We had a couple repeat winners and several new successes at our second annual Portland Phoenix Maine Short Film Festival. It was a great night at One Longfellow Square, a really good spot for showing movies (including a curved wall onto which the films were projected!). All the winners were there, except one, who had to work. Silly him — his future is in movies. And we were able to showcase the best Maine filmmakers, whether they are still in high school or long retired.
We really have some stars here, so check them out when you see Maine films in the theaters or at the video store. Watch the winning videos and get scheming for next year’s festival!
Film of the year
The Art of Walking
By Kevin Henthorn
It’s hard not to giggle at The Art of Walking, which celebrates the quotidian challenge of getting from here to there. Seventeen-year-old Freeport High School senior Kevin Henthorn, who filmed his movie during the hectic two weeks before his junior-year final exams, says the idea for the movie evolved from looking at — and jumping around on — the diagonally patterned tiles in his school hallway. He cast his friends as exaggerated versions of themselves — a biker, a skater, an agitated driver, and a superstitious walker — and, despite a few “dirty looks from teachers,” made a film that’s charming in its simplicity. If you’ve ever avoided cracks to save your own, or your mother’s, back, this one’s for you.
Click here to watch the movie
Best music video
Street Musicians
By Charles Rotmil
Charles Rotmil calls the street his studio. The dignified Frenchman, who is in his 70s and lived in New York for years before moving to Portland in the 1980s, was trained as a street photographer; that background is evident in his Street Musicians. The film shows us four busking acts, three in New York City and one in Maine, and each is distinctive. Within the New York subway underground, Rotmil finds a xylophonist whose dreamlike music seems fit for a po-mo movie score, and a six-piece mariachi band that elicits both energy and money from the crowd. In Maine, he captures an accordionist who flirts with the camera like a natural. And in a park back in New York, he films an African musician whose unique harp-like instrument and clear voice are mesmerizing. Rotmil may be getting on in years, but he’s still going strong — he’s putting together a longer documentary about World War II, and collaborating with a friend on a music video they plan to post on YouTube.
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Best comedy
Deadphone
By Andrew Batson
Andrew Batson portrays one hot zombie, and his friend and co-writer/director Jarrod Anderson is equally attractive as a member of the still-living in their film Deadphone, which shows how annoying it can be when your friends won’t leave you alone — even after they die. Twenty-five-year-old Batson, who hopes the film will serve as his introduction to the film world, says that the pair “didn’t expect it to come out as well as we’d hoped.” The undead never give themselves enough credit, do they?
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Best drama
Artifact: Episode 1
By William Fraser
It’s not surprising that Artifact: Episode 1 is the brainchild of self-proclaimed “sci-fi nerd” William Fraser, who took home last year’s Film of the Year honors for Driving Miss Crazy. Episode 1 is the start of an Internet series about a post-apocalyptic world where humans are an endangered species, menaced by Deep Black, a virus of unknown origin. Merryn, played by fellow sci-fi aficionado Nanette Hennig (who, awesomely, looks like she walked off the set of Lost), is tasked with finding and unlocking the secrets to an artifact that could help save the survivors. Fraser’s film, shot in Damariscotta, is edited to show different angles and perspectives on the screen simultaneously, and it’s an effect that heightens the suspense. Episode 2 is currently in production, and we’re on the edge of our seats.
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Best documentary
Smelt Fishing in America
By David Camlin
We challenge you to watch David Camlin’s candid depiction of a late-night/early-morning smelt-fishing adventure and not want to gather your zaniest friends to recreate your own version of the fun. In his Smelt Fishing in America, Eliot native Camlin (who’d never entered a film competition before this one) and another smelt-fishing novice join two more experienced angling friends in a tiny hut above the frozen water. They catch some fish. They drink some beer. They make us laugh. In addition to giving us a glimpse into one of Maine’s favorite pastimes, Smelt Fishing in America is an ode to friends and PBR — worthy subjects if there ever were some.
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Best production
Les Moulins
By Ross Morin
“To me, it is a film about the loss of personal connection to one’s cultural history,” Ross Morin writes in an e-mail about his film, Les Moulins. “My own personal disconnect from my heritage as a French Canadian is represented through the young woman’s travels through the ghost town of the mills.” It’s a family affair for Morin, who cast his grandmother in one of the two roles in Les Moulins (The Mills), and who sent his Uncle Bob to accept the award for him (like last year, when his Suburban Fantasies won the Most Creative award, Morin is in Ohio, studying for his master’s degree at the Ohio University School of Film). But the town of Lewiston just may be the main character in Morin’s film—a character we alternately mourn and honor, and who is shot as lovingly as a celebrity starlet.
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