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Festival circuit is new ground
Animator and high school senior Brian Lipko is up for best animation and best Pa. filmmaker.
For 18-year-old animator Brian Lipko of Westtown, his first taste of the film-festival circuit puts him in the ring with professional filmmakers from around the globe, including Australia and Belgium.
He's a finalist (and the youngest competitor) in the categories of Best Animation and Best Pennsylvania Filmmaker at the West Chester Film Festival, which begins Thursday.
The four-day festival will feature 68 shorts (less than 30 minutes), plus 18 films made by youths. More than 30 of the films will have their world premieres in West Chester.
On Saturday, Tim Chambers, the director of the film The Mighty Macs, about the great Immaculata women's basketball teams of the '70s, will give a free lecture. The festival workshop series will focus on musical scores, with teams competing to score a previous West Chester Film Festival creation Stunt Friend.
The movie blocks will be shown at the Cultural Center at the Chester County Historical Society, YWCA, Knights of Columbus and the Masonic Lodge. John Cigler, a festival organizer, noted that "We still don't have a movie theater in West Chester."
Lipko, a senior at West Chester's Bayard Rustin High School, also won $500, one of the first scholarships ever awarded to high school students by the West Chester Film Festival. In the fall, he'll go to Temple as a film and media arts major.
"It's something that most film festivals don't do," Cigler said. "But we wanted to give back to the community."
In the festival, Lipko, a tall, lanky teenager who is deeply reflective when talking about his work, has two film entries, Crayon and Broken Wind.
Crayon is about the adventures of a boy that involve Frankenstein, surfing, dragons and a small, sandy island with a single palm tree. It was loosely inspired by the children's book Harold and the Purple Crayon, which Lipko remembers from first grade. It took more than four months to make, and Lipko called it a more personal project.
Broken Wind, which took a week to make, is a two-minute comedy involving birds that has gotten more than 120,000 views on YouTube.com. Lipko described it as "sound-driven more than animation-driven . . . based on a broad sense of humor."
Another finalist for Best Pennsylvania filmmaker is Berwyn native Josh Smith, 22. His touching drama, Four Thorns for Aidan, was shot around Easttown Township, Marsh Creek in Downingtown, and his grandmother's house in Tredyffrin Township.
Smith said his inspiration came from "growing up in the Main Line and watching so many parents who would push their kids so hard." After graduating from Drexel last year, he's now working as an assistant producer in Tokyo.
In the documentary Tredyffrin Township . . . The First 300 Years, audience members can spot more local sights, as well as learn about local history. Filmmaker Jane Pollini, who lives in Berwyn, said she's only entered local film festivals since she thought "the people from the area would be most interested in their community."
A double winner from last year's film festival, CBS3 anchor Larry Mendte, has entered a documentary called The Beanie Baby Soldier. Based on the life of Cpl. Stephen McGowan of Newark, Del., Mendte chronicles the efforts of McGowan to distribute Beanie Babies to Iraqi children.
Mendte said he wanted to tell the story of McGowan, who died in the war in 2005, because "I feel better about the world knowing there are people like that."
The winner of the Best Woman Filmmaker goes to Carolyn London for her live-action comedy I'm in the Mood for Death. This is the only award given in advance, and the film was selected by the Regional Center for Women in the Arts. The short is about a woman planning her own death.
London, who lives in New York, said the movie was inspired by her "compulsive need to control every part of everything in your life." However, in the film, "the joke is when you throw that away and jump into the abyss, you learn to live," she said.
In another film about death, Muhammad Ali Hassan directed Rabia, a film about a female suicide bomber. Hassan said he made the film because "every terrorist has a story. I want to make an audience empathize so we can have an honest dialogue" about what causes terrorism in the Middle East.
Shot in California, Hassan said he managed to "manufacture Israel and Palestine in Orange County," where he lives part of the time. He's running for state representative in Colorado, where he also has residency.
Another unexpected inspiration from war is the Barbie doll. The Tribe is a documentary about how the Barbie doll was created by a Jewish woman and modeled after a post-World War II German doll named Lilli, an Aryan-looking blonde.
Filmmaker Tiffany Shlain said she found out about the coincidental tidbit in a museum show called "Too Jewish." The San Francisco filmmaker added, "I thought it was a great way to explore identity" about what it means to be Jewish.
Having already won 12 film awards, the short originally premiered at Sundance in 2006 and has been translated into seven languages.
Cigler said he expects about 20 to 30 filmmakers at the festival.
For Lipko, it will be his first time attending a film festival. "I just want to get a feel of what it's like," he said. "I'm just a kid working on a computer."
