California director to show Oscar-nominated works at Gretna film festival

For Jay Rosenblatt, making short movies is a labor of love. 

“if you see my films, you’ll see that they’re not very commercial. So I’ve never made a living from films,” California-based filmmaker Rosenblatt said during a telephone interview with LebTown. “I always had a day job. And many times it was a full-time job. They take such a long time when you’re working full-time.” 

Rosenblatt’s short films were nominated for Academy Awards in 2021 and 2022, his full-time jobs have been film-industry based, and he’s won over 100 film festival awards. 

He will discuss his movies and show two of his Academy-nominated films, When We Were Bullies from 2021 and How Do You Measure a Year? from 2022, during the 2nd annual Mount Gretna International Film Festival. The full schedule can be found here.

The two films, set to be shown at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Mount Gretna Playhouse, are in addition to a slate of various short works from nominated film directors to be aired over the two-day film festival this weekend as part of the 51st annual Mount Gretna Outdoor Art Show. The film festival is free with admission to the art show.

Rosenblatt said both films are based on personal experiences. Bullies focuses on an event that happened 50 years ago when he was in school, while Year was shot on his daughter’s birthday, from the time she was 2 until she turned 18. 

How Do You Measure a Year?

When asked by LebTown if Year is a love letter to his daughter, Rosenblatt said it is much more than that. 

“Yeah, I mean, I think so,” Rosenblatt said in response to the question. “I think that’s a nice way of putting it, and I would say her participation was like a love letter to me. Because she gave up time on her birthday and, well, you kind of have to see the film but you get that feeling at the end of the film.”

As might be expected, his daughter always wasn’t a willing participant over the years.

“There’s some resistance in some years, there’s the teenage years. There’s a lot of different phases, but ultimately she’s very appreciative that we did this,” Rosenblatt said.

When We Were Bullies

“That film is based on a fifth-grade incident where myself and actually most of the class bullied someone else and I go back and speak to all my fifth-grade classmates about what they remember from this one incident,” said Rosenblatt. “And it’s a very personal film and also almost feels like at times a detective story trying to find these people.”

The background work for this film was, at times, difficult.

“Since the fifth-grade incident, some people had died. I don’t want to give it all away but it goes to different places and there are a lot of unbelievable synchronistic – and what I would call in quotes – coincidences that happened which were kind of mind-boggling. That led me to make this film almost like the universe was saying, ‘You have to explore this further.’”

Filmmaking styles

Rosenblatt said he employs several artistic styles in his filmmaking.

“I have two styles of filmmaking. One is using film footage, archival footage, and home movies, and things like that and making kind of a collage,” Rosenblatt said. “And the other is very personal. I would call them almost diary films. So When We Were Bullies is the first method, which is more collage, mixture of lots of different formats. There’s some interviews, there’s different styles. And How Do You Measure a Year? is just a very personal film that I did with my daughter.”

Rosenblatt will be doing double duty while he is at the international film festival, which is held in memory of local actor/director Michael Evan Deitzler, who died in March 2023 at age 30. Deitzler was a Lebanon County native who had a career at Warren Lotas in California after participating in Cedar Crest High School’s broadcast program and graduating magna cum laude with a film degree from Temple University. 

“I’m showing two of my recent films in a program, and then I’m gonna do, I assume, a Q&A about those films. They’re both short docs that are about 30 minutes each, and so that’s one program,” Rosenblatt said. “And then I think at the Sunday brunch, which is just for filmmakers attending the festival, I think they want me to just talk about festival strategies, you know, how to get your films into festivals and how to go about doing that. I also was a film festival director for 15 years. So I have perspective from a festival perspective, but also been a filmmaker for over three decades.”

Rosenblatt has had an interesting career. He started it by obtaining a master’s degree in counseling psychology and previously worked as a therapist.

LebTown asked him how he incorporates that background into his filmmaking. 

“The same motivation that I had to study counseling and work in the counseling field for a little while is behind my filmmaking too, which is, I really, forgive me if this sounds grandiose, but I really want to add to the healing of people,” Rosenblatt said. “So even though filmmaking is a lot different and it affects a wide scope of folks as opposed to counseling, which is very individualized, the same motivation of just wanting to add to the healing of people or groups is there.”

That knowledge informs Rosenblatt’s filmmaking process.

“My films are – not all of them but many of them – are very psychological, and that, I think, comes from my background in counseling and psychology. That probably affects even the way I conduct interviews, you know, and probably provides a certain style of listening,” he added.

The psychological nature of his films may be why he’s won so many awards.

“I guess one of the first major awards I got was from this wonderful festival in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s the Ann Arbor Film Festival and it’s more geared towards experimental films.

“And one of my early films called The Smell of Burning Ants won the Best of Festival Award,” Rosenblatt said. “And that was quite satisfying to know that. I’ve had a few awards like that since, but that was the first of its kind.”

Being juried for a well-known film festival is also an awarding experience.

Nine of his films have been at the Sundance Film Festival, nine of his films have screened at IDFA and several have shown on HBO, PBS, and the Sundance Channel. Rosenblatt is a recipient of a Guggenheim, USA Artists, and a Rockefeller Fellowship. He has been a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 2002 and served on the executive committee of the Documentary Branch for 12 years.

“Sometimes it’s not just awards, it’s where films screen. I’ve had several films at Sundance, and just getting into Sundance is like an award in itself. I did win an award at Sundance, too (Human Remains), and that was quite an honor. There’s a lot of international festivals that some of the films have won awards at, which were great, too,” he said.

Then there are the two Oscar-nominated films that will be shown this weekend.

“I mean, certainly an Academy Oscar nomination has a big impact and almost felt like a lifetime achievement for me. Not that I was always thinking of that, but I felt like it was a culmination in some ways. And the amount of attention my work got from that was very satisfying,” Rosenblatt said. “Because festivals, you know, maybe a few hundred people might see your film, whereas once you enter that other world, the Oscar world, it’s thousands of people seeing your work. I want my work seen. I want it to have an impact. So that was quite an honor, but also very satisfying.”

If you go

The 2nd annual Mount Gretna International Film Festival will feature short films over five genres: drama, horror, comedy, documentary and high school filmmaker. Films will be shown Saturday and Sunday, with Saturday afternoon’s program featuring Rosenblatt’s two Oscar-nominated films.

Awards will be presented to the top three films in each category, plus craft, hometown, audience, and young contributor honors. The festival concludes Sunday afternoon with Fact or Fib, a game facilitated by comedian Earl David Reed, and then awards for every category, the Hometown Spotlight (local filmmaker), Crafting, as well as the Vita Maxima. These films contain mature themes. As such, they are not suitable for children and parental discretion is advised.