FilmStew.com

Maine Island Home Sale Triggers Swift Horror Film

2026-05-10T09:00:33.198-07:00

Carter Smith, a fashion photographer who burst onto the filmmaking scene with the 2006 short Bugcrush and 2008 Dreamworks feature The Ruins, has parlayed his professional success over the years into a number of properties on Maine's picturesque Bailey Island.

Last fall, as he was preparing to sell one of the properties, a red house with a boathouse near Mackerel Cove, he realized that the location was "too perfect" to not use for a horror film before he unloaded it. In the span of just six months, he and collaborator Johnny Berchtold put together the microbudget horror project Headlock and fast-tracked filming, which was completed earlier this spring.

Map courtesy: Visit Portland

"It can [typically] take years and years to get indie films made," Smith told the Harpswell Anchor. "Both of us really love that scrappy, DIY feeling of indie filmmaking. We got to write to the space that we had available - and the limitations."

Smith and Berchtold previously worked together on the 2023 thriller The Passenger, with Smith directing and Berchtold starring. Once again, that's the recipe here, with the additional layer of the pair having collaborated for the script as well.

Berchtold stars as Cody, a troubled man who is hired to pack up a summer rental on Bailey Island. As the character's past is gradually revealed, things begin to spiral. Berchtold's other recent acting credits include the 2025 Hulu series Murdaugh: Death in the Family and the 2023 Netflix family film Dog Gone.

There is still one day of filming left to complete for Headlock in Los Angeles, where Smith works and lives part of the time along with New York City. The plan is to release the film in 2027 after, hopefully, a run at top film festivals.

[Carter Smith: Instagram]

AI-Generated Music Video Reboots 1985 Reggae Hit

2026-05-08T08:54:25.905-07:00

Forty years ago, Jamaican singer Audrey Hall appeared on the iconic British TV show Top of the Pops to perform her catchy song "One Dance Won't Do."

The composition, a cheeky response to fellow Jamaican artist Beres Hammond's "What One Dance Can Do," became most notably a hit in the United Kingdom, cracking the Top 20 there. On May 21st, a very different version of the song will screen at the third annual AI Film Awards in Cannes.

Hall, now 78, collaborated extensively with New York-based MVD Entertainment, headed by fellow Jamaican Marcia Deans, to create a new AI-generated music video for the song that will screen at the Cannes soiree. Although the AI Film Awards take place at the Hotel Majestic on the famed Croisette towards the tail end of the Cannes Film Festival, which runs May 12th-23rd, it is not affiliated with the main event.

"Everybody loves "One Dance Won't Do" so much," Hall told the Caribbean National Weekly. "I'm hoping for big things in the future with it, and this could be the beginning."

The music video will screen alongside various other entries including Indian AI animated short The Light. Of course, AI generates immediate mixed feelings when brought up in the mainstream filmmaking community. An international editorial framing this year's Cannes Film Festival, featuring South Korean director Park Chan-wook as head of the jury, is titled "Fear and Curiosity Over AI Shape Cannes."

Hall collaborator Deans also took part in the 2025 AI Film Awards at Cannes, showcasing an AI film about the history of reggae music.

Drama About Last Witch Burning In Ireland Makes Its Way To U.S.

2026-05-06T08:08:13.664-07:00

On May 30th, the Indie X Festival in downtown Los Angeles will host a screening of Bridget, a short film about some tragically infamous events in Ireland in 1895.

The 35-minute drama, directed and co-written by Anne Williamson and brought to life by members of repertory company the Fionn MacCumhaill Players, of which she is a founding member, depicts the final days of 26-year-old seamstress Bridget Cleary. Her husband Michael became convinced that she was a witch and wound up burning her to death with the help of family members. (She may have been immolated first and set on fire after dying.)

Bridget liked to take walks in and around a fort near her home in Ballyvadlea in Tipperary county. When she became sick after doing so one day in the rain, her deluded husband described her as "being away with the fairies."

The murder trial held in April 1895 was an international media sensation and involved a gaggle of defendants. Michael Cleary was ultimately convicted of manslaughter and served 15 years in jail before immigrating to Montreal, Canada.

The short film premiered in Ireland in the fall of 2024 and has had a nice run of local screenings. It made its U.S. debut in March 2026 at the 3rd Annual Westerly Irish Film Fest in Westerly, Rhode Island and has been tapped at the upcoming Indie X Festival in three awards categories: Best Ensemble Cast, Best New Director and Best Young Actor.

Bridget is also scheduled for another and perhaps final Ireland screening May 16th at the historic Abymill Theatre Fethard.

Film Professor Revisits 1981 Kidnapping Of U.S. General

2026-05-04T08:11:36.533-07:00

Max Leonida, a film professor at William Penn University in Iowa, is thoroughly familiar with the case of General James Lee Dozier.

On December 7th, 1981 in Verona, Italy, a pair of Red Brigades terrorists posing as plumbers kidnapped the then-chief of staff of NATO's southern European land forces. Dozier was held for 42 days before being freed in a daring raid in Padua by Italian special police forces.

