As we gear up for the 2015 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, we wanted to take a moment to list everything we're thankful for. 

Our 5th(!) Annual AoBFF is in May. May 13-17 to be exact. May rules our lives and our brains. May! May! MAAAYYYY. Some days it feels far away, other days it feels like tomorrow. We're working overtime to make FIVE our best yet, which is why it's important to take a beat, take a breath, and say thank you.

Steiner Studios — the largest sound stage and production facility for film and television outside of Hollywood — will soon be the site for Brooklyn College's Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema.

In an exclusive story, NY1's Jeanine Ramirez got a first look at the renderings for the school's 60,000-square-foot campus at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.

"We're building from scratch, so this gives us the opportunity to really re-imagine what a film school should be like in the 21st century," said Jonathan Wacks, director of the Feirstein School.

The deadline for applications is January 15.

FULL ARTICLE (Video watchable for TWC/NY1 customers)

Brooklyn East. Brooklyn West. Brooklyn North and South. Brooklyns here, there and everywhere. The New York Times is especially fond of comparing Kings County to cities all over the world.

Recent Brooklynite Bouree Lam has painstakingly compiled all the places the Times has compared to our favorite borough, why they do it, and how "Brooklyn™" and Brooklyn are very different things. Read her piece at The Atlantic. 

Brooklyn is art. Art is Brooklyn. Our instagram feed captures the borough in unexpected ways. Old school, new school. Street art and streets that are art. Who knew every inch of Kings County was so beautiful? (We did.) Follow us and you'll see why.

From the New Yorker: "Like the Weeksville Gardens housing project, about ten blocks west on Bergen Street, the Weeksville Center was named for the free, landowning black community that once lived in that area of Brooklyn. Founded in the early nineteenth century by the former docks worker James Weeks, on land previously owned by Dutch farmers, Weeksville is thought to have been among the first free black communities in the country." Full Article

We were incredibly proud to bring the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival to Bay Ridge for the first time in 2014 and plan on it being one of our locations for years to come. 

In his incredibly well-researched article for BKLYNR, writer (and lifelong Bay Ridgeite) Henry Stewart traces the history of 11209 over the past 150 years, and how a 19th century outbreak of yellow fever led to an influx of artists to the area. More proof that Brooklyn has always been a haven for artists, and every part of the borough has a story to tell if you're willing to look more closely.

About the author:
Henry Stewart is an assistant editor at Opera News. He was previously the culture editor of The L Magazine, and his writing has appeared in Electric Literature, BAMbill, and the Brooklyn Eagle.