Filmmakers

Mike Psenicska says he's tried to be a good sport about his unwitting big-screen debut in the blockbuster Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. He went to see the movie with his family. He has answered strangers' questions about his sudden celebrity, has smiled for pictures and, he says, even autographed one teenager's wrist. But the 64-year-old Perry Hall driving instructor says he didn't seek the attention, and he was hoping yesterday's snow would allow news of his lawsuit against the filmmakers to come out without too much notice.

Festivals are fun, unless you're organizing one. But Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival for nine years, says it's still fun. Seriously. The man is confident. ("It's going great.") And well he should be. This year's event runs May 3-6 and is set to be bigger than ever, including a first-time filmmaker tent village across the street from the Charles Theatre. "There will be interactions with filmmakers, panels, workshops, screenings and all of that is free," says Dietz, 59, a father of three who lives in Roland Park with his wife, Dr. Julia McMillan, a Johns Hopkins University pediatrics professor.

Five years ago, Maryland Film Festival founder Jed Dietz was struggling for something appropriate to kick off Baltimore's annual celebration of all things cinematic. What he and his staff came up with has since become a tradition, something separating it from the scores of other festivals that dot the U.S. every year. The 2002 festival opened with "10 Under 20," a program of 10 films, all running 20 minutes or less, on subjects ranging from dead kitties to body language to Cupid's misdirected arrows.

It's somehow fitting that "The Blair Witch Project" should be released the same day as "Eyes Wide Shut."Whereas "Eyes Wide Shut" is opulent to the point of excess, "The Blair Witch Project" is lean and spare, virtually free of visible production values.Whereas "Eyes Wide Shut" is the final stroke from a cinematic genius, "The Blair Witch Project" is the first film of two thirtyish auteurs.And whereas "Eyes Wide Shut" features two huge stars and has all the emotional immediacy of a storefront window, "The Blair Witch Project" features a cast of unknowns and packs an emotional wallop entirely disproportionate to its meager pedigree.

If you missed "Waco: The Rules of Engagement" during its July Fourth weekend run at the Charles Theatre, you can still catch the Oscar-nominated documentary today, when it has its last screening in Baltimore."

NASHVILLE, Tenn.-- Jon Alpert and Maryann DeLeo are veteran documentary filmmakers, whose projects have taken them across the globe and back, and into subject matters as hard-hitting as prison, rape, and drug abuse.But nothing prepared them for the hassles of constructing "A Cinderella Season: The Lady Vols Fight Back", a 75-minute look at the Tennessee women's basketball team's 1996-97 season, which premieres at 7 p.m. Thursday m. on HBO."We've been to Third World countries where we've had an easier time, but this was worth it," said Alpert, who along with DeLeo is traveling with the Lady Vols this year to drum up publicity for their film.

"Divine Trash," Baltimore filmmaker Steve Yeager's documentary about the life and work of cult auteur John Waters, won the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday.Yeager, who directed the film and co-produced it with Cindy Miller, was still "in a state of shock" when reached by telephone just minutes after receiving the award.The Filmmakers Trophy is voted on by the dramatic and documentary directors who are in competition at Sundance. This year, 31 filmmakers voted "Divine Trash" their favorite documentary.

Putting the finishing touches on "Little Castles" isn't the only thing keeping independent filmmaker Skizz Cyzyk busy these days. He's also preparing to serve as host for the first MicroCineFest, a film festival he promises will showcase "big ambition on a little budget."Set to run Oct. 1-4, the festival will include local and nationalfilmmakers. Scheduled highlights includeSuki Hawley's "Half Cocked" (set for opening night), the tale of five penniless teens who steal a van full of music equipment and hit the road.

I did not think there'd ever be a television documentary about the black experience to rival PBS' "Eyes on the Prize." But "The Promised Land," which starts tomorrow night at 9 on the Discovery cable channel, is at least in the same league.It's impossible to talk about "Promised Land" without talking about "Eyes." They cover much of the same ground, but go about it in different ways.Whereas "Eyes" followed the birth and early years of the civil rights movement in the South, "Promised Land" focuses on a few rural Mississippians, tracing their journey from the cotton fields they share-cropped north to the promised land of Chicago.

Gideon Brower describes his 13-minute film, "Valentine," as being about "a spring blood drive at a Baltimore boy's school where the kids are trying to figure out what women and romance are all about. When a French nurse arrives, they're lining up to give blood."This is not a movie you'll likely see at the mall multiplex.The unnamed school, by the way, is Gilman in north Baltimore, of which this 28-year-old filmmaker is an alumnus.Mr. Brower's quirky little story is one of nine short films by Maryland filmmakers being shown in a Rosebud Awards Show case at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Baltimore Museum of Art. A question-and-answer period with the filmmakers and a post-show reception at Donna's are also part of the evening.

