Black Maria Film Festival in Madison Friday

Film historians will tell you that the Black Maria (pronounced “mar-RYE-uh”) was the name of Thomas Edison’s film production center in West Orange.

Film buffs will tell you that the Black Maria Film Festival is the name of a program of intriguing short movies that you will not find at any multiplex or on Netflix.

Now in its 35th year, the annual festival has become a reliable event for people who feel that “film” mean more than “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”

The festival, part of the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium at New Jersey City University, runs an international tour with stops across America and Europe. (The festival also receives support from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.)

As many as 580 shorts – animated works, documentaries, narratives, and experimental films – by filmmakers from around the world were submitted for inclusion in this year’s program alone.

But as the name indicates, the Black Maria Film Festival is rooted in New Jersey, according to executive director Jane Steuerwald. The Garden State is where the festival is based, and several screenings are held here.

One stop will be the Madison Public Library tonight. As has been in the case for about a decade, the Black Maria Film Festival is jointly presented by the Madison Arts & Cultural Alliance (MACA).

The connection between the festival and MACA has been a rich one, noted John Pietrowski, MACA treasurer. “There’s a lot of art and culture out there, and a lot of breadth and depth,” he said. “Black Maria fills a niche for quality short films.”

“It’s a rare opportunity to view short films in anywhere,” added Pietrowski, who is also artistic director of Writers Theatre of New Jersey, based in Madison.

“You get to see a nice diversity,” he said. “It’s wonderful to sit down and in a 90-minute to two-hour span be taken to so many places.”

Steuerwald said the Madison program will offer a characteristically eclectic sampling of films.

For example, one of the works screened will be “teeth,” an animated short that she characterized as a black comedy by directors Tom Brown and Daniel Gray of Brooklyn.

Also on the bill is “Notes for My Homeland,” a documentary by Ed Kashi and Julie Winokur. Steuerwald described the film as a portrait of a Syrian-American composer responding to the Assad regime.

“We’ve received more narrative films than usual this year, and they are stellar,” said Steuerwald.

One such work is “The Bravest, the Boldest,” the story of two Army officers who have to notify the families of service personnel who have died in combat. “It’s an incredible story, sensitively acted,” Steuerwald said.

Every screening is followed by a discussion that often includes a question-and-answer session with at least one filmmaker. In some cases, those discussions run longer than the films themselves.

Besides the Madison program, Black Maria will stop in East Brunswick on April 14 and Caldwell on April 16.

To celebrate its 35th anniversary, the festival will also hold a retrospective series in Manhattan at the end of April. “We’ve been planning this for a year,” said Steuerwald.

“The last time we did a retrospective was for our 20th anniversary. For this one, we chose the best of the past 15 years,” she said. “It’s really a look at Black Maria in the 21st century.”

Though she is heartened by the array of submissions, Steuerwald said she is even more gratified by the response of the attendees who regularly turn out for the screenings.

“It means everything that we have these incredibly supportive audiences,” Steuerwald said. “I get more and more positive feedback. There’s a demand out there, and we’re able to reach it.”

35th ANNUAL BLACK MARIA FILM FESTIVAL

WHEN: 8 tonight

WHERE: Madison Public Library,

39 Keep St., Madison

ADMISSION: $10

INFO: 201-200-2043 or www.blackmariafilmfestival.org or 973-377-0722 or www.madisonartsnj.org