OCFF is not on, but Not OCFF is

The Oak Cliff Film Festival, scheduled for the first weekend of June, has been canceled for health and safety reasons related to COVID-19. In its place? Not The Oak Cliff Film Festival. Yes, the OCFF is temporarily the NOCFF, an online evening of togetherness… only apart. “Everyone is invited, but no one can come,” they say about the virtual celebration of cinema.

Taking place on June 4 at 8 p.m. — which was to be the original opening night of the festival — it will be an online screening of shorts in a program culled from veterans of the fest, followed by a livestream discussion with some of the filmmakers.

The program will include the shorts from previous filmmakers with films at prior OCFFs, including Greener Grass (2019), Person to Person (2017), The Sirens (which inspired the 2015 feature The Midnight Swim) and Lost Weekend (2019), with more to be added. North Texas-bred filmmaker David Lowery (A Ghost Story, Pete’s Dragon, The Old Man and the Gun) will co-moderate the panel. And everything is free.

— Arnold Wayne Jones