New York City’s longest-running touring exhibition of award-winning short films will stop in North Carolina for the first time ever in March! Asbury Shorts Film Concerts feature shorts selected from major US and international film festivals. This special event is being presented by Longleaf Film Festival and Dagtype Films and takes place on March 3. Join us at the North Carolina Museum of History for this First Friday event: tour the museum’s lobby-level exhibits, shop at the gift shop, and purchase concessions—including craft beer from the Oak and Dagger brewery—beginning at 5 p.m.; enjoy live music with Castle Wild starting at 6:30 p.m.; then enjoy the films, which start screening at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $15 and are available online.

The annual collections of comedy, drama, and animation combine award-winning shorts from the past with new honorees. Academy Award-nominated director Jason Reitman (Juno, Up in the Air, Thank You for Smoking) calls the Asbury concerts “the best short-film show I’ve ever seen.” With this stop on the 35th anniversary tour, Daniels Auditorium in Raleigh joins such previous venues as the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Lakeshore Theater in Chicago, DGA (Directors Guild of America) Theater in Manhattan, and Royal Festival Hall in London.

The March 3 concert will include two Longleaf Official Selections: Oh Crappy Day and Civil. Both were filmed in North Carolina.

Oh Crappy Day (Dagtype Films), about a film student who struggles to keep his OCD tendencies on the down-low during a blind date, has been screened at 35 international festivals and has earned 11 awards, including Narrative Short, Best Comedy at the 2015 Longleaf Film Festival.
	Civil (by Andrew Stacy Huggins), a film on death and forgiveness set in 1865, received Narrative Short, Best Drama at the 2016 Longleaf Film Festival; it has been screened at 19 festivals and has won 8 other awards.

Other highlights of the evening include:

• Asad, from director Bryan Buckley, features the amazing story of a young Somali boy who is forced to make adult decisions on a daily basis in his wartorn country. The Academy Award nominee for Best Live Action Short Film in 2013 has won multiple Best of Show contests in film festival across the US. (This short is replacing the originally scheduled A Poet Long Ago.)
• Globe Trot, the latest short-film dance project from acclaimed independent filmmaker Mitchell Rose. Rose teamed with choreographer Bebe Miller to create this international crowd-sourced piece, which was awarded first prize at WorldFest in Houston, as well as Best Experimental Film at the Crossroads Film Festival in San Francisco and the Audience Award in Poland’s ShortWaves Film Festival.
• Fait d’Hiver, a classic dark comedy short film from Belgian director Dirk Beliën. The story features an angry businessman, who is stuck in horrendous highway traffic and decides to try out his new mobile phone—with absolutely astonishing results. Fait d’Hiver received an Academy Award nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.

Steven Neilson, producer of Oh Crappy Day, will serve as guest host for the North Carolina debut on March 3.

Longleaf Film Festival is a program of the North Carolina Museum of History. Dagtype Films is an independent production company in Raleigh. Asbury Shorts Films Concerts provide the opportunity to see little gems on a big screen.

Help us promote our Asbury Shorts Film Concert—the 35th anniversary and the first in North Carolina! Click, download, print, and distribute copies of our promotional poster.  Thank you.

 

The Museum of History and Longleaf Film Festival are excited to have products from the brewery at Oak and Dagger Public House as our featured beers on March 3, 2017: for sampling during First Fridays at the Museum and as concessions for the Asbury Shorts Film Concert.