The UnLonely Film Festival: Best of Fest
The Tables
About the Filmmaker
Jon Bunning grew up on Air Force bases around the Midwest eventually landing in Omaha, Nebraska. After college, he moved to New York to pursue a career as an advertising creative director.
In recent years he branched out into photography and documentary filmmaking. His photo essay on Bhutan was recognized by National Geographic. His first two films were shot entirely by himself, playing the roles of director, producer, cinematographer, and sound recordist.
His second documentary The Tables premiered at the acclaimed Ashland Independent Film Festival where it won the audience award for Best Short Documentary. It went on to win over a dozen awards for best documentary and screened at several prestigious festivals including DOC NYC, Nashville Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Oscar® qualifying Florida Film Festival.
Dive Even Deeper
Try the following to connect further with the film’s story…
Visualize your community, your heaven.
Consider for a moment what one of the players said: ‘When you find your people, you find your heaven.’
- Think about a time when you experienced a deep sense of community and belonging.
- What made the community work so well for you?
- Take a piece of paper and a pen/pencil and draw a flow chart or other diagram representing the group/community/place and the connections that you made.
12 Comments
Join in the conversation:
Here are a few thoughts about the film.
Nice story about co-existence in New York, the kind that is not limited to one social class
everyone needs someplace to go and enjoy life and company.
it is a beautiful thing when people from all walks of life are accepted based on being human and now what they can offer or provide. A love for the sport is all they have in common and everyone is open and friend and genuinely good hearted when they are at the Tennis Table. This is a great video.
Loved this. Makes me want to go back to NYC and watch this. I love random community gatherings like this.
I liked the film and how it demanstrates the different classes of people with the same interests and how they share a commanality and have made a community for themselves.
Great job paying it forward by the gentleman who sponsored the installation of the tables in the park. He found joy, love and value in a sport and spread it within the community. Great role model.
Nice film. This represents the bonding of people in different walks of life because they have this commonality – ping pong.
People should have some place where they can turn to to connect within self and/or to connect with others by doing things they can share with, socially.
nice film – interesting
Community.
This is such a NY story. I like the unexpected twist of the eloquent homeless man and the hustler ping pong champion who is responsible for all of the tables. Never would have guessed! The filmmaker is a good story teller and the players make you love them.
Just wondered if you’re a New Yorker? I grew up in Ohio and never saw this sort of mixing between races and classes there, though it would have been nice. New Yorkers still scare me a little, even when they’re just playing ping pong but I liked this story!