Leonida, originally from Milan, was an 11-year-old child when the Dozier kidnapping occurred and all these years later, he has made Dozier, a feature-length drama about the case with the help of William Penn students. At the recent Julien Dubuque International Film Festival, the film won the prize for Best Feature.

Leonida, who runs his production company Astarox Productions with his wife Paola, first lived in Los Angeles for 10 years after moving to the U.S., before relocating to the Midwest and Oskaloosa. General Dozier, meanwhile, is still alive, retired in Florida at age 95.

"General Dozier has been asked for the rights to his story by a lot of people," Leonida explained in an interview with the Oskaloosa News. "He never gave the rights to anybody, but he gave the rights to me after we became friends."

"The most beautiful thing has been when we presented the film in Dubuque, Dozier's daughter Cheryl was in the audience for the premiere and she said, 'This movie is one of the most beautiful tributes,' and everybody cried," he added. "To know that you've done something that has been so faithful, so right, so compelling that the Dozier family appreciated it, for me, that is enough."

Distribution plans are still being firmed up for Dozier, but Leonida is convinced it is in his home country of Italy that the movie will have its biggest impact. "We were looking for a project that could basically bring together our Italian background and connections, our American experience, our knowledge, our skills and of course the help of the entire community of Oskaloosa."

[Max Leonida website]

Brothers Channel Experience With Their Late Grandfather's Dementia

2026-05-01T09:04:23.523-07:00

Tony and Joshua Gary's grandfather passed away in 2025, a few months before the pair began filming Temple.

The 25-minute short comedy-drama, set to debut May 12th at New York City's Big Apple Film Festival, mirrors the experiences Tony had living in Atlanta with their grandfather, who suffered from dementia. Real-life brushes with a group of door-to-door missionaries trying to take advantage of the elderly man's condition frame the movie's title.

Not only was the film shot in the house where Tony, Joshua and their grandfather wiled away the elderly man's final years. But the actor initially hired to play Jean, the brothers' onscreen combined namesake, had to be replaced at the last minute because of their father-in-law's death. Michael Silberblatt stepped in and stars as Jean while Rick Andosca portrays the grandfather.

"We shot over, like, four days at the house," Joshua explained in an interview with Rough Draft Atlanta. "It was a pretty somber shoot. I don't think it got really super real until we put the guy playing our grandfather in wardrobe and we were seeing him at the table that we saw our grandfather at just a couple of months earlier."

Andosca, a veteran actor with a myriad of acting and directing credits, continues to teach Meisner technique classes in Atlanta. The brothers Gary, under the banner Funguh Productions, have made a number of previous films, including the 2020 feature drama Half a Mile Out on the Night, which won a pair of prizes at European film festivals.

[Temple: Website]

From Nazi Germany To Protesting The War In Gaza

2026-04-29T08:22:21.010-07:00

Peter Schumann, who turns 92 in June, is still going strong.

And on Sunday, May 3rd, this artist's indomitable spirit will be celebrated with the world premiere at the Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro, Vermont of An Artist Responds to War, a 45-minute documentary about Schumann's refocusing of his paintings and puppets to protest the conflict in Gaza.

The film was made by Robbie Leppzer, who has also been at work for years on a separate feature-length documentary about Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont. Leppzer, along with Schumann's daughter Maria and others, will take part in a post-screening Q&A moderated by Reverend Ed Sunday-Winters, pastor of the Greensboro United Church of Christ.

"We don't actually see any documentary footage of Gaza in the film," Leppzer explained in an interview with Seven Days. "We only see Gaza through the paintings and theater productions of Schumann."

"At some of the work-in-progress screenings, people told me that they often get overwhelmed by the actual news footage of the devastation in Gaza," he continued. "But watching Peter's paintings in my film allowed them to open up their hearts and actually feel deep grief."

The film also retraces how Schumann fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1944, met his wife in Munich a decade later and move to the United States in the 1960s. An Artist Responds to War will have a subsequent virtual world premiere May 12th on the platform Kinema.

[Turning Tide Films: An Artist Responds to War ]

Beloved Fast Food Employee Gets Post-Retirement Premiere

2026-04-27T09:11:39.569-07:00

During her 37 years as an employee of Mac's Drive-Thru in Gainsville, Florida, Sighle Williams became known for remembering regular-customer names and orders.

On the evening of Saturday, May 2nd, no doubt many of those customers will be back to celebrate the work ethic and personality of Williams, who retired in the fall of 2024. A 20-minute documentary about her last day on the job, One Last Order, is set to premiere locally.

"Williams's dedication over 37 years shows that when you value your employees, they in turn create immeasurable value for your customers and community," noted Lauren DeFilippo, daughter of Mac's owner Ron DeFilippo, who co-directed the short documentary with Sam Soko. "We wanted her last day behind the window to be as memorable as she's made every customer feel."

At this month's Aspen Shortsfest, One Last Order won both the Audience Award and the prize for Best Documentary. The jury stated in awarding the latter prize that "while we are living in particularly tumultuous times, when the news can feel like an endless cycle of darkness, it feels especially important to shed light on the joyful moments of humanity. The jury was taken for an exciting and moving ride by this film's celebration of a resilient, hardworking subject who united a community with her generous spirit."

