Former Cinefamily ED Linked to NY Film Festival and New California Nonprofit
Oct 9: Updated to include a response from Belove.
Following months of rumors on social media, organizers have announced the schedule for the New People’s Cinema Club (NPCC) — a film festival taking place in New York later this month. According to the festival website, NPCC is “the annual festival hosted by the Children's Cinema Resource, a California 501(c)(3) dedicated to promoting and developing transgressive and discounted art and film.”
The festival runs from October 20 through October 27 at multiple venues, with most events held at Cinema Village in New York’s Greenwich Village. On the website, the festival’s tagline — “The worst is yet to come” — sits atop an illustration whose elements might be familiar to someone who spends too much time online.
The festival appears to be tapping into themes consonant with the so-called "intellectual dark web." A parody Twitter account is currently satirizing the NPCC as the Anti-Woke Film Festival.
Who is the nonprofit Children's Cinema Resource?
Hadrian Belove registered Children's Cinema Resource (CCR) as a nonprofit with the California Secretary of State’s office on August 17, 2021. (The Cinefamily had also been registered as a nonprofit before its collapse.) CCR’s address was listed in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Belove lives. (County Assessor records indicate the property is owned by Hadrian Belove and his brother.) The California Attorney General’s Registry of Charitable Trusts confirms CCR is located at the same Lincoln Heights address — though the Registry also indicates that the additional documentation typical of nonprofits has not been provided.
Secretary of State records show that in addition to CCR, Belove has in recent months formed other film-related entities. In June 2021, The New Underground LLC was established at the same Lincoln Heights address, though paperwork filed only two months later terminated this company. (According to a festival organizer, at one point the New People’s Cinema Club was going to be called the New Underground Film Festival.)
Cinefamily Accountability has reached out to the organizers of the NPCC for comment. Private communications, however, confirm Belove’s involvement. In a text message soliciting a filmmaker’s participation, NPCC organizer Kate Levitt indicates that “[the film festival’s] primary investor is Hadrian’s new film incubator.” (Screenshots of text communications were provided to Cinefamily Accountability earlier this summer.)
Possibly a different Hadrian?
Who is trying to hide what, and why?
Belove’s name appears on none of the public materials associated with NPCC: not its website, nor Instagram, nor Twitter. Three contact names are provided, though none are Belove’s.
Shortly after Belove submitted papers with the California Secretary of State to form CCR, new papers were quickly filed — the very next week — in which Belove’s address was replaced by that of a Burbank law office.
Reached by email, Belove states “I didn’t file that non profit [CCR]” and “I wasn’t aware they used my name” on the paperwork. Regarding CCR being located at Belove’s home, he states “They used my house as temp mailing address.” Belove acknowledged his connection to New Underground, which he described as “a dropped idea, before we went another way.” He declined to explain his connection to either CCR or NPCC, though he suggested additional announcements would be forthcoming, noting “all will be revealed in due course.” “No one is hiding anything,” he added.
Yes, this may be a weird Three’s Company-esque series of mishaps and coincidences, made worse by a blogger with a penchant for public records. That said, these actions would also be consistent with an effort to scrub the public record of a connection to Belove. If the latter is the case, one wonders to what extent the story may be “Blacklisted artist toils without recognition,” to what extent the story may be “Artists wary of association with noted sex pest,” and to what extent the story may be something else entirely.
Cinefamily Accountability has reached out to CCR and NPCC organizers, and will provide updates as available. For what it’s worth, there has not been any press coverage of either CCR or NPCC to date. It is not clear there even would be press coverage for what appears to be a “four-walled” festival. As The Guardian explained in 2015:
A week on a single screen at a theatre like the Quad or Cinema Village can be bought by anybody with a few thousand dollars to spare. The practice is known in the industry as “four-walling”: film-makers or distributors pay theatre-owners anywhere between $2,000 and $18,000, depending on the venue and options, for the privilege of screening for the general public, retaining any ticket sales and reaping the benefits of any attendant coverage by the press. “I think of four-walling as kind of the self-publishing of the film world,” Scherstuhl says. It’s a way for artists with few other recourses to present their work to a paying audience – assuming any such audience can be persuaded to come.