Fall Film Festival Includes a Concert by Two Bands of Rutgers Students

Hanging Coats and Lawns, part of New Brunswick's basement music scene, take the stage for an audio-visual performance from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Oct. 2

A Rutgers student is injecting some sonic youth from the New Brunswick music scene into this year's New Jersey Fall Film Festival.

Rutgers student Emma Hackbarth is a New Jersey Film Festival intern.

The Rutgers University-New Brunswick event - a mix of features, documentaries, shorts, animated works and experimental films - begins Friday, Sept. 4, and concludes Sunday, Oct. 4. The festival, which marks its 45th anniversary, includes an audio-visual concert featuring two local bands as well as two free filmmaking workshops.

Emma Hackbarth, an Honors College student who attends the Rutgers School of Communication and Information and is pursuing a degree in journalism with a minor in arts management and leadership, is a New Jersey Film Festival intern who helps with outreach and visibility efforts. A fan of basement shows, Hackbarth recommended both bands to Al Nigrin, a cinema studies lecturer at Rutgers-New Brunswick who organizes the event.

Nigrin spotted an Instagram post by Hackbarth saying she was going to some basement shows one evening in the spring.

"I thought maybe we should invite some of these bands to perform," said Nigrin, the executive director, curator and founder of the Rutgers Film Co-op/New Jersey Media Arts Center.

Lawns began as a project to combine musical influences that the members love: rock, jazz, folk and avant-garde.

Since September 2023, Nigrin has been adding concerts to the film festival. Usually paired with films and videos projected behind the performers, Nigrin said he included live music "with the hope of reawakening the mostly dormant New Brunswick music scene."

Nigrin asked Hackbarth to join him as co-organizer to help with the music included in the show.

"Al knew I was an enthusiastic member of the New Brunswick basement show scene," said Hackbarth, 20, who attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York. "From my perspective, New Brunswick music is alive and well in the basements of show houses from Sunday School to the Mud House, but it is literally underground."

The festival is a hybrid event: In addition to in-person screenings, nearly all the films will be available as videos on demand for 24 hours during their show dates. 

Each general admission ticket or festival pass is good for both virtual and in-person screenings. Both the audio-visual concert, the free film workshops and the festival's in-person screenings will be held in Room 105 of Voorhees Hall, 71 Hamilton St., New Brunswick, N.J., with show times beginning at 1 p.m., 5 p.m. or 7 p.m. General admission tickets are $15 per program; student tickets for in-person screenings are $10 per program. An all-access festival pass is available for $100.

A young woman floats in water in a scene from "Your Lips Never Left Mine."

The audio-visual concert, scheduled from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 2, will feature performances by two New Brunswick bands: Hanging Coats and Lawns. Both groups are made up of Rutgers students. General admission for the concert is $15 a person.

A six-piece band that formed in the spring of 2025 through late-night jam sessions, Hanging Coats taps various influences, including shoegaze, indie rock and rhythm and blues. The band is working on releasing its first extended play.

Lawns began as a project to combine musical influences that the members love: rock, jazz, folk and avant-garde. The band has released three singles and plans to release its debut self-titled album in August.

"We hope to bring in a new audience to this particular AV concert - and to give these basement bands a higher profile and bring them up and out of the underground, so to speak," said Nigrin, an experimental filmmaker who organizes multiple film festivals hosted at Rutgers-New Brunswick.

A young woman holds up a bowl of salad in a scene from "Love New York."

He added that the two filmmaking workshops are free and open to the public but have limited seating and require advance registration.

The first, "Intro to Filmmaking," taught by Nigrin, begins at 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 20. The second, "The Film Business: Basic Legal and Business Aspects of Motion Picture Production and Distribution," taught by film industry attorney Steven C. Schechter, begins at 1 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 27. To register for one or both, email Nigrin at [email protected].

Previous workshops were filled to capacity "and had many folks on wait lists, so we decided to do two of these again," said Nigrin, adding that the workshops are supported by an arts education grant festival organizers received from the Arts Institute of Middlesex County.

Nigrin said prize-winning films from the 2026 New Jersey International Film Festival will be screened on Saturday, Oct. 3 (best animation films), and Sunday, Oct. 4 (best experimental and documentary films).

In-person screenings will include appearances by directors, artists and actors as well as virtual filmmaker introductions and question-and-answer sessions. Visit the festival's website for more information.

The documentary "Imprinted" focuses on choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw and her pioneering work with dancers and horses.

The festival's lineup includes Matched, a dark comedy directed by Elvira Ibragimova, who graduated from Rutgers in 2009, as well as:

• Mike Meyer'sThe Fright Stuff, adocumentary following the haunted attraction industry in the United States

• Martina Casas' Imprinted, a journey into the world of choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw, whose pioneering work with dancers and horses transcends conventional boundaries of movement

• Jeff Mizushima's The Bond that Broke, a documentary focused on a mother and daughter that traces the generational impact of eating disorders

All the works that we are screening are part of the New Jersey International Film Festival were selected by a panel of judges including media professionals, journalists, students and academics from more than 400 works submitted from around the world. Prize winners will be announced via our social media sites after the screening on Oct. 4.

A robot hands a potted flower to another robot in a scene from the animated film "Sunspark."