2011 Greater Lehigh Valley Filmmaker Festival

The Frank Banko Alehouse Cinema at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks will host the first ever Greater Lehigh Valley Filmmaker Festival with screenings on the nights of November 5th, 7th and 9th. Eleven different films - ranging from documentaries to features to shorts - will be showcased, all of which made by people living in or around the Lehigh Valley. Admission is $8 for Saturday, the 5th, and $5 for Monday, the 7th and Wednesday, the 9th. A ticket purchased for a specific night gets the holder into each of the screening blocks that night.

The awards for the 2011 Greater Lehigh Valley Filmmaker Festival will go to the following submissions:

• Best Feature: The Obsession
• Best Short: One Way Out
• Special Technical Achievement: Here
• Best Documentary: Animating Autism
• Best Young Filmmaker: A Rough Draft

The schedule for the festival is as follows (*denotes award winner):

Talkbacks with the directors and/or representatives from each block's film will occur directly after each film.

Animating Autism* - Sean Feely and John Gross (Easton) - 62min

This documentary follows seven high-functioning individuals on the Autistic Spectrum as they collaborate on creating a short animated film at the Autism Society of Berks County in Reading. The participants form new friendships while defying stereotypes and learning about the techniques and technology needed to make their sketches come alive.

Blank - David Bright, Nick Lasinno and Ryan McDonald (Hawley) - 31min

What appears to be a healthy all-American boy turns out to have more in the closet than one might expect. Entranced with entertaining his peculiar sociopathic mind and cut off from the world, he patiently awaits retaliation. His backwoods home may serve as a secluded fortress from the rest of the world but some days you just happen to drive down the wrong road.

Guise - Julie Wagner (Bethlehem) - 3min

A young woman struggles for acceptance in society; brought to life by the fragmented moments and images of the film. Set against the backdrop of a college campus, the character goes through several tests of will as she explores a notion considered by most to be taboo.

Here* - Courtney Eady (Schnecksville) - 5min

A young man is told he only has months to live, causing him to reflect on what he's lost. Inspired by Agnes Varda's "Cleo From 5 to 7" and films from the French New Wave of the 1960s, Here is a distinct technical achievement as it was shot in a two-hour time span on 16mm film with sound design created in post-production.

Liberty - Lawrence Milano (Bath) - 10min

This documentary follows Dallas Harris, or, as he's more commonly known in the Pittsburgh drag queen world, Georgia Bea Cummings. Harris tells the camera the hard times he had keeping the secret of his sexual orientation in the small Western Pennsylvania town he grew up in, to coming out to Pittsburgh where he was welcomed into the small, but gay-friendly, city.

Media Made - Vincent Mondillo (Easton) - 60min

An obsessed TV documentary producer that takes reality TV to the ultimate extreme as she barges into one situation after another, intending on making a documentary that is better than "all the crap you see on TV". Candace is the media unhinged; the media in all of its un-glory.

Not Just Eye-Candy - Marya (Washington, NJ) - 12min

Two words - horror vacui - spark new avenues of artistic investigation for the artist. A chaos of patterned juxtapositions spill over into her everyday world when she is confronted with her mother's death. Filmed on the Caribbean islands of Tortola and Bonaire, the poetic narrative traces one woman's pathway through grief and her ultimate resolve to change the pattern of her life.

The Obsession* - Spencer Snygg (Allentown) - 114min

What would you do for the person you love? How far would you go for true love? What would you be willing to give up? Things that are romantic in fairy tales become creepy in real life. Based on a true story, The Obsession is a dark and sometimes comical journey about falling in love, breaking up, dealing with loss and trying to win back the love of your life.

One Way Out* - Eric Leadbetter (Bethlehem) and Joshua Neth (Allentown) - 29min

Based on an original short story by Kyle Peterson, One Way Out tells the story of a young man whose struggle with sexuality and bullying leads him into his darkest place as the world that he trusted falls down around him.

Popcorn Pushers - Jeremiah Peck (Bethlehem) - 4min

This trailer is pulled from a 22-minute pilot of a series designed to be a love letter to the experience of working at a movie theatre. It's about the importance of the communal viewing experience, the effects of entertainment on the individual's psyche, but more importantly, a gang of creative misfits hanging out between selling tickets, cleaning theaters and pushing popcorn.

A Rough Draft* - Anthony Delluva (Bethlehem) - 18min

A deadline approaches. Raymond struggles to complete his screenplay by morning, but finds himself lost in the process. The tensions of his floundering relationship seep into his writing, and he finds himself as the anti-hero of his genre thriller. His girlfriend, Laura, is cast alongside him as the antagonist. As the night wears on, Raymond confronts the nature of his relationship through his real world actions, and his fiction. He finds himself fated to repeat his mistakes, and discovers that the real deadline may be on his relationship.

Two for Three - Matt Nye (Harrisburg) - 82min

Produced for just $500 during Matt's junior year of college at DeSales University, Two for Three is a study of lust, greed and addiction. After an unexpected night together, James and Hank decide to share the mysterious Katharine, who may hold the key to their material desires. As time goes on, a mental tug of war develops and Katharine's emotions are torn in half. With cocaine as an ultimate means of persuasion, who will she choose?

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