Long Winter, Short Film Festival Coming to Abbot Library

MARBLEHEAD, MA - Mid-winter blues getting you down? Time to shorten the winter at the Long Winter Short Film Festival, presented by the Marblehead Festival of Arts.

Thirteen films, ranging in length from two to nineteen minutes, will be featured at Marblehead’s Abbot Public Library, 235 Pleasant Street, in their Lower Meeting Room on Wednesday, February 10 at 7p.m. After the screening, the evening will conclude with a Q&A session with filmmakers.

The evening’s lineup includes, but is not limited to, pieces that were screened during last year’s Summer Short Film Festival. Among the films to be shown are: Hyperhidrosis: The Silent Handicap by Molly McGinnis of Marblehead. She gives us a glimpse into the illness that pervades her life. This shortest of the films lets you into her world, or rather the world of her illness, and the feelings of isolation that encumber her.

In this election year, the longest film of the program focuses on one of the most famous politicians in Massachusetts history, James Michael Curley. Curley, four-time mayor of Boston, two-term Congressman, one-term governor, pardoned federal prisoner, was the inspiration for the novel “The Last Hurrah.” Now Boston filmmaker, Billy Palumbo brings us Curley: A Historiophoty

Historiophoty, the representation of history in images and film, questions whether history can be accurately conveyed through these media. Through looping black and white shots, and fractured chronology, the Curley myth is questioned and laid open for your delectation in this startlingly original film. Palumbo teaches at Emerson College.

Subjects can be a matter of opportunity and a first-class filmmaker knows when to seize the good story when it pops into view. The last film on the program, 81 Year Old Sweethearts, is the result of such an opportunity.

On a flight, from Long Beach CA to Washington DC, filmmaker Danielle Lurie met Jack, an 81-year-old man who told her he was flying across the country to reunite with his high school sweetheart Betty, whom he hadn’t seen in 62 years. “Sounds like a film,” thought Danielle, who pulled her camera out of her carry-on bag and filmed the reunion at the Dulles Airport. Danielle Lurie’s “Intuition”’ played in this final spot last year and here is her work again,

Film Festival works are intended to show the many ways that film and video can be used as an art form to inform and express. They are not commercial films of the sort that you can find in your standard multiplex. Here is your opportunity for a fun local night out and to see some great films and hear filmmakers speak.

Although children can certainly enjoy some of these works, not all of the films may be understood by them. Parents should review the lineup and decide if the films are appropriate for their younger children. For a listing of this year’s line up, please visit our website at http://www.marbleheadfestival.org/events/winter-film-festival/.

The Festival is also accepting films for the 2016 Summer Short Film Festival. Please visit our website at http://www.marbleheadfestival.org/artists-information/film-festival-call-for-entries/.

Film Committee members include co-chairs Mike Evers and Laurie Stolarz as well as Patti Rogers, Bill Smalley, and Paulina Villarroel Cruz. The committee can be reached at FilmFestival@marbleheadfestival.org.