A Jackson Heights husband-and-wife team are hoping to break a curse that has plagued film festivals in Queens.
Don and Katha Cato are kicking off the first Queens World Film Festival Thursday with a selection of films at the Jackson Heights Cinema and the Renaissance Charter School.
The four-day marathon of independent movies will feature more than 120 short and feature-length films - with Queens filmmakers contributing about a third of the flicks. All of the money raised from the first night of festivities will benefit wounded soldiers, organizers said.
"We have a huge filmmaking community here in Queens, and we can support a world-class film festival," Katha Cato said.
The independent film celebration will also include international and gay and lesbian flicks, panels for up-and-coming filmmakers, an awards ceremony and an evening of short films made for and by local youth.
"We'd like the festival to become a destination event for people who want to see films," said Don Cato, who screened hundreds of submissions with his wife to pick the lineup. "It'll give the borough of Queens a little spotlight."
The Catos put the event together after its predecessor, the Queens International Film Festival, imploded in 2009. Its organizer, Marie Castaldo, was accused of stiffing bands, guests and vendors. She pleaded guilty to fraud in September and was later deported, authorities said.
The couple, who had volunteered for the festival for years, said they learned just two days before the November 2009 opening that the bills hadn't been paid.
They wound up paying about $5,000 out of pocket to ensure that the show did, in fact, go on.
The Jackson Heights Film and Food Festival also fell apart that same year after the Eagle Theater and then the Jackson Triplex closed without warning - leaving the festival without a venue.
But that doesn't mean there isn't a hunger in Queens for the kind of movies rarely shown in multiplexes, said David Schwartz, chief curator at the Museum of the Moving Image.
"The audience is out there," he said. But "there are not that many venues that show international and independent films."
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