Brooklyn’s flagship indie film event will cast and produce a live staged reading for its inaugural Best Screenplay category. The 7th annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival is accepting entries of films, series and unproduced scripts until April 14, 2017.
 
The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival has launched a new screenplay competition for its seventh annual edition, which will run June 7-11, 2017. The three Finalists will be awarded free listings on screenplay aggregator InkTip to help producers find them. The winning script will receive a live staged reading cast with professional NYC actors, produced and promoted by AoBFF. Unproduced film and television screenplays in any genre are eligible, as long as they have a connection to Brooklyn via the writer, theme, subject matter or location. AoBFF also accepts new indie films and series of all lengths and genres that emerge from the Brooklyn scene. Submissions are open until April 14, 2017 on Withoutabox, FilmFreeway and aobff.org.
 
“We’re committed to supporting the work of Brooklyn’s film and media makers at every phase,” said Joseph Shahadi, AoBFF’s Executive Director. “Our screenplay category will help new films get made, via our prizes and the networking and learning opportunities we produce. Every screenplay entry will be read by a team of professional script readers, whether we get it on the first day of submissions or the last… which is the same ethical submission policy we have in place for our films.”
 
The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival is the only international, independent festival in the world exclusively devoted to the vibrant Brooklyn indie film and media scene. Since 2011, AoBFF has entertained an average of two thousand guests a year, had a half dozen distribution deals made for our premieres—and an HBO series. We’ve partnered with New York Women in Film and Television, Prime Latino Media, the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, NBC Universal, ESPN Films and others. The theatrical cut of Spike Lee’s new film 2 Fists Up premiered at the 2016 AoBFF.
 
AoBFF is also the only indie film festival to build and program its own video-on-demand streaming platform: Brooklyn On Demand, which broadcasts festival favorites, original series and more for free online and on a free Roku channel with over 15,000 subscribers alongside Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

Award-winning writer/producer Dave Chan has been named Guest Festival Director for the 7th Annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival (June 7–11, 2017.) Dave Chan is the founder of Navy Yard Films, a Brooklyn-based independent film production company. An acclaimed screenwriter and producer, his short comedy script “Fly!” is in development as an animated feature that he will produce and direct and his Family Guy spec script has won or placed in almost 25 competitions.

​Dave is currently writing and producing the crime comedy feature “Sure Fire!”, to be directed by his creative partner Michael Goldburg. Their previous collaboration “What’s Eating Dad?” — a winner and nominee at almost 20 festivals internationally — screened at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival in 2015. Dave also regularly consults for television and movies including the taut action film “Ambushed” starring Vinnie Jones and a TV pilot currently in development at Fox.

We wrote a blog post for our friends at Stareable to give emerging filmmakers some helpful strategies in navigating the world of film festival submissions. Check it out! 

Stareable democratizes how viewers find and watch digital series, so great indie shows can be found and enjoyed by a large audience that has never heard of them before. It's the same reason we created Brooklyn On Demand, which has its own category on Stareable. We love it when indies get the love they deserve!