Williams started part-time at Mac's Drive-Thru in the summer of 1987 when the restaurant first opened. A year later, shockingly, her parents died two days apart, leading her to take over the care of two nieces who had been living with them and a few years later, three more great-nieces.

For the free screening event on May 2nd, there will be music provided by The Browns and, of course, a Mac's food truck. Owner DeFilippo is getting ready to open a second Mac's Drive-Thru location in the area and will be lucky if he lands employees with the spirit of his beloved all-timer.

Audiences at Aspen Shortsfest may also have been reacting to the wonderfully nostalgic and anachronistic strain of One Last Order. The days of a person working decades, happily, at a food service industry job and using that platform to connect with the community are almost entirely gone.

Georgia Pastor Lands Tubi Slot

2026-04-25T10:31:53.912-07:00

As Jimmy Thomas, a writer-director based in Bainbridge, Georgia, was headed to bible study one day, he got a providential call from his business partner Kenneth Jenkins.

His 2025 film My Pastor has been added to Tubi.

The 98-minute thriller tells the story of a 'dedicated pastor in the deep South who fights against dark forces that threaten his flock. A tale of courage, prayer and redemption.' The kicker in this case is that the writer-director is also a pastor himself in real life at New Faith Life Ministries.

"If you have an idea or dream, just go for it," Thomas exhorted to WTXL-TV reporter Vanessa Lawrence. "I mean, why not? I mean, we only got so many days on this earth here, so you spend it to do what you want to do. I know you got responsibilities though,but always make time for your dreams."

In Thomas's case, those dreams include his newest film, the comedy Mr. Griffin Goes To Court, which is set for a Bainbridge red carpet premiere May 2nd. Festivities will take place all day, with repeat showings, at The Charles H. Kirbo Regional Center.

"Let's pack the Kirbo out," Jenkins stated recently on Facebook. "Show up and support our own, and prove what happens when our community rallies behind local stories. Every ticket sold, every share, every tag - it all fuels the next one. We're just getting started, family."

Pixies Backup Singer Wants To Make Ableist Rock'n'Roll Flick

2022-07-31T17:11:00.008-07:00

There are a few days left, and about a third of the way to go, for U.K. indie drama Tallywacker's fundraising campaign.

The movie is a labor of love for Jeremy Macomber-Dubs, a man of many talents. On the one hand, he is the chairman of the Disability Commission in Northampton. On another, he is a rock guitarist who doesn't let being confined to a wheelchair get in the way of a good jam session.

The budget for Tallywacker is $30,000 U.S. At press time, about two-thirds of that had been raised on Seed and Spark. The current fundraising deadline for the full amount is August 4. The project is a buddy comedy about a pair of musicians (Macomber-Dubs, Chris Goodwin) whose friendship is challenged after their band Tallywacker is recruited to open for a major rock star.

One of Macomber-Dubs former bands opened for The Pixies. He befriended the band and wound up singing background vocals on one of their albums. Macomber-Dubs currently plays in the group Bunnies.

In recent years, Macomber-Dubs has been sharing his frustrations about the depictions of disabled musicians on Facebook. One of those posts caught the attention of Brendan Boogie, a Boston-based writer-director who has since relocated to L.A.

If a pair of collaborators with the last names Dubs and Boogie can't make a good music drama, then the world is doomed. Sure enough, based on those Facebook posts, Boogie came to Northampton to meet with Macomber-Dubs, and subsequently wrote the Tallywacker screenplay.

"I think Brendan's script is incredible," Macomber-Dubs recently told the Daily Hampshire Gazette. "He really understood the issues I was talking about. He wrote scenes about things that had happened to me that I hadn't even told me about. He just intuitively understood so much."

Chicago Professor Weaves Tale Of Two Morocco's

2022-05-07T11:56:00.009-07:00

In several ways, the half-hour documentary Morocco, Morocco feels like it was meant to be.

Jackie Spinner, the film's director and a journalism professor at Chicago's Columbia College, has two Moroccan-born sons. And the small town of Morocco, Indiana is not too far from her current home base.

The documentary, produced with the help of a grant from the Pulitzer Center, premiered this week on local PBS-TV station WWTW. The film is currently available to view online.

Spinner, a staff writer and war reporter with The Washington Post from 1995 to 2009, first stumbled upon the town of Morocco with her husband as they were on their way back from Cincinnati. She is the founder of two independent student newspapers in the Middle East, AUIS Voice in Iraq and Al Mir'ah in Oman, and helped put on "Conflict Zone," a combat photojournalism exhibit.

The documentary incorporates a couple of unusual wrinkles. On the U.S. side of filming, most of the crew was made up of veterans. And the idea of tying in drawings from children on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean came from a friend.

"I was actually talking to a friend of mine, who was an art therapist," Spinner explains to student newspaper The Columbia Chronicle. "She asked me if I had thought about incorporating art and drawings in any way."

"To me, it's one of the most endearing parts in the film because both sets of Moroccans have heard about the other, mostly through film and TV, and so they don't always have the exact right ideas," she continues. "But they're curious about each other and that's the connection to humanity."

