Urbanite Arts & Film Festival to Launch in June 2022
Press Release by Alex Armando Torres
Copyedited and Posted by Iliana Cosme-Brooks
Organizers are pleased to announce the inaugural Urbanite Arts & Film Festival, to be held in Westchester County, New York, in late June 2022. Urbanite will highlight new voices, particularly those of young women, people of color, LGBTQIA and neurodiverse communities—creating an exciting platform for a diverse range of young artists to express themselves through the exhibition of their art. The Urbanite Arts & Film festival is unique because it is free of submission costs, focuses on the next generation of artists, has four artistic categories of competition, and submitters will use smartphones to capture their work.
The Urbanite Arts & Film Festival was founded in 2021 by Alex Armando Torres, a self-taught filmmaker and photographer. As an Afro-Latin Gay male who did not see himself represented in front of or behind the camera, he started producing works that focused on a diverse subset of voices with unique stories to tell. He created this festival to give those voices a chance to tell their stories, one unique voice at a time.
This festival will showcase four areas of art: photography, short screenplay writing, short films, and poetry (spoken word) to be performed live during the festival weekend. All photographs, short films, and spoken word videos must be from a smartphone, with the short films having a maximum of ten minutes in length. The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2022.
Smartphones today have a tremendous capability of catching beautiful, excellent quality still and moving images. They are an equalizing force because they are flexible, light to travel with, easy to handle, and readily adapted for cinematic-like film work and stunning photographs, allowing the artist to focus on their true creative potential.
Urbanite will announce the festival’s schedule and activities on social media, in newspapers, and by email in early May 2022. For more information about the event, submission rules, and deadlines, please visit the Urbanite Film Festival website. We can be found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Submissions may be entered on FilmFreeway.