The weekend's offerings included a silent film with live music accompaniment (Underworld), an investigation into just what people around the world think of the United States (The Listening Project), a couple of squabbling Bigfoot hunters (Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie), a drama centering on a black man trying to get in touch with his heritage (White Lies, Black Sheep), a look at Harry Potter fanatics (We Are Wizards), a golden-age 3-D movie starring Rita Hayworth (Miss Sadie Thompson) and a short starring a curious mollusk (The Inquisitive Snail).
Like we said, something for almost anyone. Plus, the festival offers no prizes and is far enough removed from Hollywood and New York to be off the radar screens of the major studios. That left filmmakers free to simply show their films, chat at length with their audiences and sample the works of others.
"This is a really hospitable film festival," said Daniel Robin, whose short, My Olympic Summer, was part of the opening-night program. "I'm happy whenever my film is shown in front of somebody, and they get to ask questions."
FOR THE RECORD - An article in Monday's editions on the Maryland Film Festival misspelled the name of one of the attendees interviewed. His name is Michael Gamerman.
The Sun regrets the error.
"It's been unbelievable," said Dietz, the festival's founder and tireless advocate. "When we started [in 1999], the question was, could we do things, in our own way, that would make this one have its own personality. I think it very distinctly does."
The range of activity didn't end with the festival's official offerings. The Metro Gallery, across the street from the Charles, offered its own minifestival, Videopolis, featuring live performances from Protomen (specializing in music inspired by the Mega Man video game) and two days of experimental shorts and documentaries. Special-effects fan Ryan Graham was handing out packets of fake blood and hoping to get something started. Ticket buyers for Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story, were handed insurance policies, guaranteeing their heirs $1,000 if they died of fright while watching the film.
And over at the Maryland Institute, College of Art's Brown center, local artist Billy Pappas displayed his portrait of Marilyn Monroe, an astoundingly detailed pencil drawing he spent 8 1/2 years producing. His quest to, as he puts it, "take realism, naturalism and set a new precedent," was detailed in Julie Checkoway's Waiting for Hockney. The film's audience members, who after the screening could take magnifying glass in hand and look at Pappas' Marilyn close-up (with an armed security guard standing by), came away impressed.
"From far away, it looks like a standard drawing," said Stephen Doolittle, a MICA grad student who lives in the city and saw the film. `Close up, it's almost breathtaking. The details are amazing. There was a moment where I said, `Oh, my God.'"
chris.kaltenbach@baltsun.com
sam.sessa@baltsun.com
