Decision
Sat Feb 23, 2019 – 7:30 pm | Domenico’s
Decision
Directed by Mary Jo Zefeldt
Narrative Short
USA | 3 min | 2016
Within an expanse of anxiety and faced with a false choice, a decision must be made. Decision is a short animated film that explores one woman’s experience with anxiety and how she handles a perceived false choice.
Mary Jo Zefeldt
Director, Writer
Mary Jo Zefeldt is an animator and user experience researcher/designer from Chicago, Illinois. She is a recovering attorney and currently pursuing a M.F.A. in Animation and a M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction at DePaul University. Mary Jo also teaches Introduction to 2D animation at Loyola University Chicago. She has recently spoken at both CIMMFEST in Chicago and partner festival to the Tribeca film festival, Games for Change. “Decision” is her debut animated film.
Film Information
Director: Mary Jo Zefeldt
Country: USA
Year: 2016
Language: English
Runtime: 3 min
Rated: PG
Credits
Writer: Mary Jo Zefeldt
Sound Design/Re-Recording Mixing: Ryan Sullivan
Pharma Lab Training Video:1
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Pharma Lab Training Video:1
Directed by Joe Bowes
Narrative Short
USA | 9 min | 2017
A training video gone wrong for the government’s new pharmaceutical testing facility!
Joe Bowes
Director, Writer
Bowes is a student of both the Film and Psychology programs at UW-Milwaukee and the combination is apparent in his work. With a deep appreciation for cinema, Joe hopes to continue writing, directing and producing films long into the future.
Film Information
Director: Joe Bowes
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 9 min
Rated: R
Credits
Writers: Joseph David Bowes
Producer: Joseph David Bowes
Director of Photography: Louis Fisher
Assistant Director: Ryan Klassa
Editor: Joe Bowes, Ryan Klassa, Louis Fisher
Off Book
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Off Book
Directed by Robert Bruce Carter
Narrative Short
USA | 8 min | 2017
OFF BOOK is an offbeat comedy about living the scripted life.
Natalie is an ambitious small-town girl looking for love. Steve is a leather jacket-wearing city guy that has life figured out. They meet for a first date at a Chicago cafe, but their date takes an unexpected turn when Steve brings something with him that leaves them both changed. OFF BOOK examines the complexities of social structures and dating in the twenty first century.
Robert Bruce Carter
Director
Robert Bruce Carter is a Chicago-based writer, director, and occasional actor, originally hailing from Baltimore. The son of a Puerto Rican mother and an American father, he speaks Spanish and French and has lived abroad in France and Argentina.
He moved to Chicago in 2009 to get into the city’s renowned comedy scene. He studied improv and comedy at The Second City and The Annoyance Theatre and spent many years writing and performing live comedy before deciding that he wanted to create something that was a bit more permanent-probably because of the fear of death and all that…
Robert then turned to creating short films with odd-ball characters and absurd comedic themes. In 2015, his comedic web series, “Words Fail Me”, was an official selection at Brooklyn Web Fest, NYC Web Fest, and Hollyweb Festival.
Film Information
Director: Robert Bruce Carter
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 8 min
Rated: PG
Credits
Writers: Eric Feltes, Mindy Fay Parks
Producer: Eliaz Rodriguez
Cinematography/DP: Hannah Welever
Editor: Paul Myzia
Natalie
Steve
Barista
Mom
Mount Liptak
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Mount Liptak
Directed by Ryan Allsop
Narrative Short
USA | 13 min | 2017
To provide for his family after his father’s murder, a 15 year old boy must lie about his age in order to enlist in the Navy during WWII. Based on a true story.
Ryan Allsop
Director, Writer
Ryan Allsop has been a filmmaker all his life and loves to tell a wide variety of stories from drama’s to comedies. He grew up in a Mormon household in central Wisconsin. He’s about as midwestern as you can get. Telling stories is something he’s done all his life and something that he wants to keep doing for the rest of his life. Mount Liptak is now his 3rd short film with the hopes of shooting a feature length film soon. He’s an outgoing, goofy, hard-working, focused, rowdy guy who loves to tell the best possible story through film.
Film Information
Director: Ryan Allsop
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 13 min
Rated: PG
Credits
Writer: Ryan Allsop
Producer: Jordan Larson, Emmanuil Morari
Cinematography/DP: Tanner Shinnick
Music: Will Van De Crommert
Lester
Milfred
Officer Johnson
Virginia
Pilot
Police Officer
Vanita
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
VANITÀ
Directed by Kevin Pontuti
Narative Short
USA | 10 min | 2017
A young woman finds a strange mirror.
