The third annual San Diego Film Week wraps upon Saturday with its Film Award.
The event has programming at the Museum of Photographic Arts, The Sunset Temple, Landmark Hillcrest Cinemas, Digital Gym Cinema and Whistlestop Bar.
San Diego Film Week is sponsored by the Film Consortium San Diego and highlights more than 100 local films as well as best-of selections from local film festivals such as Film Out San Diego, GI Film Festival San Diego, San Diego Italian Film Festival, San Diego International Film Festival, New Filmmakers LA and the 48 Hour Film Project. Sadly it also overlaps with the older festival Pac-Arts' Spring Showcase. I wish the Film Consortium would pay a little more attention the the festival calendar and not schedule its film event on top of veteran festival events. Hopefully filmgoers can make time for both with some careful planning.
One of the films screening at Film Week is "Capture" directed by John Freeman and Karenssa LeGear.
LeGear, who got into film through acting and makes her directing debut with "Capture," described the film as "a suspenseful 15-minute psychological thriller. It's about a photographer who finally decides to reveal his deep dark passion to his girlfriend. And once he does that he can't come back from that decision. He's going to have to live with the consequences."
The film came about through a partnership the Film Consortium has with So Say We All, a literary and performing arts non-profit organization whose mission is to create opportunities for individuals to tell their stories, and tell them better, through three core priorities: publishing, performance, and education.
So Say We All provided stories, in this case, horror stories, for filmmakers to adapt.
"Then it needs to be adapted into a screenplay and turned into a film in two months," Freeman explained. "It was really exciting for us because we spoke with the writer personally, we had contact with him and we're like, hey we wanted to get your input, what was your inspiration like what were you thinking about, where did this story come from, what does it mean to you, and then we just build off of that."
Freeman has been a part of the Film Consortium from its beginning and recalled how Jodo Cilley first came up with the idea of helping local filmmakers to network and having mixers at random hotel lobbies and how it has grown over the years to hosting bigger events such as Film Week.
"I can promise you that I would not be where I am now without the Film Consortium as a filmmaker," Freeman said. "I can make a living right now making movies doing what I love. I make a living making art and I got that opportunity directly from the Film Consortium so they gave me opportunities to meet other filmmakers, they gave me opportunities to enter film festivals, they gave me opportunities to get resources such as crews and locations."
LeGear added that after a week of screening local films it leads up to the San Diego Film Awards where a panel of judges selects the best of what's been screened.
"It means so much to see your work how it's intended on the big screen," LeGear stated. " It's such a nice thing to get to go and see your own work or support others in their work on the big screen and that's a huge part of it. And to share it with friends and family it becomes an event."
Other films that I have seen and can recommend are "Unlocked" (I have worked with filmmaker and stuntman Fernando Jay Huerto on a few of his 48HR Film Projects and Four Points Film Projects), "Kathy" by Jonathan Hammond, who I have seen grow as a filmmaker from his early student days, "San Diego Gay Bar History" directed by Paul Detwiler, and "From Haarlem to Harlem" by Barbarella and David Fokos. And as a "Star Wars" fan and toy collector I am looking forward to "Star Wars: The Toys Awaken."
"Capture" screens on April 18 and San Diego Film Week culminates with the 6th annual San Diego Film Awards presented by KPBS on April 20 at Parq Nightclub in downtown San Diego. The San Diego Film Awards will air on KPBS.
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