The Colorado Springs Gazette final

Colorado filmmakers in spotlight at festival

BY JENNIFER MULSON jen.mulson@gazette.com

Every weekend, while you sleep in and have an extra cup of coffee, somebody somewhere in Colorado is making a film.

Colorado Springs filmmaker Ralph Giordano calls the movie business around our state “thriving.”

“Here in Colorado Springs or the Pikes Peak region, it’s booming,” he said.

To showcase the grit and passion of Colorado filmmakers, the Independent Film Society of Colorado established Colorado Short Circuit six years ago, a film festival showcasing award-winning shorts by independent Colorado filmmakers in nine categories: comedy, drama, documentary, women in film, animation, music videos, experimental, horror/sci-fi and young filmmakers.

The two-day event at The Ivywild School starts at 2 p.m. Friday and wraps up at 9 p.m. Saturday. Ten awards are handed out Saturday evening, including best of the festival.

“This year we have more documentaries than ever,” said Giordano, festival director and creator. “People decided to be more introspective and do more personal things.”

More than 60 films will be screened this year, ranging in length from two minutes to just shy of 30 minutes, the maximum length for a film. The shorts were culled from 150 submissions, all reviewed by a screening committee and Giordano, who based his final selections on the committee’s feedback.

“It’s enlightening and educational,” Giordano said. “I get to see what other filmmakers are doing.”

About half of the filmmakers are from the Pikes Peak region, including featured filmmaker Steven Sabell, whose drama, “Dead Right There,” is the story of a police officer who struggles with the pressures of the job, including watching a victim of addiction and domestic abuse be failed by

the justice system. The film will be screened Friday night.

“Anyone who’s screening a film there can consider themselves leaders in the community for aspiring young and upcoming artists,” said Sabell, who started making movies a dozen years ago in high school.

Some of the festival’s more interesting shorts include those in the youth category, Giordano said, which includes 10 films from students in the Youth Documentary Academy, a training ground for kids ages 14 to 18 in the Pikes Peak region where every summer they learn to direct and produce their own documentaries. Thematically, this year’s offerings can’t be pinned down. They’re set in Colorado, they’re personal and they’re about the environment.

And don’t expect to necessarily see much Colorado Springs scenery, though all the films were shot in Colorado. There are a greater number of dramas this year, as opposed to comedies, which Giordano attributes to the pandemic’s somber-inducing mood. Filmmakers are also of a wide variety of ages, including some in their early 70s.

Other films chronicle issues in the LGBTQ+ community, inclusivity and people of color. And on the other side of the spectrum are the ones about cannibalism in the horror/sci-fi category and the documentary about a young woman so obsessed with social media it almost destroys her life.

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2022-10-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-06T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://daily.gazette.com/article/282492892589416

The Gazette, Colorado Springs