Articles about the Heritage Film Festival
The Heritage Film Festival continues to be a free, well received annual community event sponsored by the Liberal Arts Division at Prince George's Community College. Click on the links below to read some of the articles about the Festival.
Starting in film
Largo festival gives aspiring directors a chance to show off their work
As the Heritage Film Festival grows each year, it attracts a more diverse group of applicants from not only Prince George's County, but from across the country and outside of the United States.
Filmmakers submit films on a variety of different topics — there's something for everyone among the festival's 35 films.
O.F. Makarah, a Largo resident and director of the Heritage Film Festival, said that after moving from California to Maryland a few years ago, she missed being around filmmakers and decided to create a film festival.
"It started out as just an idea," she said.
The festival, which was founded in 2006, grows each year, with applicants from as far away as Australia.
This year's submissions included documentaries, how-tos and public service announcements, in addition to traditional narratives.
"I'm surprised by what people do and don't like. It's refreshing," Makarah said.
Submissions come from people of all ages, some of whom have never made a film before.
Films also vary in length — from 60 seconds to 40 minutes. Because of time constraints, the Heritage Film Festival doesn't show any feature-length movies.
"I try to balance male and female, the content and length, where [filmmakers] are from — it's just a matter of trying to find that balance," Makarah said. "I've been happy and gotten good comments about the way things fit together. I don't just show things I like — that's hard to do sometimes, to see things that appeal to different audiences."
Some veteran filmmakers, like Faraday Okoro, Jason Stefaniak and Chris Lynn, keep submitting films to the festival year after year.
Faraday Okoro
Faraday Okoro, 22, of Riverdale entered the film festival for the second year.
Okoro, a Howard University sophomore majoring in film, has produced three films and is an aspiring director and screenwriter.
Okoro said that when he was a sophomore at Parkdale High School in Riverdale his interest in film really began to develop. In the first two days of a film history class at Prince George's Community College in Largo, he knew that he wanted to major in film.
His latest film, "Rivers of my Father," is a story about a father and son. The father wants to take his son fishing one last time before he goes off to college.
"I find father-and-son stories easier to tell," Okoro said. "In terms of a relationship, a parent-child bond is stronger than any other bond. People relate to these types of bonds."
Okoro said he can't identify his source of inspiration, because it isn't consistent.
"I find myself maturing more and see myself approaching [film] stories differently. They're more technical-based," he said.
With experience, Okoro's films are getting longer, but he isn't placing an emphasis on time.
"As I learn with experience I don't focus on time to get my story across," he said. "I try not to pass 20 to 30 minutes if I don't have to."
Jason Stefaniak
Jason Stefaniak, 23, of Manassas, Va., is a 2008 graduate of Towson University, where he majored in film.
He is currently a New York University graduate student studying film production, with the goal of becoming a filmmaker.
At age 14 he made his first film; at age 19 he submitted to the Heritage Film Festival.
Stefaniak is entering the festival for the fourth year.
During his sophomore year of college he found out about it and decided to submit a film.
"It was the first festival I ever had something screened at; it was significant," he said. "Film is something I can use to learn about different cultures, for example."
He believes the Heritage Film Festival is a great place to submit films, because there aren't any criteria or a buzz around the festival, like there would be in New York or Los Angeles, for example.
Stefaniak's films are short — no more than 20 minutes, he said.
"[The film] doesn't have to be spectacular, it's OK to make mistakes," Stefaniak said. "It's a way to show it to people and to get feedback. There's a homegrown community feeling that definitely attracts me to keep coming back."
His entry for this year's festival is "The Garden." The film, 4 minutes and 30 seconds in length, is a black-and-white film that was shot in a New York City garden.
"The garden was one of the first things I saw in the city when I moved in," he said. "It was visually pleasing to film — it was a practice in visual storytelling."
Stefaniak said he's feeling a shift in himself, making his desire to create films not only about relationships, but also about larger world issues, like climate change.
He was raised by mostly women, and has a great interest in relationships, which he said his three other films are about.
"I think it's something I've had experience with. I was in a relationship for a long time," he said. "I was raised mostly by women [so I'm] attracted to a story that explores women and relationships."
Chris Lynn
Chris Lynn of Silver Spring, a self-taught filmmaker, is entering the film festival for the third year.
He is a film and 12th-grade English literature teacher at DuVal High School in Lanham.
"My films tend to be more experimentally based with image and sound. They're longer, meditative pieces," he said. "It's not a deliberate, aesthetic choice."
For at least the past 10 years, Lynn has been making films, but in the past four years he's been doing the filming, editing and sound on his own. He makes his films with only him and his camera — no actors and actresses.
