Harford CC Art Professor's Short Film Receives Honor

BEL AIR, MD —Harford Community College art professor Heidi Neff's short film "The Long Goodbye" has been selected for the NYC Downtown Short Film Festival, the school has announced.

The film festival, in its 17th year, is a program sponsored of DMAC-Duo Multicultural Arts Center, a non-profit organization. The mission of DMAC is to create, promote and celebrate multicultural arts through theater, music, dance, art and film.

In the "The Long Goodbye," which runs just under 7 minutes, Neff used her newly-developed animation skills —she is primarily a painter —to give a frame-by-frame account of every day beginning on Election Day 2020 and ending on Inauguration Day 2021.

When the project had its virtual premiere in January at Brooklyn's Amos Eno Gallery, the work was described as a personal diary reflecting on all possible outcomes —and resulting worries —of the time period. The film is a mix of political cartoons, personal stories, hallucinations and doom-scrolling paranoia, according to press materials.

The work originally was projected on gallery walls in addition to being available on YouTube.

Speaking last winter, Neff explained why she called the work "The Long Goodbye."

"For many of us eagerly awaiting a new start in 2021, hope has moved from New Year's Eve to Inauguration Day. To what – or to whom exactly – are we saying goodbye this January? Are we bidding farewell to a power-hungry autocrat? Or parting ways with our Republic as we know it? How many more Americans will we be forced to part with due to the pandemic? Or will we, optimistically, dispense the necessary vaccines and finally begin saying goodbye to the virus itself" she said.

Neff's husband Paul Chuffo created the soundtrack for the short film.

Watch Heidi Neff's short film "The Long Goodbye"