Another highlight is a segment featuring local American-side doctor Dr. Oranu Ibekie (pictured, above). He explains how he randomly put a pin in a map to choose the Indiana town of Morocco to establish a family practice, and comically recalls a local sheriff pulling up to him when he was checking out office space.

Morocco, Morocco is at heart a leisurely paced slice of life. It allows the points to make themselves, such as the portion where a local tattoo artist, after Ibekie is joyfully introduced, recalls Black kids being chased away in the 1970s from the town pool.

A Horror-Comedy Sparked By Trauma

2022-02-19T09:01:00.006-08:00

When Jack Be Nimble screens February 20th in York, Pennsylvania, it will mark the end of a very unusual road for writer-director Steve Woollett.

In the space of just a few days at the very beginning of 2020, Woollett's health food store burned down and his wife, checked into the hospital, was declared brain dead. She died soon thereafter, of what very well may have been COVID. On top of all this, the couple's family dog had passed away during the 2019 Christmas holidays.

After a period of alcohol and drug-fueled grief, Woollett miraculously picked himself up by the bootstraps and wrote a film script in three weeks. Jack Be Nimble, set in assisted living home, is about a group of aged former role-play gamers; one of them, Jack, becomes convinced that a nurse is trying to kill him.

The nurse is played by Bai Ling, who Woollett ran into by chance one day in the elevator of a New York hotel. From an article in the York Daily Record:

"We got to talking and she introduced herself, and I thought: Bai Ling, weren't you in The Crow? He asked if she would be interested in reading the script for his movie, and she agreed.
"I ran to my room, grabbed a copy of the script and handed it to her and figured I'd never hear from her again," he said. Within 24 hours, Woollett received a phone call from Ling, who loved the script and insisted that he put her in the film.

Starring as Jack is Vernon Wells, whose famously played Wez in Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. Everything seemed to line up for Jack Be Nimble, including the nursing facility location, which was provided by a longtime friend who was in the midst of renovating and had a vacant floor to provide for the 11-day shoot.

[Jack Be Nimble Facebook page]

Short Film Revisits 1931 Maryland Lynching

2021-12-04T11:09:00.015-08:00

Premiering virtually today, December 4th, exactly 90 years after a white mob dragged 23-year-old Black man Matthew Williams from a hospital bed and hung him in front of the courthouse in downtown Salisbury, Maryland, the short film Hidden In Full View is part of a one-two punch from Dr. Charles Chavis, an assistant professor at George Mason University.

Next month, a book will follow, titled The Silent Shore: The Lynching of Matthew Williams and the Politics of Racism in the Free State. Chavis produced and co-wrote the short film.

Baltimore Afro-American
December 12, 1931

Williams was hospitalized with gunshot wounds after a wage dispute with his white boss, who was found murdered. Following today's screening, there will be a panel discussion featuring Chavis as well as Jeannie Jones, a descendant of Williams, and a half-dozen other participants.

From a recent PBS article:

On December 4, 1931, a mob of white men in Salisbury, Maryland, lynched and set ablaze a twenty-three-year-old Black man named Matthew Williams. His gruesome murder was part of a wave of silent white terrorism in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, which exposed Black laborers to white rage in response to economic anxieties. For nearly a century, the lynching of Matthew Williams has lived in the shadows of the better-known incidents of racial terror in the deep South, haunting both the Eastern Shore and the state of Maryland as a whole.

Following the lynching, the then-governor of Maryland engaged a Pinkerton detective, Patsy Johnson, to go undercover and investigate the Williams killing. Johnson gathered damning evidence that confirmed several local law enforcement officers as ringleaders of the lynching, burning and desecration of the man's body. Nevertheless, a grand jury declined to indict the perpetrators.

Chavis made the short film in partnership with Cue Films, a company headed by Nigerian siblings Katrina and Samson Binutu.

A Locally-Made Short About Hawaii's Infamous Massie Trials

2021-11-07T08:19:00.011-08:00

Decades before the "Central Park 5," there were the Massie trials in Hawaii in the early 1930s. Five young local boys were falsely accused of raping a white woman, Thalia Massie, who was married to a Navy officer. Although they were found innocent, that verdict did not end their troubles.

Following the trials, one of the boys was attacked and severely injured, leading the group to huddle together and strategize about how they could best protect themselves. Ala Moana Boys premiered this week at the 2021 Honolulu International Film Festival.

The 18-minute short is the first locally-made look at the events circa 1931-32. Rather than focus on the trials, director Keli'i Grace's intent was to shine more of a direct light on the boys themselves.

There has been, previously, a 2018 PBS documentary about the case as well as a 1986 CBS-TV miniseries. The latter, Blood & Orchids, was very loosely based on the events of the Massie trials; Madeleine Stowe starred as the victim while Kris Kristofferson played a detective assigned to her case.

The trials have only recently been taught in Hawaii schools. Grace told Hawaii Public Radio that none of it was covered during his formal education. The script for his short film was written by locally based journalist Alexander Deedy, who from the islands works as assistant editor of Alaska magazine.

Ala Moana Boys screens again November 19th and 20th at HIFF locations. It will also be made available online beginning November 10th, via hiff.org, to festival passholders.

