Maryland Film Festival

The Maryland Film Festival is an annual five-day international film festival taking place each March in Baltimore, Maryland. The festival was launched in 1999, and presents international film and video work of all lengths and genres. The festival is known for its close relationship with John Waters, who is on the festival's board of directors and selects a favorite film to host within each year of the festival.

Each U.S. feature screened within the festival is hosted by one or more of its filmmakers. The many internationally known filmmakers who have presented their work within Maryland Film Festival include Barry Levinson, David Simon, Kathryn Bigelow, Melvin Van Peebles, Lena Dunham, Lisandro Alonso, Bobcat Goldthwait, Amy Seimetz, David Lowery, Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, Todd Solondz, Anna Biller, and Jonathan Demme.

In addition to forty or more new features and fifty or more new short films, each Maryland Film Festival includes one favorite film selected and hosted by legendary filmmaker and MFF board member John Waters. The films presented by John Waters within Maryland Film Festival have ranged from Joseph Losey's Boom! to Gaspar Noé's I Stand Alone.

Major names in contemporary music have presented favorite films within the festival, including Beach House, Dan Deacon, Branford Marsalis, Marin Alsop, Ian MacKaye, Will Oldham, Jonathan Richman, Bill Callahan, and members of Animal Collective. Each festival also includes a silent film with a live score by Alloy Orchestra. Additionally, personalities ranging from Harry Belafonte to Cal Ripken Jr. have appeared at the festival alongside documentaries about their lives and work.

The festival also programs film events in and around Baltimore year-round, including the film component of Baltimore's annual summer Artscape festival and many events for its membership support group Friends of the Festival.

Festival history
The first Maryland Film Festival screening took place Thursday, April 22, 1999, with an Opening Night presentation of Barry Levinson's documentary Diner Guys (about the real-life inspirations for his first feature film, Diner) at the historic Senator Theatre.

Full programming began April 23, 1999, using all five screens of the historic Charles Theatre. These screenings were the first public use of the newly renovated Charles, which had expanded from one to five screens.

In 2002, the festival dedicated its Opening Night to a collection of short films, and has done so each year since 2004.

In 2009, the festival expanded its offerings of international films, with the stated goal of expanding the scope of international films brought to Baltimore, and in future years bringing a filmmaker to host each foreign feature film screening as the festival does with all U.S.-made feature films.

In 2013, the festival announced its expansion to 5 days, shifting its Opening Night to Wednesday, May 8, 2013. Previous festivals had been 4 days, with opening nights taking place on Thursdays. The festival continued as a 5-day festival in each subsequent edition.

The 18th annual festival took place May 4–8, 2016 using 5 screens in and around the Station North Arts and Entertainment District as well as the auditoriums of the Baltimore Museum of Art and Walters Art Museum.

The 19th annual festival took place May 4–7, 2017 using the 3 screens of the newly restored and expanded Parkway Theatre as well as three additional screens on the nearby Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) campus.

The festival's feature-film programming has emphasized independent films represented by their filmmakers, as well as international works handled by such art-house and specialty film distributors as The Cinema Guild, Oscilloscope Laboratories, Factory 25, Milestone Films, Strand Releasing, and Kino.

The festival has offered the world premieres of such American independent features as Eugene Kotlyarenko's 0s & 1s (2010), Josephine Decker's Butter on the Latch (2013), Stephen Cone's Henry Gamble's Birthday Party (2015), Josh Crockett's Dr. Brinks & Dr. Brinks (2017) and Stephen Cone's Princess Cyd (2017). The 2017 edition featured the U.S. premieres of Hugh Gibson's The Stairs and Ashley McKenzie's Werewolf.

The festival launched a year-round, 3-screen venue anchored by a historic, restored 1915 auditorium, The Parkway Theatre, in May 2017.

Longtime director of programming Eric Allen Hatch, who began working for MdFF in 2007, departed as lead programmer of Maryland Film Festival and The Parkway in February, 2018, citing creative differences detailed in a Filmmaker article concerning the need for greater risk-taking and attention to diversity in independent-film festivals and alternative venues.

In November 2022, it was announced that Maryland Film Festival would not hold a 2023 edition, explaining the festival would "recalibrate its business model amid major changes in the film industry."

