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Colony Short Film Festival in its 11th year

The Colony Short Film Festival marks its 11th year of showcasing local and international short films in downtown Marietta from March 2 to 4 at the historic Peoples Bank Theatre.

This year’s short film festival includes films from 12 states, including Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, as well as international submissions from Spain, France, Switzerland, Cyprus, Belgium, and Canada. The films represent a variety of genres, from whimsical experimental films, to hard-hitting documentaries.

Filmmakers in attendance are given the opportunity to speak about their film at the screening and experience the opportunity to connect with their fellow artists.

In addition to the more than two dozen Official Selections, highlights of the Colony Short Film Festival schedule include special features from the Middle East and West Virginia, as well as workshops by local photographers.

On the evening of Thursday, March 2, at 7 p.m., the film festival will open with a collection of seven short films by Another Kind of Girl Collective, a media arts collective that “equips girls in the midst of displacement with the creative and technical means to explore and articulate their inner worlds and daily lives through film and photography.”

Started in 2014 with Syrian teenage girls living as refugees in Jordan, the workshops in Jordan’s Za’atari Refugee Camp and the city of Irbid were developed and facilitated by documentary filmmaker and educator Laura Doggett and documentary animator and educator Tasneem Toghoj.

The films have shown at several international festivals including Sundance, Cannes, and SXSW. They have been featured in conferences addressing the refugee crisis such as the EU Conference on Women Refugees and Asylum Seekers. They have won numerous awards and been featured on various media outlets such as the New York Times, NPR’s The World and Morning Edition.

As one of the young artists said recently, “I want to show the rest of the world that even though we live in a refugee camp, and have different lives, we still have dreams and ambitions. We are creative. We strive to rise above our limitations. I feel it’s my responsibility not just to tell the world that truth, but to let people see it for themselves.”

On Friday, screenings of the Colony Short Film Festival’s Official Selections will begin at 7 p.m. The screenings will continue Saturday, beginning at 10 a.m.

The final day of the festival will also be punctuated by a workshop at 11 a.m. Saturday on “Lighting for Filmmakers” by Marietta photographer Robb DeCamp. An Associated Press award-winning photographer with over a decade of experience in visual arts and an education from The Art Institute of Pittsburgh, DeCamp will show workshop participants how to use inexpensive household lighting in film production, how to test different sources and temperatures of lights that are easily found around the house or garage, and understand how they translate to the screen.

At 2 p.m., a second workshop on using drone photography in filmmaking will be led by Nathan Reich, media production specialist at Marietta Memorial Hospital, and a drone photographer with more than a decade of experience.

“Drones are essentially flying machines that have a camera onboard enabling a broad range of applications to enhance everyday life,” said Reich, “such as aerial photography and videography, sports, filming, public safety, inspections, search and rescue, agriculture, delivery, real estate and many other applications that are far beyond what you might think of when you hear the word ‘drone.'”

The final evening of the film festival, Saturday, March 4, at 7 p.m., filmmaker, Mountain Stage guitarist, and West Virginia Music Hall of Fame director Michael Lipton will introduce his recent documentary West Virginia My Home: Musicians and the Mountain State Experience.

Lipton and his crew talked with as many prominent West Virginia musicians as they could, highlighting the diversity of the musical contributions that have roots in the state and also what unites them. The documentary includes interviews with Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Bill Withers and country stars Kathy Mattea and Brad Paisley

Lipton and his camera team also spoke with West Virginia natives like late country singer Little Jimmy Dickens, classical composer George Crumb, Jimi Hendrix bassist Billy Cox, as well as transplants to the state, like “Mountain Stage” host Larry Groce and the late mountain fiddler, Joe Dobbs.

The film is narrated by NPR’s Anna Sale, a Charleston native and the host of the popular “Death, Sex and Money” podcast.

One day passes for the Colony Short Film Festival are $10, or $25 for all three days. Senior and student passes are $8 a day or $18 for the full festival. Limited VIP passes, which give access to the filmmakers lounge, are $25 a day or $50 for the weekend.

Full event information and ticket details are available on the Colony Short Film Festival website at http://colonyfilmfestival.com. Tickets are available online at peoplesbanktheatre.com or by calling the box office at 740-371-5152. Walk-up hours at the box office are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The Colony Short Film Festival is a program of the nonprofit Hippodrome/Colony Historical Theatre Association, which also manages the historic Peoples Bank Theatre at 222 Putnam St. in downtown Marietta.

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