A recent book about the trials, A Death in the Islands, was optioned by the screenwriters of Disney's Moana animated feature. Grace meanwhile hopes to expand his short film into an episodic series or full-length feature film.

[Ala Moana Boys Facebook page]

DC Comics Fan Film Rolls Out on Halloween Weekend

2021-10-30T08:41:00.014-07:00

It was shot in North Carolina and, this weekend, premieres in the state at a movie theater owned by the film's writer-director-producer Ronald J. Rossman.

After tonight's gala showing at the Golden Ticket Cinemas in Lenoir, The Devil's Daughter: A Harley Quinn Story will be available for free on Halloween via YouTube and Facebook. A donation link in both cases will lead viewers to Gracious Hands, a Charlotte organization that helps women with children transition away from homelessness, often the result of escaping domestic violence.

The reason the film is free and the reflection of a non-profit undertaking is, of course, that Rossman does not have any kind of licensing agreement with DC Comics. It is a fan film, one that took root in his mind a few years ago. From a piece in the Taylorsville Times:

Rossmann said the film idea dates back to 2016, when he wrote the script as a serious take on the Harley Quinn character, focused on the effects of domestic violence. When he got the script together, he didn’t think it was marketable, because it wasn’t a typical “comic book film.”

Then, The Joker came out, starring Joaquin Phoenix, and it was well received. “So, I thought if people are ready for a much more realistic style comic book film, then I think we could put this [film] out,” Rossmann reasoned. “We did some revisions to the script and were going to start producing last year, but of course, COVID hit. So we had to put it off for a year.”

Faneal Godbold (Nashville) portrays Quinn. The cast also includes wrestler Rob Kellum (a.k.a. The Maestro) and horror actress Crystal Cleveland as Poison Ivy.

The movie was filmed on weekends. Proceeds from tonight's premiere screening will also go to Gracious Hands.

[Empire Fan Productions]

Ohio Filmmaker Taps Into SHAWSHANK Prison Location

2021-10-17T08:58:00.017-07:00

When Gary Jones moved back to Ohio from Los Angeles in 2005, he returned to his native Crestline, a few miles from the Ohio State Reformatory, a location famously used for The Shawshank Redemption as well as other movies such as Air Force One and Tango & Cash.

All these years later, he was able to film a movie there, in and around the Covid pandemic, Escape From Death Block 13. The action drama screened this weekend in Columbus and Mansfield, Ohio ahead of streaming release November 12.

The only wrinkle was that the Ohio State Reformatory was under renovation. "I just made a story point out of it," Jones told Columbus Underground. "The state hires a contractor, they make the inmates do the work of renovating the prison."

The film stars Hungarian actor Robert Bronzi, who looks like a heyday Charles Bronson, as Miklos "Mick" Kovacs. After coming to America to seek a payment related to the death of his brother, he is falsely convicted and winds up in Pleasant Hill Penitentiary. Alongside Bronzi as Bunyan is former professional wrestler Chris Hahn, who after almost 30 years in the WWE trenches and so on is now busy as an actor and stuntman. Hahn was an associate producer on the film.

Jones made his debut as an independent writer-director with 1994's Mosquito. He sold that movie for a million dollars, but was never able to collect the money. From there, he moved into TV, directing several episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess. He also has worked previously with Bronzi on the 2018 thriller Death Kiss.

[Watch a video interview with Jones and Hahn here.]

A Superhero Loses His Powers

2021-10-03T16:32:00.011-07:00

This is when you know the premise of your short film has strong potential.

Saint Bernard, screening this weekend at Cheyenne's Midnight Fest West event, was made for $6,000 by locally based writer-director Anthony Syracuse. At one point in the creative process, he was traveling in Ohio and working regularly on the script at a hotel.

As he tells the Wyoming Tribune Eagle, some construction workers within range of the outdoor area where he would fine-tune Saint Bernard on his laptop couldn't help but notice him and finally struck up a conversation, asking what he was working on:

"They got so interested that that night I had eight construction workers that I had never met before all doing a read-through of my script," Syracuse said. "All around this electric fire outside of the hotel, we were reading while I was directing them and taking notes... then they all bought plane tickets to come and see the movie."

Saint Bernard tells the story of an unassuming superhero, Jeremy - a.k.a. Letter man (Just Woolsey) - who loses his powers and is forced, as a result, to go into therapy. It opens with him in session and intermingles the story with various flashbacks. The 26-minute comedy-drama can be seen here.

Cinematographer Matthew Stacey first met Syracuse in 2016 at the Cheyenne Youth Film Festival, where he had a movie in competition. So the local trajectory of this project courses deeply through the veins of the local arts scene in this Wyoming city. Last year, Syracuse recruited Stacey to help him make a Netflix special, but unfortunately, that program did not come to fruition.

Adding to the quirky local flavor of Saint Bernard is the fact that another character is played by Dominic Rufran, a one-time wide receiver at the University of Wyoming who now trains other athletes at that position for training academy Jenkins Elite. Syracuse is currently pursuing a degree in English at that same university. Last but not least, Syracuse listened often of the Lincoln Lutz song "Saint Bernard" while working on his short film script. It was obviously a key element in the whole process and makes an appearance as well in the final product.

