose McClendon convinces co-director John Houseman to help her bring Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” to the Harlem community at the Lafayette Theater with an all-Black cast. They choose for their groundbreaking production a gifted but untested 21-year-old director by the name of Orson Welles, whose reimagined Haitian vision for the Scottish play is as daring and fresh as the cast and crew themselves. [2021, USA, 108 min, Rating: NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
The Test
The Test is a moving, joyful comedy about a family that lives in harmony until a test threatens the life they adore.
The Castillon’s seem to be the perfect French family. That is until Annie, the mother, finds a positive pregnancy test in the bathroom. Is it Juliette’s, her son’s girlfriend? Poupi’s, her teenage daughter? Another woman in her husband’s life? Does her other son actually have a girlfriend? Whatever the answer, the answer will not be linked to good news. [2021, France, 80 min, in French with English subtitles, R:NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
The Forger
The Forger is an illuminating drama, based on an extraordinary true story, about a daring and adventurous young German.
In 1942 Berlin, Cioma Schönhaus (rising star Louis Hofmann, Dark, Land of Mine), refuses to let the Nazis take away his zest for life. When he discovers his talent for forging documents – especially passports – he sees this as the ideal way to help not only himself but also others escape deportation. Thanks to his knack for creating new identities, he dares to venture out, hiding in plain sight and navigating around the authorities with inventiveness and charm.
He throws himself into the city’s nightlife with his two friends and even catches a fragile glimpse of love in seemingly hopeless times. Like any tale during Nazi occupied Germany, the more good they do, the tighter the noose around their necks. [2022, Germany, 116 min, in German with English subtitles, R:PG-13]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Karaoke
Karaoke is a bittersweet comedy drama about a husband and wife who are drawn to their charismatic neighbor who hosts Karaoke nights in his home.
Meir and Tova are a Sephardic, upper-middle-class couple, seemingly resigned to live out the rest of their semi-retirement in the banal comforts of an upscale apartment complex in a sleepy Tel Aviv suburb. When Itsik, a sexy, open-minded bachelor from Miami, moves into the building’s penthouse, their lives are gleefully upended. Energized by their newfound friendship with Itsik, Meir and Tova undergo personal transformations, but, will their relationship as a couple be a casualty of expressing their individual desires? Karaoke is an optimistic portrait of midlife self-discovery, laced with both poignant wisdom and barbed humor. [2022, Israel, 100 min, in Hebrew with English subtitles, R:NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
Rose
Rose is an intimate revolution, a drama about a 78-year-old woman who experiences the devastating loss of her beloved husband while discovering herself as a woman beyond her provincial roles.
Rose (Françoise Fabian) surrounded in her grief comes alive and gives way to a powerful impulse to live her life, making her realize that she can redefine herself as a woman presenting new challenges -- the whole balance of the family is upset. [2022, France, 106 min, in French with English subtitles, R:NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.
As Far As I Can Walk
As Far As I Can Walk is a touching drama that tells the story of two African refugees looking for their place in Europe.
Siisi, nicknamed Strahinja, a 22-year-old Ghanaian refugee, is doing everything to integrate in Serbia. He volunteers for the Red Cross in the camp where he lives, looks for work, and plays on the local football team. His biggest challenge, however, is to win back the woman he loves. When she disappears one day, Strahinja sets out to find her. [2021, Ghana, 92 min, in English and Serbian with English subtitles, R:NR]
Location: Cinema Art Theater (CAT) in Lewes
Admission
- $10.00 RBFS Members
- $10.00 General
Advance Sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door starting 30 minutes before screening time.