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| Scene from Gay by Dawn |
During the summer Film Festival, in July, 2005, the first ever People’s Choice Award for Film was held. Mike Evers, Chairperson of the Festival Film Committee, explained, "This year, we asked the Film Festival audience members to choose the film they liked the best. By an overwhelming margin, they chose the horror comedy film, Gay by Dawn. The second favorite choice was the animation, Dear Sweet Emma. Other significant favorites were Flyaway, Wages of Sin, and Green Thumb."
For many years, People’s Choice Awards have been a regular feature at Festival Art Exhibits, such as Painting and Photography. During the Festival, the public is invited to cast ballots for their favorite works of art, with the winners announced on the last day of the Festival. This year, the Film Committee decided to extend PC Awards to Film.
The Winter Film Festival was held Thursday evening February 16, 2006, in Abbot Hall.
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Film Festival Committee |
| Chairperson: |
Mike Evers |
| Committee: |
Barbara Papish, Sandy Rhoads, Bill Smalley, Lauri Stolarz, Caryle
Anne Wildfield |
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Ground Zero/Sacred Ground
Karen Aqua
9 minutes
This film was not included in the summer program.
Lobster Legs
Corey Corcoran and Lisa Needham
4:30 minutes
A short film from Lynn’s Raw Art Works (RAW) Real to Reel Film School shows Lisa Needham’s family digging into a mound of freshly boiled lobsters with great gusto. Eavesdrop on their party! Send them your spare paper towels!
Wages of Sin
Alfred Thomas Catalfo
18 minutes
A major league ballplayer with an inflated sense of self-worth walks out of spring training in an attempt to force the owners to renegotiate his contract. Then he has an accident and wakes up to a world in which ballplayers are minimum wage workers and plumbers are superstars. Alfred Thomas Catalfo is a screenwriter, actor, former MTV, singer-songwriter, MTV video producer — and a trial attorney in Dover, New Hampshire.
Andaluz
Karen Aqua and Joanna Priestley
6 minutes
An animated film inspired by the culture, landscape, and architecture of Andalucia, the region of Southern Spain where the filmmakers spent time several years ago. Bright colors slip, slide, and dance to an infectious flamenco soundtrack. A winner of film festival awards from San Francisco to Boston. The two artists are long time filmmakers; Karen Aqua has won numerous prizes in her lengthy career and has animated segments for the “Sesame Street” television program.
Flyaway
John Cernak and Danny Oakley
9 minutes
A bittersweet animated tale about a wooden toy plane who tries what it can only dream of doing, and succeeds, if only for a moment. Flyaway is a film produced by Out of Our Minds Animation Studios in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (www.outofourmindsstudios.com) and has won numerous awards (17) in film festivals around the country.
Les Pantins
Benoit Maestre
14 minutes
This silent film traveled from Toulouse, France, to be in the Film Festival. Les Pantins (The Puppets) tells the story of a traveling actors’ troupe preparing for a show in a small French village. Disaster strikes one of the actors and everyone is on edge. Benoit Maestre is a 29-year old filmmaker who has done a number of short documentaries and experimental fiction films.
Deuces Wild
Emily Roberts
3:30 minutes
Emily Roberts made her appearance last year at the Film Festival with Empire of Dirt, a short film she made when she was in high school. This year, the Brown University student has submitted a moving animated piece about what it means to be left out in a world where pairing is the norm.
Green Thumb
Peter Pa
5:30 minutes
Another short film from Raw Art Works, this is the filmmaker’s heartfelt — and humorous — tribute to his mother, whose life encompassed experiences that would have taxed the endurance (and sanity) of a lesser person.
Dear Sweet Emma
John Cernak
5:30 minutes
She’s the lady everybody in the town of Fishtickle loves–but whatever became of her husband? He just disappeared, and after a while they all gave up looking. We are invited into the lady’s house for a look around and we see a different side of this paragon for whom “cleaning the house” means more than dusting the furniture. This is another animation from Out of Our Minds Studios (see Flyaway Minutes), and has won numerous awards at many film festivals.
The 1000 Mile Step
Angela Santora
3 minutes
In this entry from Raw Art Works, Angela Santora shows us how she "gets away from it all" in the comfort of her room and her posters.
Girl with Pail
Paul Van Ness
4 minutes
This unusual film shows how a fragment of a video can inspire a painting–and you see the painting actually being made before your eyes. Paul Van Ness is a painter and filmmaker and the director of Van Ness Creative Group, a production company in Beverly.
Gay by Dawn
Jonathan London
10 minutes
It’s a dark night in the woods, and four gents are telling each other ghost stories in this comedy horror film. Things get out of control when one of them tells about a man lost in the woods. Chaos ensues and homophobia gets a well deserved skewering. Definitely not for the squeamish. Jonathan London is a filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles. Gay by Dawn was made while he was a student at Columbia University and has been shown in film festivals both in the United States and abroad and has won four awards.
Weakest Shade of Blue
Lisa Needham and Corey Corcoran
3:30 minutes
A music video directed by two Raw Arts filmmakers set to the song by the Boston-based Pernice Brothers, this film, a “rumble and love fest”(according to the Boston Phoenix)between karate kids and little ballerinas, was shot on the beach at Salem Forest River Park. The video was accepted for airplay on MTV and MTV2. |
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