Union Grip Survives Harrowing DEXTER Detour

2021-08-12T13:50:00.005-07:00

In the middle of working as a grip in Massachusetts on Dexter: New Blood, Justin Sulham was involved in a nasty multi-vehicle car accident on the I-95 freeway in Attleboro. He's lucky to be alive.

Sulham survived, in large part, because he is such a monster of a physical specimen: six foot five inches tall, bulked up and trained over the years as a professional wrestler. From one of several Instagram posts he shared following the Friday, March 5th winter pile-up:

Today I saw the car that saved my life. It was overwhelming. Responders said another car or another person (physically) behind the wheel would have ended in a fatality, my car and myself were built to take it... I’ve got some struggles going on right now after the crash but I’m finding ways to be productive, ways to continue learning and becoming better, it’s not easy but nothing worthwhile in life ever is.

Image courtesy Instagram

At the time, Sulham was also in the middle of producing and directing his second short film, Black Vulture. He fought through his concussion and related symptoms, finished the short in early June and this weekend, will screen it for crew, friends and family at the Marilyn Rodman Performing Arts Centre in his native Foxboro.

As Sulham told local newspaper the Foxboro Reporter during a recent interview, adding to the specialness of this weekend's screening is the fact that the 398-seat facility is where he forged his own moviegoing memories as a young boy and teen. The Centre was at that time called the Orpheum and he remembers seeing his first movie there, at age 5 - Turner & Hooch.

Meanwhile, adding to the uniqueness of Black Vulture is the fact that the person starring in the lead role, Brian, also worked as a grip on the 10-episode Dexter: New Blood reboot! Teddy Pryor plays a man trying to make it through a ritualistic hunting exercise.

Image courtesy Instagram

High School Mass Shooting Drama Wraps in Wisconsin

2021-08-10T13:42:00.007-07:00

As first-time filmmaker Calvin Zimmerman explains in his Director's Statement, the idea for Wild Life sparked many years ago, during his senior year at Oconomowoc High School.

When Zimmerman was assigned the debate topic of whether or not teachers should be armed in the classroom, it sent him down a rabbit hole of Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech and more. As a result, he made a short film at that time, which this summer, he expanded into a full-length independent feature drama, under the same title. Principal shooting wrapped last week.

Photo courtesy Instagram

From Zimmerman's Director's Statement:

I was thrown yet another curveball the day that my [high school] film teacher proudly walked into class and announced that a prestigious film school in Chicago was holding a festival for High School students, and we were encouraged to participate! That year’s theme?
The best or worst day of school.
It felt like fate.
I gathered my friends and my fellow film students, and told them what I planned to do. I wanted to portray a fictitious school shooting within the walls of my high school in the most respectful way possible. No violence, no weapons, no shooter. Just the concerned faces of the school’s students as they watched horror unfold offscreen. I could see it so vividly in my head. I knew that I could get my friends to help if I gave them that incentive of having a winning festival film. So, we got to work.

Although the short-film version of Wild Life did not win at the Chicago festival, it became something of a cause célèbre at Zimmerman's Wisconsin high school. He self-financed this year's feature-film version and moved back to Oconomowoc from San Diego for the summer to guide a small crew of about 15. In the feature film, 14 people are killed in a mass shooting incident.

Zimmerman, now 23, told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel he hopes to complete post-production on Wild Life by the end of the year and carry on at that time with the process of submitting it to film festivals.

The Hong Kong Elvis Impersonator Known as 'Melvis'

2021-06-05T08:09:00.009-07:00

Kwok Lam-sang died of kidney failure December 29th, 2020 at age 68. He left behind a documentary in progress, The Heartbreaker: The Story of Melvis, which filmmakers Jonathan Duncan and Richie Fowler are now working to complete.

Lam-sang, a one-time Hong Kong factory worker, got all shook up by the death of Elvis Presley in 1977. He eventually became a street-roaming Elvis impersonator, Melvis, singing for tourists and locals alike in the city's entertainment district.

Before the pandemic, the filmmakers were planning to bring Lam-sang to the United Kingdom, which he had always wanted to visit. But that became impossible and now, in the wake of the unassuming married father of two's death, the documentary project has become a posthumous tribute.

From a report in the South China Morning Post:

“It was difficult finding him. I had two days left on my trip and ventured out to Lan Kwai Fong with three other people on that first night to find him,” Duncan says. “I wasn’t sure how much English he spoke so I had the concierge at my hotel write out what I wanted to ask him in Cantonese so he understood me correctly.

“Sadly, on that first night of looking, we couldn’t find him. It was a case of ‘he was here, but now he’s gone’ – typical Melvis. So the following night I was due to fly out, I checked in my bags at the Airport Express and walked up to Lan Kwai Fong in the hope of seeing him – I had two hours before I had to make my way to the airport. This time, I decided to stay in one spot.”

Lam-sang was born in Jakarta, Indonesia and immigrated to China with his family when he was 13. He first made his way to Hong Kong in 1974.

