By Mike Szymanski

All kinds of film festivals exist: those focused on vampires, or cannabis, or veganism.

Filmmaker Kyle Schickner’s has dreamt for the past three decades to have a festival of movies that cater to his specific interests: telling stories that focus on women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ communities.

Of course, some quite prominent individual film festivals exist for each of those, but Kyle has combined them all together — and he is putting them on in a small town in his home state of New Jersey.

“It is a culmination of what I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and now it’s here,” says Kyle in a call from New Jersey, where he grew up.

He has created a triad of clever separate tracts of film interests: the Melvin Van Peebles Tract is of and by diverse and varied people of color; the Jane Campion Tract consists of movies written and/or directed by a female and/or tell the stories of women; and the John Waters Tract of movies that highlight queer cinema.

In his first year, he received more than 100 submissions, and he is offering a multitude of prizes in all the categories.

The Best Feature and Short Films will have winners in each category and an overall festival winners. The Best Actor is not delineated by gender, and will be chosen festival-wide. They also have an Audience Award and Best Screenplay.

An amazing different twist on encouraging new filmmakers is a FenceSitter Short Screenplay Competition where the top three finalists of the competition will have a staged reading the weekend of the film festival in front of an audience.

Then, Kyle’s FenceSitter Films will produce the winning screenplay and the finished product will premiere at the next year’s festival.

“We need to encourage films in all these categories and if I can help a newcomer get a short made that could land them a bigger picture deal, then I have contributed to this,” Kyle says.

A few of the titles this year include:

This first year, most of the films were very good, Kyle sums up. Judges offered tips about what needed to be done. Mostly it was about editing.

The theater is a classic 120-year-old big art house theater in Bernardsville, a small down near where Kyle lives in Mendham, New Jersey. He convinced the theater owner to do a festival, and he hopes the public will enjoy the movie choices, too.

But, it’s a Trump-supporting area, and former Republican Governor Chris Christie lives nearby.

“I want to push the envelope, but I’m not looking to ruffle a few feathers. I’m hoping that all sorts of communities will come out and support these films,” Kyle says. “There are no art houses anymore around here and we want to get people to know these movies with this festival.”

Kyle’s history includes how he came out as bisexual in college in New Jersey and became an activist with a movie and online series called “Rose By Any Other Name” featuring a bi character, and then “Steam” with a cast of Ally Sheedy, Kate Siegel, Ruby Dee, Chelsea Handler and others which is a woman’s story including bisexuality and a tender older black relationship.

Kyle directed a movie “Strange Fruit” about a gay black attorney who goes back to his Southern town where he grew up, and people were surprised he was not black. He was invited to a black film festival and asked, “Who do you think you are making this?”

Kyle said, “At least someone is making it, and in a perfect world, a white bisexual guy should not be making this, I answered.”

Kyle has a funny, poignant and timely documentary out now called “A White Man Walks Into a Barbershop” about racism throughout the country.

A lot of trans youth movies were entered in the festival. Most of the entries are not political. It’s a wide variety including a beautiful animated pirate who wants to be a mermaid,

“People are depressed lately people and there’s not much to laugh at, but there are unique perspectives that have gestated during Covid and because of Trump and a lot of these movies are ahead of the curve,” Kyle says.

The festival kicks off for four days, April 18–21 and features a great deal of local sponsors and special events.

Find out more here: https://www.bvfsfilmfestival.com/fencesitter-film-fest

Check out more about Kyle in a Zoom chat conducted by the author and actress Bai Ling and others for the LA Bi Task Force: https://labitaskforce.org/bi%2B-blog/f/bi-filmmakers-talk-about-their-struggles-in-hollywood

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