Film Festival promises exciting schedule

It’s been many a year — about five — since we’ve heard anything from the iconic D.C. punk band Bad Brains. Time and personal problems have prevented the band from getting together for studio work since their 2012 album Into the Future and a suspected upcoming album has yet to materialize. Thankfully, punk fans can look to the Maryland Film Festival in their time of need.

At the festival, there will be screenings of Finding Joseph I, a biopic dedicated to the enigmatic singer and frontman of Bad Brains, H.R. The film — which is meant to accompany a book of the same name — was directed by James Lathos for the Lesser Gods publishing company.

Bad Brains fans will be familiar with H.R.’s iconic onstage antics, but perhaps less acquainted with the man himself. To fans, H.R. and indeed Bad Brains are more of an idea than a group of people. Many associate them with their music, not their complex and — in H.R.’s case — occasionally difficult and strange personalities.

The Little Hours is a dark comedy starring Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Aubrey Plaza, Molly Shannon, and a number of other famous comedic actors.

It is an adaptation of Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and it features raunchy, wild nuns whose desperate need for excitement leads them down a path of ridiculous debauchery. And in case you’re on the fence about seeing it, just know that the Catholic League called it “pure trash.” Do with that what you will.

Whose Streets? is an incredibly relevant, incredibly pressing documentary following organizers and protesters in the wake of the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown.

Focusing on seven people who worked together to craft a movement that extends far beyond buzzwords and news headlines, Whose Streets? uses things like video footage from cell phones and tweets to capture the intensity and growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.

There could be no better time for this film than now, and no better place to see it than Baltimore.

The  Maryland Film Festival will run from May 3rd to the 7th. Venues for screenings are clustered in the Station North area and local cafe Red Emma’s will host filmmaker discussion panels.

This year’s festival will also act as the grand reopening of the refurbished Parkway Theater, which closed in the 1970s but will now reopen thanks  to renovation efforts which began in February of last year.