[The Heartbreaker: The Story of Melvis GoFundMe page]

A George Romero Short 27 Years in the Making

2021-05-20T20:39:00.010-07:00

Jacaranda Joe was initially envisioned as a feature-length mockumentary. As the Orlando Sentinel reported back in the summer of 1994, George A. Romero had engaged with the students of Valencia Community College to begin putting it all together.

The author of the piece, Catherine Hinman, also suggested Romero in person was as approachable as Mr. Rogers!

At 6 feet 3 inches, Romero is almost as tall as Joe, the shaggy-haired Bigfoot character that will be unnerving the fictional Florida town of Jacaranda in his VCC film. Make no mistake, Romero aims to have the audiences for this film unnerved as well.

Jacaranda Joe, which Romero wrote, is an experiment. In the faux documentary, a Geraldo Rivera-like TV talk show host investigates an encounter with the alleged monster on a hunting show. Romero wants to know if audiences can be scared by a documentary format, if they can be frightened when they don't know much about the story's characters.

Romero hoped to return to VCC in 1995 to expand and complete the mockumentary, after lining up some sort of studio backing for the project. But various factors derailed this endeavor, leaving just the 17 minutes shot at Valencia that first summer month. All these years later, some 35mm reels have been discovered and all signs point to the belated original-format resurrection of what amounts to a pitch presentation for a never-made mockumentary.

Extremely fun developments in the George A. Romero Archive!!! @pittarchives @FleaMarketFilms https://t.co/woFDokDs2i
— Adam Hart (@m_hulot) May 19, 2021

Incredibly, Jacaranda Joe was a re-imagined version of a long-gestating feature project Romero had first hatched in the early 1970s called The Footage. Per a University of Pittsburgh Library System post, there was a most unusual person considered along the way for the supporting role of a local Seminole tribesman:

One of the actors considered for this role was the great horror novelist Owl Goingback, who had then not yet published his first book. Romero, who became a fan of Goingback's work, would later work with him to attempt to produce an adaptation of his book Evil Whispers. According to Goingback, they were in talks with a studio but a writers strike put the brakes on any possible deal.

That would be the writers strike of 1988. University of Pittsburgh professor and horror films clinician Adam Charles Hart (whose recent tweet is embedded above) says the truncated Jacaranda Joe is 'a playful experiment that's funny and pointed and takes the premise in unexpected directions. In other words: a George Romero movie.'

[Jacaranda Joe's 35mm Negative]

Low-Budget Flick Shot in 13 Days Slated for 13th Season of MST3K

2021-05-18T12:39:00.012-07:00

In early 2015, the title of this Alabama grassroots production was Full Moon Inc. That moniker was later changed to Night Hunters and, ultimately, Demon Squad and it is under that banner that the film will receive the beloved Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment during the show's upcoming crowd-funded 13th season.

From a report in Mobile newspaper the Press-Register:

For Kris Skoda, the film’s director of photography, the selection is an unambiguous win. “Back in early 2015, I got asked to be director of photography on my first ultra low-budget feature length film for my friends Thomas Smith and Erin Lilley Smith,” he wrote on Facebook. “With my pretty limited knowledge at the time, 3 small LED panels, a ton of party gels and a Canon 70D, we proceeded to shoot a movie over I believe it was 13 days. Never did I ever think that ‘Full Moon Inc.’ (now ‘Demon Squad’) would eventually receive one of the highest honors possible of being riffed upon on ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000.’”

The film's director, Thomas Smith, who co-wrote Demon Squad with his wife Erin Lilley Smith and watched her take on the lead role of Daisy O'Reilly, assistant to paranormal investigator Nick Moon (Khristian Fulmer), says he found out about the MST3K selection recently late on a Friday night. A comment left on the film's trailer page last week alerted them to the selection.

A full-length version of the film is currently available on YouTube.

Fighting Owl Films

Ohio Filmmaker Gears Up for Worst.Christmas.Ever

2017-10-07T04:15:00.001-07:00

The Mahoning Valley Film Initiative, a collective of filmmakers in northeast Ohio, has their sights set on subversive Christmas tale.

Written and to-be-directed by John Chechitelli, Worst.Christmas.Ever takes place on Christmas Eve and follows the plight of Sophia, a teenager for whom the Ho! Ho! Ho! season gives way to Oh No! No! No! when she learns she is pregnant. The project has hit a fundraising target of $7,500 on Seed & Spark and is aiming to crack the top ten of "Hometown Heroes," a special competition with a final deadline of October 13th. The ten highest-voted films will get the opportunity to pitch the Duplass brothers and the winner will gain the Hollywood pair as producers.

Per a report on vindy.com, Chechitelli and co. are hosting a fundraising event tonight at The Federal in Youngstown. Admission is $10, and the filmmaker's previous effort, Youngstown: Still Standing, will be shown. The 2010 feature documentary was co-produced by Chechitelli with boxer Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, who also appears in the film.