"I've been pretty passionate about film — I grew up watching a lot of films but I wasn't serious about filmmaking until college, when I took world cinema, looking at film as an art form," Lynn said. "We watched films from different countries. The audience treated it as something that was artistic and not just for commercial [monetary] value."
At the University of Maryland, College Park, Lynn majored in English literature and took film classes, where he learned to cut 16 millimeter film.
Lynn, who has made nearly 30 films, said he films both inside and outside the United States. His films range from 2 minutes to 20 minutes in length.
After filming he spends his time editing sound.
Lynn said the Heritage Film Festival is so successful and enjoyable for the audience because Makarah does a good job of curating films that fill well together.
IF YOU GO
Heritage Film Festival
When: 7 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday
Where: Rennie Forum, Prince George's Community College, 301 Largo Road, Largo.
Admission: Free
Information: E-mail heritagefilmvideo@yahoo.com or visit www.heritagefilm-videofest.org.
E-mail Liz Skalski at eskalski@gazette.net.
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PGCC hosts area's first Heritage filmfest
By Erin Whiting
Special to The Owl
The Heritage Film Festival , whose theme was "Everyone has a story" and featured twenty-nine films created by local artists, was presented March 25 at PGCC.
This was the first time the film festival was presented at PGCC.
Funilay Makarah, director and organizer for the event, said the festival was a means for her to "share my curiosity and my passion for independent media..." This opportunity to reach out to the community was particularly significant for the youth, Makarah explains. "It was really gratifying to see young people making films. It's important to reach out to young people." Makarah says she hopes the festival will "inspire the viewer to pick up a camera and tell a story."
Makarah said PGCC was a perfect location to showcase the event, both geographically as well as culturally. "[PGCC] is centrally located, and the culture of the college is really in tune with the vision of the festival." Makarah went on to say that the college was very cooperative in sponsoring the event. "It was a really supportive environment. Dr. [Robert] Barshay and Shelly Fisher [of College Life Services] were absolutely wonderful."
The films presented at the festival ranged in themes and production styles. Lasting from thirty seconds to ten minutes, the subject matters of the films varied from the light concepts of horseback riding, kung fu comedy, and bathing a pet to the more serious social issues of HIV/AIDS, family issues, prejudices, war, and environmental awareness. While there were serious issues addressed in the films, the material stayed within boundaries considered appropriate for all audiences. Barshay asserts that though the festival is not trying to censor the filmmakers, "we have to respect the values of the community."
The films' genres varied from animation shorts to works of Claymation, black and white films, documentaries, and one experimental abstract short simply showing the flow of shapes of lights on a screen.
The festival's sponsors were led by the college's Liberal Arts Department, headed by Barshay, who is dean. Barshay said the event was an important for the Prince George's County public because it promotes diverse interaction. "The college has always been interested in reaching out to the community," he explains. "And [the festival] gives [the community] a forum to express their voice."
He told The Owl that the division would welcome a return engagement of the festival.
The diversity of films reflected the diversity of the filmmakers. They ranged in ages, from under twelve to middle aged and older. Several of the filmmakers were students from the Thomas Pullen School. Their "historical moments" films were part of a school project, featuring staged interviews of historical African Americans. Similarly, there were two films created by college film students as school assignments. Andrew Payton, a film major at Towson University, presented a piece entitled "Misadventures of Drifting Laterally," a film about the experience of leaving home. American University students Kasey Kirby and Liang Cai offered a comedic piece about paranoia and kung fu.
Youths from the Greenbelt Access Television's (GATE) film classes presented animated shorts for the festival. Tiffany Ferguson, one of the GATE students and a presenter at the festival, says the experience was "pretty cool...I was pretty excited when I found out I had gotten into the festival." Since entering the festival, Ferguson has been offered an internship with GATE.
Several of the films dealt with social issues, such as war, the environment, and HIV. A piece by Jerry A. Henry, "I Promised Africa," uses no dialogue, instead giving only a few written words and the singing of African children to impart the effects of the disease to the audience. A film by Mustafa Khan, "Coming to Life: Stories of Hope, Healing, and AIDS," deals with people living with HIV, as well as the issues of addiction and prostitution.
One attendee, Judine Slaughter, found the works "very creative...I liked the diversity of the themes." She went on to say several of the films "struck me as interesting from the beginning and held my attention to the end."
The festival was held, free of charge, in PGCC's Largo Student. Iinformation about future events presented by the Liberal Arts Department at PGCC is available on the college's Web page at http://www.pgcc.edu. For more information about upcoming film festivals or about the Heritage Film Festival, go to www.heritagefilm-videofest.org or call 240-568-3790..
Erin Whiting is a student in English 104 (Media Writing).
