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Kickstarter Film Fest Features 'Obvious Child' Among Crowd-Sourced Flicks

By Janet Upadhye | July 3, 2014 2:51pm
 "Obvious Child," released on June 6, stars "Saturday Night Live" alum Jenny Slate as a late 20s Brooklynite who, after a drunken a one-night stand, gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion.
"Obvious Child," released on June 6, stars "Saturday Night Live" alum Jenny Slate as a late 20s Brooklynite who, after a drunken a one-night stand, gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion.
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Facebook/Obvious Child

FORT GREENE — It's the big screen on a crowd-sourced budget.

Kickstarter, the Greenpoint-based fundraising website, is hosting its Fourth Annual Film Festival in Fort Greene Park this year featuring more than a dozen shorts, web series, animations, documentaries and feature-length films. "Obvious Child" — former "SNL" cast member Jenny Slate's romantic comedy about abortion — will headline the event.

"Obvious Child," released on June 6, stars Slate as a late 20s Brooklynite who, after a drunken a one-night stand, gets pregnant and decides to have an abortion.

The movie, which has been touted as the flip-side of flicks like "Juno" and "Knocked Up," where female leads decide to give birth after accidental pregnancies, portrays abortion as a common, and not entirely tragic, choice for modern women who are not ready for motherhood.

 The festival will screen 17 films that were made with funds raised from Kickstarter campaigns.
The festival will screen 17 films that were made with funds raised from Kickstarter campaigns.
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Kickstarter Film Festival

"We were frustrated by the limited representations of young women's experience with pregnancy, let alone growing up," said director Gillian Robespierre on the film's Kickstarter page. "We were waiting to see a more honest film, or at least, a story that was closer to many of the stories we knew."

"Obvious Child," which is currently playing in theaters, will screen for free at the festival along with 16 other films selected from more than 1,000 submissions by Kickstarter staff. The movies cover topics ranging from the 1939 New York World's Fair to India's last magician's colony to skateboarding.

"Me and Ewe," a stop-motion short created by an 11-year-old director, Trinity Andersson, will also be screened along with "The Burning House," about a depressed young urbanite who flees his burning home with an armload of useless luxury items.

Also featured is "WONDER," a 365-second animation that consists of a sequence of 8,760 pictures hand-drawn by the director.

Guests can dig into Butter and Scotch baked goods, Brewla Bars' popsicles, soda by Brooklyn Soda Works, La Sonrisa empanadas, Pitanga's gluten-free juice and Pop Karma popcorn while listening to the Asphalt Orchestra marching band and Kaki King play live.

The free event starts at 7 p.m. near the Myrtle and North Portland avenues entrance to Fort Greene Park.

In case of rain, the event will be held on Saturday, July 19. Watch Kickstarter's Twitter account for updates.