Concord High School Film Society Presents Horror Movies Wednesday

The Concord High School McAuliffe Auditorium will be a haunting, scary place on Wednesday as the student film society presents an interactive Frightening Film Festival at 6 p.m.

The festival, put together by Pedro Pimentel, will feature student produced horror films, live stage presentations, and music, in between the short films.

Pimentel, who moved to Concord a couple of years ago, said eight films will be presented at the event, all around 5 to 10 minutes in length, mostly put together by students. He said there are about 10 society members (a sort of high school club) that focuses on making films. Pimentel said members would be introducing their films in a number of different ways.

“We’re going to be having the members of the film society presenting a live play on stage, as a way of (introducing) the films,” he said. “As they are doing the plays they’re presenting the films. There will be a live presentation by the band of one of the directors of one of the films. He’s going to play a song. It’s going to be very interactive.”

Some filmmakers produced their own films at home while others used the facilities of Concord TV to edit and produce their films. The films will be shown on a large digital screen in the auditorium, that takes up the entire stage.

“It’s the first themed film festival that the film society is making,” Pimentel said.

Previously, the society sponsored two festivals a year where students could submit any kind of film, ranging from documentaries to people recording skateboarders, he said. Moving from two to one festival, he believed, would allow students to produce more content. Pimentel submitted two films, including “I Said Smile,” a horror film featuring a number of fellow students.

This year, Pimentel accepted every film submitted by students for the festival, and invited a British team of filmmakers known as Bloodycuts to submit shorts too.

Tickets range from $3 to $5, and due to the nature of some of the films, children under 13 will only be admitted with a companion who is 17 or older. The money will be used by the film society to train students on how to make their own films or work on productions of upcoming projects.

“We want to get filmmaking out there because it’s not very popular these days,” he said. “Most people, they like films, but they don’t see it as a new type of art. That’s what I’m trying to show them … I’m trying to make them think about filmmaking in a different way.”