WASHINGTON — Don’t let your short attention span keep you from seeing great local flicks.
The sixth annual Bethesda Film Festival returns this weekend with five short documentaries in the black-box theater of Imagination Stage, all courtesy of the Bethesda Urban Partnership.
“Our niche is short documentary,” festival spokesperson Brenna O’Malley told WTOP. “When our board of the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District decided that we wanted to go into film, they felt that short documentary was an area we needed to focus on. … Documentary just spans so many different topics and you can have so many great conversations.”
A showcase of five short documentaries will screen three times throughout the weekend, including Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 6 p.m. and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. The same five films will be shown at each screening. Each will be followed by a Q&A with the five filmmakers.
“We started in 2013 with one night and one screening and sold it out, so the next year moved to two nights and two screenings,” O’Malley said. “Now we’re up to two nights and three screenings, so we really have seen it grow over the years, which we’re really excited about.”
This year’s festival received 60 submissions from D.C., Maryland and Virginia. These were whittled down to five finalists by three judges: Larry Engel of American University, Ben Steger of George Mason University, and Katherine Wilkins de Francis of Women in Film and Video.
“We bring in professional judges to come in and make sure that we are picking the best documentaries that are out there,” O’Malley said. “They look for really well-made, not just films, but stories. They are after a really good, unique story that they haven’t heard before.”
This year includes Enrique Huaiquil’s “Aiven” (6 minutes) about a quirky artist in Landover.
“He’s hilarious,” O’Malley said. “He talks about his outlook on life and death and how you should be living your life. … He’s quite the character. People are really going to like him.”
Equally lighthearted is the hilariously named “Pot of Gold” (20 minutes) by Daiei Onoguchi.
“His film is one of our lighthearted films,” O’Malley said. “It’s about the Toto Bidet [toilet]. He goes on an exploration to Japan to find out why this is such a sensation over there.”
If you’re into family films, try “Sisterly” (28 minutes) by Nina Vallado of Silver Spring, Maryland.
“This was her senior thesis about her and her sister,” O’Malley said. “Her sister is autistic and nonverbal, so how they’ve been able to communicate with each other throughout her life.”
On the global change front, check out “Mama Rwanda” (30 minutes) by Laura Waters Hinson.
“She’s done a lot of work in Rwanda,” O’Malley said. “This film in particular is about the women and the mothers who are rebuilding the economy and the community after the genocide, because they are really the ones who are going to make the changes.”
And last but not least, don’t miss “Two Steps Back” (12 minutes) by R. Kayeen Thomas, who premiered it last August at the inaugural D.C. Black Film Festival. It follows the teachings of Dr. Derrick Bell, the first black tenured law professor at Harvard University, who evolved from civil rights activist to later believing that Brown v. Board of Education was a failure in hindsight.
“He believed it was a failure because we focused too much on the ‘separate’ and not enough on the ‘equal,'” Thomas said. “We were too eager to integrate and didn’t concentrate enough on making sure there was equality within the integration. The message resonates with people who expected the civil rights movement to be the end-all-be-all. Why didn’t it fix everything?”
Each screening block costs $10, which translates to a modest $2 per film.
“We really do want to get as many people in and keep it affordable,” O’Malley said. “You should come out and support local artists. The audience over the years keeps coming back because they like seeing local artists in their community talking about their work.”
Find more details on the festival website. Hear the full chat with O’Malley and Thomas below:
