Yonkers Film Festival Offers Hybrid Format

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When filmmaker Dave Steck and film editor Patty Schumann moved to Yonkers from Manhattan, they missed the excitement of film festivals. While discussing the matter one evening at a dinner with friends in late 2012, a suggestion was made that they start their own.

“We said, ‘we make films, we don’t show them,’” Steck recalls. But the conversation got them thinking.

A few months later, Steck and Schumann decided to give it a go. And that’s how the Yonkers Film Festival, or YoFiFest, was born, “with a great combination of ignorance and enthusiasm,” says Steck, who is also the founder and owner of the film production company Numeric Pictures.

YoFiFest 2021, which runs from November 5-21, offers a wide range of films—features, documentaries, shorts, animation, music videos, web series and student work. In recent years, YoFiFest has received nearly 1,000 entries for each festival. Submissions were down this year because fewer films could be produced during the pandemic, but organizers still identified 185 worthy entries from 25 countries.

The films cover a range of genres—comedy, horror, drama, romance, science fiction—and topics—love, immigration, the Holocaust, social justice, dance…the list goes on.

For the first time, a Local Talent Day has been scheduled on November 13, featuring 25 movies by Westchester-based filmmakers. “I’m really excited about it,” says Schumann. “Most are early in their careers.”

Adds Steck, “Local filmmakers needed something like this. There are lots of great places to see movies in Westchester, but not that many places to screen them.”

Steck and Schumann have come a long way since the first YoFiFest in October 2013, when they presented 46 movies over two-and-a-half days. Its pre-pandemic high-water mark occurred in 2019, when they screened 237 films over 17 days.

“It really took off,” Steck says of the festival. 

In 2020, YoFiFest went virtual due to COVID-19. But this year, it will offer hybrid viewing—attendees can buy both single tickets and festival passes for in-person screenings to take place at the Riverfront Library in Yonkers, or simultaneously live-streamed online showings.

“Everything live is also online, but not everything online will be shown live,” Steck explains.

Precautions for in-person screenings include proof of vaccination, mask-wearing and a seat-booking program that creates empty-seat buffers around audience members in the same party.

“For people who haven’t been out much, it’s a great way to start enjoying arts and culture again,” says Steck.

Live filmmaker Q&A sessions have been scheduled after each screening. YoFiFest will also present educational workshops, networking events, receptions and parties.

The first weekend will see showings of Vinyl Nation, a documentary about the recent resurgence of vinyl records, and My Dead Dad, a film about a man who realizes that his estranged, recently deceased father was not who he thought he was.

The festival closes with 86’d: How A Global Pandemic Rocked The World’s Culinary Capital, a documentary about New York’s restaurants in the early days of the pandemic. The screening includes a fundraising reception for Feeding Westchester.

YoFiFest has received many accolades since its founding. FilmFreeway has named it one of the “Top 100 Best-Reviewed Festivals” numerous times. It has been featured twice in Westchester Magazine’s “Best of Westchester” issue and received a mention by the readership of The Journal News/LoHud for the top 10 reasons Yonkers is the “Hippest Town in the Lower Hudson Valley.”

“We’re really excited to welcome audiences back into theaters again,” Steck says.

A version of this article first appeared in the November issue of ArtsNews, ArtsWestchester’s monthly publication. ArtsNews is distributed throughout Westchester County. A digital copy is also available at artsw.org/artsnews.​​​