It's a breezy morning in eastern Annapolis. Sea gulls squawk overhead. Boats bob beside a dock. And on the deck of a tied-up charter vessel, two folk musicians in ball caps strum a shuffle on a banjo and ukelele, looking every inch the easy-living Jimmy Buffetts of the Chesapeake. It's the final day of shooting for "Seize the Bay," the latest creation from Daphne Glover and Bob Ferrier, filmmakers from Severna Park, and as the two roll videotape, neither one can suppress a smile. "Fantastic," says Ferrier, the director, clapping his hands as the music ends.

A record number of teams, 53 as of Friday afternoon, are out frantically making movies in and around Baltimore this weekend, part of the annual exercise in creative cinematic anarchy otherwise known as the 48-Hour Film Project. "There will be at least 500 people out on the streets," said Rob Hatch, project organizer for Baltimore. "If they're aiming something at you, it's just a camera." Under the competition's rules, teams of filmmakers have exactly 48 hours to make a film between four and seven minutes long.

Revolutionary Road is a small-spirited depiction of a golden couple in mid-1950s America. As they crash on their own failed hopes and dreams and fall into the trap of a comfortable, convenient life, you wonder whether you'd keep watching were it not for Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The movie never draws you into their summer of discontent. Revolutionary Road isn't just a failed literary adaptation. It's a failure of the worst kind: It doesn't even make you want to read Richard Yates' deservedly legendary book.

Forty years ago, George Romero and a bunch of his buds threw together Night of the Living Dead, a piece of happily primitive filmmaking that scared the pants off the midnight horror crowd and inspired a whole generation of zombie films doubling as cultural commentary. With Diary of the Dead, Romero goes back to the beginning, only this time the amateurish look is calculated and the resulting film far less effective - if only because a handful of filmmakers have beaten him to the punch.

Mike Psenicska says he's tried to be a good sport about his unwitting big-screen debut in the blockbuster Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. He went to see the movie with his family. He has answered strangers' questions about his sudden celebrity, has smiled for pictures and, he says, even autographed one teenager's wrist. But the 64-year-old Perry Hall driving instructor says he didn't seek the attention, and he was hoping yesterday's snow would allow news of his lawsuit against the filmmakers to come out without too much notice.

When Kevin Costner told an interviewer that the writers of his serial-killer thriller Mr. Brooks presented it to him as a potential trilogy, warning lights should have flashed for him and everyone else. Was that why the already-bloated film floated the suggestion that serial killing could be hereditary? Did the filmmakers envision a Daughter of Mr. Brooks down the line? The success of the Star Wars movies and The Lord of the Rings films have roused trilogy-mania among Hollywood moviemakers.

Maybe it's time for filmmakers to try telling one story at a time. Already this spring, Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End have committed the sin of cinematic overkill by trying to cram too many stories into a single film. And now Mr. Brooks, with Kevin Costner as a model citizen by day, serial killer by night, joins the list of the jam-packed. In addition to the story line centering on Mr. Brooks, there's one involving Demi Moore as an heiress-turned-detective with some serious parental issues to work out and another with Dane Cook as a serial killer wannabe.

One of the distinctive pleasures of the Maryland Film Festival is the chance it offers to catch filmmakers with their hair down. As wonderful as the films frequently are, the opportunity to actually meet and talk with the people responsible for them -- sometimes after the screening, sometimes in the Charles' lobby, sometimes even over lunch at the North Avenue McDonald's -- is often what makes this festival-going experience so memorable. It's also what separates Maryland's annual celebration of the cinematic arts from the dozens of other festivals staged each year.

Festivals are fun, unless you're organizing one. But Jed Dietz, director of the Maryland Film Festival for nine years, says it's still fun. Seriously. The man is confident. ("It's going great.") And well he should be. This year's event runs May 3-6 and is set to be bigger than ever, including a first-time filmmaker tent village across the street from the Charles Theatre. "There will be interactions with filmmakers, panels, workshops, screenings and all of that is free," says Dietz, 59, a father of three who lives in Roland Park with his wife, Dr. Julia McMillan, a Johns Hopkins University pediatrics professor.

Five years ago, Maryland Film Festival founder Jed Dietz was struggling for something appropriate to kick off Baltimore's annual celebration of all things cinematic. What he and his staff came up with has since become a tradition, something separating it from the scores of other festivals that dot the U.S. every year. The 2002 festival opened with "10 Under 20," a program of 10 films, all running 20 minutes or less, on subjects ranging from dead kitties to body language to Cupid's misdirected arrows.