For years one company has been providing a superbly innovative platform for newly formed businesses to blossom. It’s Kickstarter, the video based fundraising website that has launched some of our favorite businesses and definitely some of yours as well. On a clear Saturday night we made our way to the south side of the Williamsburg Bridge to attend Kickstarter’s 3rd Annual Film Festival- yet another way the company is working to help the little guy grow.

Shortly after 7pm, we entered into the stunning open air space- free of charge- to watch selections from the website’s favorite features, shorts, animations and works-in-progress that were funded by Kickstarter in the past year by backers just like you. If that wasn’t enough, the festival’s food vendors like Snap and Littleneck would be on hand to serve up their delicious eats, all made possible by Kickstarter campaigns. Once the sun descended into the evening sky it was time to start rolling the features. First up, “Everybody Street” directed by and starring photographer, Cheryl Dunn. This documentary excerpt followed Dunn throughout her career as New York City’s leading NYPD photographer. This work is a fantastic time capsule to see how our City’s law enforcement has been viewed in the past six decades and is a documentary that we eagerly want to view in its entirety.

With the moon now directly overhead it was only fitting that the next feature should be a short film about wolves. “The Cub” directed by Riley Stearns tells the comedic tale of two parents who leave their young daughter in the woods to be raised by wolves. Not to spoil anything, but some delightfully dark stuff goes down. The tight five minute short kept the audience rolling with laughter, showing us that you can make a good deal of headway with even a little amount of time. One documentary that really caught our eye was “Mr. Grillo: The Thereminist.” If you have ever watched a monster movie from the 1950s then you know the Theremin quite well. The Theremin is an instrument capable of making other orldly sounds just by the use of hand moments. But, as the film rolled on we found out that Thomas Grillo is out to make the Theremin into a beautiful sounding instrument. And after the excerpt concluded we were thrilled to be surprised with a live performance by Mr. Grillo himself, wailing away on his beloved instrument, truly making this film festival highly interactive.

Cool summer night, great films and food. You really couldn’t have asked for more! Thanks to the great people at Kickstarter and all the filmmakers and vendors involved for truly projecting independence onto the silver screen.

- Jay Rubin