Event: Allentown Art Festival
Activities: Allentown Art Festival is an annual arts festival held in the Allentown neighborhood of Buffalo, New York. Each June, this collective weekend sidewalk art display attracts tens of thousands of pedestrians to Buffalo. In 2007, it celebrated its 50th anniversary.Controversy has surrounded the festival in recent years. Organizers were engaged in a long and public dispute with local merchants, ultimately barring them from displaying merchandise in front of stores during festival hours. Complaints have also been levied against the festival's organizers for the limited scope of presenters allowed to present, as well as the strict refusal to allow any creative street art, or music.This controversy came to a head when in 2007 the Music is Art festival, a charity event founded by Goo Goo Dolls member Robby Takac, was successfully prevented from operating on adjoining streets by festival organizers as it had the previous three years. This alternative festival was created as a direct protest to the limited scope of what has become one of the largest "arts" festivals in the Great Lakes region.

Event: New York Film Festival

Activities: The New York Film Festival is the one of the most important film festivals in the United States, first held in 1963 in New York. The films are selected by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.The non-competitive festival was established by Amos Vogel and Richard Roud. The present director is Richard Peña, who is also the chairman of the Selection Committee which includes Kent Jones, editor at-large of Film Comment magazine, and critics Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly, Scott Foundas of L.A. Weekly, and J. Hoberman of The Village Voice.The festival is also known for its several sidebars, programs running concurrently with the main festival. These include the annual Views from the Avant-Garde, a showcase of non-narrative, experimental film, which has been running since 1997.