Community organizers are excited to announce the Jamaica Plain Film Festival, a three-day celebration of work by local, emerging filmmakers from Jamaica Plain, Boston, and the wider New England Area.

One of the featured films is Mayor of Lowell, a short recounting the story of the election of America’s first Cambodian Mayor, Sokhary Chau. Chau, who served as Mayor from 2022-2023 and still sits on the Lowell City Council, will attend the showing and take part in a Q&A, along with the filmmakers.

Adding more local flavor, Khmer dancers from Indras Artistic Creations of Lowell will open the festival with a performance ahead of the short film about Chau.

“To be able to uplift our community across two weekends, back-to-back, is a rare and exciting gift,” said Hunter Berube, Executive Producer of Mayor of Lowell.

Berube is also Director of IMAG9NE Film Festival, taking place September 12 and 13, said:

The Jamaica Plain Film Festival will held Friday, September 5 to Sunday, September 7, 2025, in the gardens of the historic Loring Greenough House, an 18th century Boston Landmark, volunteer-run community center founded by women in 1924, and home of the popular Thursdays on the Lawn.

It is presented by The Loring Greenough House in collaboration with local filmmakers including Imag9ne Media, behind DARE 2 IMAG9NE film festival in Lowell, MA.

The festival is founded, organized, and run entirely by local volunteers.

The evening line ups can be found here. A second line-up of shorts to be held in the house during the morning and afternoon of Saturday, September 6 and Sunday, September 7, will be announced shortly.

Other highlights include:

• Salma’s Home; the feature debut of Jamaica Plain-based Palestinian-Jordanian director, Hanadi Elyan, on three generations of Jordanian women. Q&A afterwards with Elyan.
• Dawnland, an Emmy-winning documentary on stolen native children in Maine, by Jamaica Plain-based director, Adam Mazo, and The Upstander Project. Q&A afterwards with Mazo.
• Anyuka, an experimental, animated short on JP-based filmmaker Maya Erdelyi’s grandmother, who escaped the Holocaust. Q&A afterwards with Erdelyi.
• Roxbury, a documentary short by Suffolk University faculty member, Daniel Weidknecht, on discriminatory housing policies in Boston’s historic, African American neighborhood.
• Central Square, an abstract animation by filmmaker Daniel Rowe inspired by commuting through Cambridge, MA.