Think Small: Short films take center screen at new Bodega Bay festival

“Horror… Drama… Comedy… Romance...Action…”  It sounds like the promises of the multiplex, a trans-generational pitch of celluloid thrills for overpriced tickets. “Sci-Fi… Thriller… Animation… Documentary.”

Instead, the above categories are those of the first Bodega Bay International Short Film Festival, to be held May 28 and 29 in the scenic seaside town of Bodega Bay.

Wait, wasn’t that the location of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds,” as I read so often as a filler factoid in the PD classifieds?

Yes, that’s the place. As a result it’s got a built-in loyalty to film fanatics who might not otherwise take seriously a Short Film festival in a town of 1400.

On the other hand, where else? Since you know a lot of people will be coming to Healdsburg to spend their Memorial Day weekend, let’s skip town. It’s only an hour’s drive, you get to feel smug about being from someplace cooler than Sebastopol, and you can have an excuse to go to the movies.

The BBISFF is held at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab , on the very edge of the wind-and surf-swept coast. Between screenings you can go whale-spotting or bird-dodging (it is Bodega Bay, after all). Although the BML will be closed over the weekend, there’s plenty of other things to do out there of an outdoorsy sort of way, I’m told.

In the county-wide surge in film festivals – Sonoma Valley, Sebastopol, Wine Country – this makes the distinction of short films only, 15 minutes or less, made since 2008, without formal distribution to this point. Also, they “Must not be experimental or music video.”

(An aside: I know what a music video is, and even by broad-mindedness realize it’s a big and mostly irrelevant category to “film.” But “experimental”? Isn’t that a large part of the reason one does a short – to experiment, whether with form or story-telling or colors or tension or camera or sound or all of the above? And how many experimental features are there?)

An all-day pass for either Saturday May 28 or Sunday May 29 is $45, with admission to several two-hour sessions a day (individual sessions are $20.) There are also gala events on Saturday night, with wine and either a single or double bill “mixed genres” screening; prices for these are $55 or $100, separate from the day pass.

Filmmakers take note: You can still submit a short (non-experimental, remember) film via an extended deadline of May 10. http://bodegabayfilmfest.org/entertainment/?p=72 Dust off your iMovie and stay away from those Garage Band tracks.