In May 2023, it was announced that Baltimore radio station WYPR, in partnership with former Maryland Film Festival director of programming Eric Allen Hatch, would hold the New/Next Film Festival in August 2023, taking place at The Charles Theatre. The festival was planned as a reaction to the news that Maryland Film Festival was not holding a 2023 event. The first New/Next Film Festival was held August 18–20 in Baltimore's Charles Theatre.

The Parkway Theatre
In December 2013, the festival announced its plans to restore The Parkway Theatre, located at North Avenue and North Charles Street in the Station North Arts and Entertainment District, for use as its year-round venue. The Parkway was built for film exhibition in 1915, and became one of Baltimore's first art-house movie theaters in the 1950s, operating under the name Five West, but it closed in 1977. Maryland Film Festival's restoration preserved the original auditorium, and built two smaller screens in an adjacent space.

In Spring 2017, the Parkway restoration project was completed and the theater opened on May 3, 2017, with the opening night of the 19th Annual Maryland Film Festival The first public screening in The Parkway was the Opening Night Shorts Program of the 2017 Maryland Film Festival on the evening of May 3, 2017, hosted by Josephine Decker and Kris Swanberg and the directors of each short film presented. The first short presented, and therefore the first film to play in The Parkway in decades, was Jessica Kingdon's Commodity City. The other shorts presented that evening were Terence Nance's They Charge For the Sun, Jeannie Donohoe's Game, Matthew Salton's Richard Twice, and Nathan Truesdell's Balloonfest. The first feature film screened in the Parkway was Barry Levinson's television film The Wizard of Lies on the afternoon of Thursday, May 4, 2017. The first theatrical film screened in the Parkway, Theo Anthony's Rat Film the same evening, was also a part of the Maryland Film Festival. The first 35mm film screened in the Parkway was Agnès Varda's Vagabond, guest-curated and hosted by the band Beach House, on the evening of Saturday, May 6, 2017. These screenings all took place within Maryland Film Festival 2017. The first live music performance in the restored Parkway was Alloy Orchestra's live score for the German silent film Variety within Maryland Film Festival 2017 on Sunday, May 7.

Films shown at the 2022 event included Navalny, Sirens, and Homebody.

The Parkway Theater closed in January 2023, but announced in May 2024 that it would re-open to host the 25th Maryland Film Festival.

John Waters picks
Within every Maryland Film Festival since its launch in 1999, filmmaker and Maryland Film Festival board member John Waters has selected one film to present to an audience. His selections have ranged from vintage cult and camp titles to contemporary ribald comedies and art-house dramas.

Alloy Orchestra presentations
A recurring highlight within each Maryland Film Festival since 2003 has been a silent film presented with Alloy Orchestra performing their new, original scores for these vintage films. Alloy Orchestra has also presented films at Maryland Film Festival stand-alone events throughout the year; this list is limited to presentations within the annual festival weekend.

Vintage 3-D film presentations
Beginning in 2002 and extending through 2012, each Maryland Film Festival presented a vintage 3D film in the two-projector 35mm format. Each screening was hosted by Baltimore Sun film writer Chris Kaltenbach.

List of features played at the festival
Each Maryland Film Festival has presented forty or more feature films, with the screenings of each U.S. film hosted by one of its filmmakers.

Gunky's Basement Film series
Gunky’s Basement was a Maryland Film Festival series curated and hosted by musician Dan Deacon, video artist Jimmy Joe Roche, and MdFF programmer Eric Allen Hatch. Each title screened from a 35mm print and was promoted in part with original screenprinted posters created by Baltimore-based artists.

Gunky’s Basement was a year-round extension of the Maryland Film Festival Guest-Host program, in which a person best known for work outside the world of film selects and hosts a favorite film. Prior to Gunky’s Basement, Dan Deacon was a guest host in Maryland Film Festival 2010, selecting Total Recall.

The series originally took place in The Charles Theatre. Beginning with the July 12, 2017 screening of The Shining, all Gunky's Basement screenings took place in Maryland Film Festival's year-round venue, The Parkway Theatre. The series came to a close when film curator Eric Allen Hatch departed MdFF in February, 2018.

Night Zones with Jimmy Joe Roche
As an offshoot of Gunky's Basement, Maryland Film Festival and video artist Jimmy Joe Roche partnered for a series exploring Roche's love of horror films. As with Gunky's Basement, each title screened from a 35mm print, and was promoted in part with original screenprinted posters created by a Baltimore artist.