VANITÀ is the third installment in Kevin Pontuti’s Poetry of Penance project, which uses magical realism to explore themes related to resilience and self-acceptance. VANITÀ was partly inspired by the historical tradition of Vanitas painting. The film explores topics related to obsessive compulsive behavior, notions of self-image, and destructive behaviors relating to vanity.
“The dark and dreamlike episode that confronts the viewer in Kevin Pontuti’s VANITÀ is rich in the suggestion of imagery recounting the long human struggle with balancing the lures of the world with the needs of the soul. His solemn woman before a mirror, whose red hair glints in the darkness around her, is redolent of portrayals of the penitent Mary Magdalene, a woman whose physical past is shed to find her spiritual core. Pontuti’s wordless image especially reminds of quiet scenes of contemplation, like Georges de la Tour’s painting of the Penitent Magdalene, where the sinner looks toward a mirror, a traditional symbol of vanity, and is reminded by the insubstantial flame of the transience of earthly life. In Pontuti’s film, the woman’s disturbing moments of disgorging a part of herself- a physical part of herself- is the equivalent in the painting of the quiet skull, hollow with gaping dark orbits, that implies mortality and the willing abandonment of the physical, sensual past. But while the Magdalene lets her earthly beauty go, the woman in Pontuti’s film resorbs that aspect of physical sensuality that links her to world. Her quest for redemption and transformation has not yet found resolution.” Sarah Diebel, PhD
Kevin Pontuti
Director
Kevin Pontuti is an artist and educator based in the USA. He received his MFA from Syracuse University in 1993 then moved to California where he founded the Los Angeles-based production company Studio P Inc. His image-making expertise and collaborative spirit attracted many top artists and designers to his studio. In 2009, Pontuti accepted a professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. In 2017, he returned to California to lead University of the Pacific’s MEDIA X program. His teaching and creative practice include photography, cinematic arts and transmedia studies.
Film Information
Director: Kevin Pontuti
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 10 min
Rated: PG-13
Credits
Producer: Kevin Pontuti, Peter Galante
Writer: Kevin Pontuti
Director of Photograph: Ed Jakober and Peter Galante
Visual Effects: Keif Oss
Special Effects: Holly Michels and Jennifer Sansfacon
Costume Design: Susan Jakober
Props: Andrew McIntosh
Into Silence
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Into Silence
Directed by Zubaydah Bashir
Narrative Short
USA | 4 min | 2017
In a near future dystopian America, on the brink of a civil war, a woman and her fiancé are escorted by a guide from an underground refugee organization. She finds to survive in society is to kill her true self.
Zubaydah Bashir
Director, Writer
Zubaydah Bashir is a New York based screenwriter and director for film and TV. Upon graduating from Columbia College Chicago, she received her BA in Cinema Art and Science, and graduated magna cum laude. She has completed several short film projects in which she directed, assistant directed, produced, written, and edited. She is known for creating scripts that often contain hidden societal and political commentary in the genres of thriller, drama, and realistic fantasy/sci-fi. Aside from screenwriting and directing, she serves as a pre-screener for a select few of international, and national film festivals.
Film Information
Director: Zubaydah Bashir
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 4 min
Rated: PG-13
Credits
Writer: Zubaydah Bashir
Producer: Zubaydah Bashir, TinTin Wang, Timothy Wilson, Rebecca Wilson, 4Christ Inc., Christine Wilson
Cinematography/DP: TinTin Wang
Editor: Zubaydah Bashir
Connect With This Film
Monastery Of The Holy Cross
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Monastery of the Holy Cross: Rebuilding a Sanctuary
Directed by Steve Sepulveda &
Alex Villaseñor
Documentary Short
USA | 9 min | 2017
The contemplative life of Benedictine Monks in the heart of Chicago as they rebuild their sanctuary with the altar piece of renowned Iconographer Vladislav Andrejev.
Steve Sepulveda
Director
Creative Director at Emerging Light Media,a production Company in Chicago dedicated in telling amazing stories wherever they may take us.
Alex Villaseñor
Director
Creative Director at Emerging Light Media,a production Company in Chicago dedicated in telling amazing stories wherever they may take us.
Film Information
Directors: Steve Sepulveda & Alex Villaseñor
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 9 min
Rated: G
Credits
Cinematograper/DP: Steve Sepulveda & Alex Villaseñor
Decision
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Decision
Directed by Mary Jo Zefeldt
Narrative Short
USA | 3 min | 2016
Within an expanse of anxiety and faced with a false choice, a decision must be made. Decision is a short animated film that explores one woman’s experience with anxiety and how she handles a perceived false choice.
Mary Jo Zefeldt
Director, Writer
Mary Jo Zefeldt is an animator and user experience researcher/designer from Chicago, Illinois. She is a recovering attorney and currently pursuing a M.F.A. in Animation and a M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction at DePaul University. Mary Jo also teaches Introduction to 2D animation at Loyola University Chicago. She has recently spoken at both CIMMFEST in Chicago and partner festival to the Tribeca film festival, Games for Change. “Decision” is her debut animated film.
