‘Barrier Island Film Festival’ Brings Filmmaking Community Together

LONG BEACH, NY. — The Barrier Island Film Festival is returning to the Long Beach Historical & Preservation Society next month, giving south shore cinephiles the chance to take in a slate of short films while helping to raise money for the museum.

The festival is the brain child of Mark Montalbano, a retired real estate professional who moved out to Long Beach from Manhattan after the COVID-19 pandemic. Montalbano picked up acting after closing his real estate company in 2018, and said the experience opened a series of unforeseen doors for him. After booking a couple of plays and producing some of his own work, Montalbano realized there could be a market for showing the work of south shore and barrier island filmmakers to the people who share their hometowns.

In total, there are eight films scheduled for the film festival on Saturday, March 7, with showings at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. The Sunday, March 8 viewing will feature nine films, with a short of Montalbano’s own making, “Bound By Bushwick” closing out the show.

“There's so much talent in the area, so my primary [goal] was to solicit short films that have either been made by a local filmmaker or have a local actor or actress in them,” Montalbano told Patch Wednesday. “So, the common theme is really that each of these films has a connection to the Barrier Island.”

For some of those films, it’s an actor or two. For “Whirl of Life,” a 1915 silent film that’s being screened as part of the festival, Long Beach is where some of the filming took place. That film, Montalbano said, stars Lester and Irene Castle, whom he described as “the Fred and Ginger of their time.”

Also included in the film festival are Long Beach natives like Kyle McCarthy, a Westchester resident who grew up in the city and lived there until just a couple of years ago. A full time video producer, McCarthy appeared in last year’s film festival and is on this year’s schedule twice, with a fictional short called “Club Soda” and a documentary short titled “Surfing on 9/11.” For the 37-year-old McCarthy, the chance to come home with some of his art is a joy.

“It's really cool. I love Long Beach, it’s a dear place in my heart. I grew up there, my whole life. I only just recently moved from there, but I love seeing opportunities for artists to showcase their work,” McCarthy said. “And this is just a really cool way to do it. I had a couple films in it last year as well, and it was really cool to see a live audience watch your film, and then be able to do a Q&A afterwards. I love those kind of real life opportunities to show your art.”

McCarthy said much of what he makes these days is distributed over the internet, making it hard to gauge live reactions even if the things he makes perform well. That problem, however, doesn’t exist when his work is being screened live, with an audience.

“It's really refreshing. It's nice because, so many things that I put out online, I only see the metrics of it. I don't see, you know, ‘real reactions,’” McCarthy said. “So any chance I get to show my work to a real live audience, I always jump on the opportunity, because 30 people in a room seeing a short film that you made somehow feels way better than 100,000 people seeing it online, you know?”

For Montalbano, the chance to get work like McCarthy’s in front of an audience is a crucial part of why the festival exists. It’s a fundraiser, he noted, but it’s also a chance to see how much talent there is right in Long Beach and across the barrier island. When asked what he hopes the audience takes away from the festival, the Brooklyn native said he had a couple of goals.

“First of all, I want them to be entertained. I want them to enjoy the films. And since I'm the curator, I take it very personally. I mean, I've screened all the films myself. Some of them I have seen before, some of them I've seen for the first time recently,” Montalbano said. “I want them to walk away and say, ‘Wow, that was a nice cross section of films. I was really entertained. I had a good time.’ I mean, at the end of the day, this is a fundraiser, but it's also entertainment, and I want people to feel like they've seen some good quality films and they've been entertained. I take a lot of personal pride in seeing to it that the films are films that people will enjoy.”

Tickets to the event can be purchased at this link. The tickets cost $25 for members of the historical society and $30 for non-members.