Lynn Cohen uncovers a secret about her late husband in Emma without Edmund
BUSHWICK FILM FESTIVAL
Online, Lot45, Regal Cinema, Circa Brewing Co.
October 20-24, $5-$7 per virtual film, $60-$250 per bundle, $15 in-person screenings
www.bushwickfilmfestival.com
One of my favorite shorts in the fourteenth annual Bushwick Film Festival, running online and in person October 20-24, is Nicolas Minas’s thirteen-minute heart-tugger, Emma without Edmund. Part of the “Defining Stages” program, the film stars Lynn Cohen as a widow who discovers that her recently deceased husband had an affair when they were much younger and insists on finding out more about it. Her husband is played by her real-life spouse, Ronald Cohen. I used to see the two of them regularly at the theater, always making sure to say hello. I saw her many times onstage and onscreen as well; she appeared in such television shows as Law & Order, Damages, and Sex and the City, such films as Vanya on 42nd St., Munich, and The Hunger Games, and such plays as Hamlet with Kevin Kline, Macbeth with Liev Schreiber, and I Remember Mama with an all-star cast of older actresses.
With theaters opening up again, I miss Cohen, who passed away in February 2020 at the age of eighty-six; she and Ronald had been married for fifty-five years, so seeing them together in Emma without Edmund is a special moment. The touching film is being shown October 23 at the Regal Cinema on Court St. with Erica Eng’s Americanized, Naaji Sky Adzimah’s 27 Candles, Ashley Paige Brim’s The Goldfish, and Sarah Kamaras and Harry Spitzer’s The Two Bees, an adorable documentary about longtime roommates Bette and Bonnie, who are ninety-five and recount details from their seventy-year friendship.
The film festival gets under way with an opening-night reception on October 20 at Lot45 and is highlighted by several in-person shorts programs on October 23 at Regal, including “Defining Stages,” “Art as Resistance,” “Family Lies,” and “Campy Comedies” in addition to Kate Beacom and Louis Legge’s full-length Rehab Cabin and a BFF Happy Hour from 2:00 to midnight at Circa Brewing Co. All films are also available online, either individually or in packaged bundles, including all 133 shorts and features from more than two dozen countries for $250. On October 24 from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm, the free, online Movie Industry Conference consists of such panel discussions as “Dive into Development/Production/Distribution,” “Heard City Presents Uplifting Underrepresented Voices,” “Meet the Producers,” and “NFTs and the Creative Future.”