Rosebud Festival Honors 'Innovative, Unusual, Experimental, Deeply Personal' Films

From experimental animation to introspective documentaries, the 2011 Rosebud Film and Video Festival has a little bit of everything.

The 21st annual short film festival starts with the screening of a five-hour slate of 19 nominees at 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 12, at . Tickets are $10, and include an invitation to an awards gala the following night in the .

"Its mission has always remained the same, which is to honor films that are innovative, unusual, experimental and deeply personal… They're kind of the four touchstones we have for selecting films for the festival," said Jackie Steven, festival director and director of community programs for Arlington Independent Media.

The Rosebud Film and Video Festival is the only one of its kind in the area that's open exclusively to Maryland, Virginia and Washington filmmakers.

The 19 nominees, picked by a panel of judges that rotates every year, range from several three-minute short films to a 66-minute documentary.

Festival-goers can watch "Blank Street," a 41-minute documentary produced by several college students who spent most of the last year traveling Virginia and talking to homeless people and others hit hard by the economic downturn.

Local filmmaker Jeff Krulik entered a 66-minute film called "Heavy Metal Picnic," which is about a group of people who got together in 1985 to hold a weekend-long rock festival in Potomac, Md.

Filmmaker Arturo Martinini's three-minute, stop-motion animation film "Chronometer for Poetic Directions" is among the shorter films. The artist's description to judges called the work "a story of the need for expression in space," Steven said.

The lineup also includes comedy, drama, several experimental videos and video art.

This year's contest received just shy of 100 entries, Steven said.

The five winners, who will be announced at the awards gala on Nov. 13, will each receive $1,000. One artist will be named "best in show" and receive an additional $500 worth of services from AIM -- services that can include class time or use of equipment.

The festival typically draws up to 300 people, Steven said.

"We're all about giving voice to people," Steven said. "That's kind of what we do."