Film Information
Director: Mary Jo Zefeldt
Country: USA
Year: 2016
Language: English
Runtime: 3 min
Rated: PG
Credits
Writer: Mary Jo Zefeldt
Sound Design/Re-Recording Mixing: Ryan Sullivan
Calvin’s Story
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Calvin’s Story
Directed by Quinn Wilson
Documentary Short
USA | 4 min | 2017
After coming out to his parents as gay, this young black man has been surviving homelessness on the streets of Chicago for years. We learn about his story, life, and aspirations to be a massage therapist.
Quinn Wilson
Director
Quinn Wilson (Chicago, IL) is the former Creative Director for the iO Comedy Network of the famous iO Improv Theater. He created and lead a team pitching TV pilots, creating comedy web videos, teaching video production classes, and doing branded work all along-side the legendary comedy talent of the iO Theater. Commercially, he is repped as a comedy director with Big Spoon Industries.
Wilson is a festival award-winning director focusing on comedy and social justice-related work. In over 20 festival appearances, his wins include The Amsterdam International Film Festival, Las Vegas International Film Fest, and The Big Island Film Fest.
As a producer, Wilson’s co-produced Embers, which garnered great esteem and many festival awards. He has a strong interest in social justice issues, global non-profit volunteer work, and using the film medium transformatively to change the world, as in evidenced in his video work with Echo100plus, All Chicago, other Calvin’s Story partner organizations, and his new venture, What Matter Productions.
Film Information
Directors: Quinn Wilson
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 4 min
Rated: PG
Credits
Producer: Caullen Hudson, Quinn Wilson
Editor: Garret Brubaker
Cinematography: Sean Kelly
Sound Mixer: Mark Serletic
Adopted
YES! Filmmaker(s) Attending for Q & A
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
Adopted
Directed by Hannah Christensen
Short Narrative
USA | 9 min | 2017
An orphan is recruited by an agency and is placed in criminal families with the order to kill them.
Hannah Christensen
Director, Writer
Hannah is a recent graduate of Film from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She specializes in editing and post-production, and finds herself at home as long as her creativity is pushed.
Film Information
Director: Hannah Christensen
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 9 min
Rated: PG 13
Credits
Writer: Hannah Christensen
Director of Photography: Sean McDowell
Assistant Director: Andrew Harrington
Editor: Hannah Christensen
Narrator: James Kuckkan
Marlow
Peggy Carol
Fawn, The
Sun Feb 25, 2018 – 12:00 pm | La Casa Grande
The Fawn
Directed by Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts
Narrative Short
USA | 9 min | 2017
The Fawn is a collaborative, intergenerational storytelling project for the 21st century. This social media born, expanded cinema work unites art and life through the reinvention and the magical realism of a child’s imagination, who is constantly stuck at her parent’s work, and she moves to another level with Snapchat. The Fawn is a lo-tech, no budget work that utilizes free mobile applications to explore character and contemporary issues in ecology through the whimsical perspective of childhood.
S/N: Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts
Director, Producer, Writer
S/N is a multi-disciplinary art group, which works extensively with, but not limited to, video, sound, animation, photography, and mobile media. The exhibitions often include performative elements and mediated footage, pushing both experimental and conceptual ideas around media. Thematic undercurrents in S/N’s creative process began in dealing with the task of interacting with social constructs as it relates to race and gender. The resulting work demonstrates their combined effort to relate to one another in conjunction with their presumed place within society. A shared fascination with ideas of the hidden, overlooked and unconsidered histories approach themes of relational interaction with the deliberate intent to undermine and subvert negative social constructs. The goal is to uncover fresh possibilities and the belief is that activating good conversation is the precursor to positive change.
S/N members include Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts who have been collaborating since 2008. Their work has been exhibited and screened world wide in various festivals, galleries and museums including Hong Kong Art Fair, Pekin Fine Arts, DAS Weekend, the Freies Museum in Berlin, and the Czong Institute for Conmporary Art in Gyeonggi-do, Korea. In 2014 S/N were finalists for the MacArthur Grant in Documentary Film. In 2015 S/N received the William Minor Grant, and the Pollination Project Seed Grant in 2016.
Currently, Jennida serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography and Hassan is the Technology Coordinator for the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts as well as the Executive Director of the Big Muddy Film Festival at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.
Film Information
Director: Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts
Country: USA
Year: 2017
Language: English
Runtime: 9 min
Credits
Producers: Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts
Writers: Jennida Chase and Zahra Pitts
Editor: Jennida Chase
Sound Editor: Jennida Chase
