Filmmakers

Common kept his cool last week — and his artistic faith. While controversy swirled around his appearance at the White House for a poetry reading, the rapper-actor was anchoring a movie in Baltimore that should quiet even those pundits who tried to paint him as a gangsta. With concentration and intensity, he was helping first-time writer-director Sheldon Candis and a superb ensemble flesh out a script that proves (among other things) that gangsterism doesn't pay. "LUV" — it stands for "Learning Uncle Vincent" — captures the turning point in the life of an 11-year-old boy named Woody (Michael Rainey Jr)

The 2011 Maryland Film Festival showcases an extraordinary number of movies by filmmakers who grew up in Baltimore or have adopted it as their hometown. Here are a feature director, a documentary maker and a creator of avant-garde fantasy talking about making movies in Mobtown. Josh Slates' "Small Pond" is about a girl who's floundering in the provincial life of Columbia, Mo. Slates says he filmed it in the summer of 2009 as part of a brief homecoming and sabbatical in the Show-Me State.

Werner's luncheonette, a downtown fixture since 1950 that was a gathering spot for politicians and lawyers as well as office workers and citizens serving jury duty, is closing Friday. Coming just a few months after the demise of Burke's restaurant, the closing of Werner's leaves downtown Baltimore without a single eatery dating from before the urban renaissance of the early 1960s — at least none with the pedigree of Werner's. One by one, they've closed: the House of Welsh in 1998, Marconi's in 2005 and Martick's in 2008, not to mention dozens of luncheonettes, diners and cafeterias.

Jason Winer comes to feature films from TV's "Modern Family. " But he always dreamed that someday he'd make movies. These are three of the filmmakers who helped shape his approach to directing: Woody Allen "From an early age, I was oddly into Woody Allen — like, when I was 7 years old. From a very early age, I enjoyed watching 'Annie Hall.' I watched it again in preparation for 'Arthur' because it was another iconic New York movie. I was watching it and wondering, 'What did I possibly love about it when I was 8 years old?

Maryland Film Festival director Jed Dietz needed a smart, distinctive newsperson to host his annual fundraiser's centerpiece attraction. Who could be authoritative and engaging when asking a panel of Oscar-nominated directors, "Are documentary filmmakers the new journalists?" His top pick was always Meredith Vieira, co-host of "The Today Show" and the host of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. " Viera said Thursday, "I told him it's a little off-point for me because I'm doing a morning show now. I can't speak to what the landscape is like for documentaries at the networks.

Matt Porterfield is a hard-knocks poet — a rhapsodist in black and blue — whose work gains strength from its Baltimore roots. Porterfield located his first two movies, 2007's "Hamilton" and his current "Putty Hill," quite ruthlessly in the Baltimore neighborhhoods that give these films their names. So acute is his focus on authentic textures and characters — and so revealing are the epiphanies he ignites on the fly — that these tales of working-class endurance and rebellion have reverberated around the world.

Documentaries are the most exciting conversation-starters in contemporary American movies — and when they earn Academy Awards, their influence soars into the stratosphere. Winners like "Taxi to the Dark Side" and "The Cove" have shaped international discussions about human and animal rights. No wonder the Maryland Film Festival gala on March 11 will debate the question: "Are documentary filmmakers the new journalists?" Documentaries give the Academy a needed dose of gravitas.

The national publicity for "Tiny Furniture" focused on this brainy, zany and engaging youth comedy as a veiled autobiography. Like her heroine, Aura, 24-year-old writer-director Lena Dunham graduated from Oberlin. Her mother and Aura's are New York artists who specialize in photographing miniatures. Dunham's sister, like Aura's, is a prize-winning student poet. To make the art-life symmetry perfect: Dunham plays Aura; her mother, Laurie Simmons, plays Siri, Aura's mother; and her sister, Grace Dunham, plays Nadine, Aura's sister.

Baltimore's bawdy John Waters and teenage heartthrob Justin Bieber have a little something in common. Facial hair. Justin's, of course, hangs over his eyes — those famously floppy bangs. Waters' creeps across his upper lip. And now, young Justin, one of the hottest stars on the planet, has let the world know he covets the filmmaker's trademark, pencil-thin mustache. The two shared the sofa last week as guests on Britain's "The Graham Norton Show. " Bieber was there being a heartthrob, while Waters promoted his book "Role Models.

Chris LaMartina has loved a good horror story for as long as he can remember. "My earliest memories are me demanding that my godmother sit down at the typewriter, and I'd say, 'All right, Lulu, sit down at the typewriter and I'm going to tell you a story,'" says LaMartina, who at 25 has four horror movies as a director on his resume, earning a reputation as one of Baltimore's favorite cinematic chillmeisters. "She still has all these stories, all typed up. They're all non sequiturs, just creepy image after creepy image.