Seed & Spark's "Hometown Heroes" competition is full of worthy projects. Films are ranked based on their number of online followers, and at press time, one of the leading entries is also Ohio-inspired. Brock Yurich's feature film drama Test is about a young bodybuilder with a strict mother. From the project notes:

I competed in my first bodybuilding show when I was 20, and I won first place in the Middle Weight division. I lost terribly in the overall division, but that's a story for another time.

During my time competing, I met some of the most dedicated and determined men and women. In film, bodybuilders are a punchline. They're portrayed as big, clunky, neanderthal-types. But behind the stereotype is a vast world of intricate science, physically-demanding training and more self-discipline than most can understand.

However, my personal battle with steroid abuse is what prompted me to write Test. I was addicted, and over the course of a couple years I lost a couple friends who were addicted as well, due to heart failure

Yurich, who is based in New York, grew up in Ohio and attended college in Florida. Both Test and Worst.Christmas.Ever will be shot in The Buckeye State.

A Family Rooted to the Fuller Brush Co.

2017-07-30T09:27:00.004-07:00

Is there anything these days more retro than the idea of a door-to-door salesman? With Amazon.com taking over the world and pulling the leases out from under shopping malls across North America, it seems almost quaint to think this profession was once a manner in which folks routinely browsed consumer goods. Not to mention a means that could provide a livelihood for a husband, wife and their family of eight boys.

Set to premiere August 5th in New Bedford, Connecticut, It's the Fuller Brush Man is Craig Barboza's loving tribute to his father Anthony, who passed away in 2016 at age 96. Barboza plans to hit the film festival trail with his 46-minute portrait, whittled down from 20 hours of interview footage, and is currently waiting to hear where the movie has been accepted.

From an interview piece in The Standard Times by Sean McCarthy:

The filming sessions took place between 1995 and 2004, some of it while Barboza was a student at New York University pursuing a BFA degree in film. Today, Craig (who has also published work as Craigh Barboza) works at NYU in the Career Services Department of the Carter Journalism Institute and he teaches a course at the school.

Barboza is the eighth of those aforementioned eight boys. All but one also worked as Fuller Brush salesmen along the way.

Native American Filmmaker Commingles the Apocalypse and Piikani Culture

2017-07-04T04:56:00.004-07:00

Shooting this month on the lands of Montana's Blackfeet Nation, fantasy-adventure short Kills Last will apply a fresh perspective to a tried and true narrative setting.

Writer-director Lauren Monroe Jr. grew up on these vast Montana lands. His film imagines four Blackfeet hunters who have survived the apocalypse, 20 years in.

Monroe Jr. raised some modest funds on Indiegogo. He will shoot the film on the Blackfeet reservation and has recruited tribe members to help both in front of and behind the camera.

One especially exciting element of Kills Last is the way the Blackfeet culture will be heard as well as seen. From a recent piece in the Billings Gazette:

The dialogue is mostly in the Blackfeet or Piikani language with English subtitles. One of the film's four principal actors is Preston Spotted Eagle, a member of the Blackfeet tribe and a devout believer in his native culture and language.

"He’s well versed in our tribal customs and history, and serves as a perfect example of our culture being passed down,” Monroe Jr. said.

The film's cinematographer, Eddie Roqueta, previously worked on a series of short web profiles of local Native American artists for the Montana Film Office. An example of that work is below.

Monroe Jr. is also a co-founder of the Creative Indigenous Collective, launched in 2016 to help support and showcase emerging Native American artists. The filmmaker earned a B.A. from the University of Montana and is currently working towards an M.F.A. with the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe. Kills Last marks Monroe's directorial debut.

A Fitting Tribute to Pulse Nightclub Victim #1

2017-06-10T10:37:00.001-07:00

As the one-year anniversary of the June 12th, 2016 Pulse nightclub mass murder in Orlando, Florida approaches, an area filmmaker is wrapping up a documentary about Eddie Sotomayor Jr., the first individual to be identified as a fatality.

One of 49: A Revolution of Love was directed by Sandi Hulon, who grew up in Los Angeles before relocating to St. Petersburg. One of Hulon's co-executive producers is Chuck Taylor, owner of Al and Chuck Travel, the Sarasota gay-travel agency where Sotomayor worked as a brand manager.

As Taylor told the Orlando Sentinel last year, Sotomayor and partner Luis Rojas sent a video message inviting him to join them at Pulse the night of the attack, around a half-hour before gunfire erupted. Sotomayor, 34, had overseen Chuck and Al's first gay cruise to Cuba in the spring of 2016 and was also responsible for a popular recurring “Drag Stars at Sea” cruise featuring cast members from Ru Paul's reality TV series. His nickname was “Top Hat.”

In an interview with a local ABC-TV affiliate, Hulon said she was struck by how much everyone--friends, family, co-workers--loved Sotomayor. That legacy led her to decide to focus on his life as a way of documenting the Pulse nightclub tragedy. On the film's Indiegogo page, there is a reminder of how emotional the project has been:

The entire production crew has been affected by a beautiful man we didn’t even know and by a tragic event that changed them all. Our camera operators have cried and the editors froze with emotion. We have wept many tears as we watched an interview live and replayed in editing. In all of our years of production experience, we have never witnessed a film crew to be so overwhelmingly moved.

The film is scheduled to be completed and released later this year.