Making Little Movies Great Again, The Indie Gathering in Hudson August 10-13

Let us now examine some of the bloated cinematic corpses from the movie year of 2017. Nobody much wanted to see the live-action GHOST IN THE SHELL. Or Universal Picture's second (count 'em) reboot of THE MUMMY, as a Tom Cruise actionfest. The once-unsinkable PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN sequels stumbled with number five, and movie spoofs of BAYWATCH and CHiPS saw quick cancellation!

Finally...THE EMOJI MOVIE. Bob Ignizio actually saw that one and didn't even bother to review it. There can be no lower praise.

With all that waste of millions in resources, time and talent, how about a film festival that really celebrates the struggling indies of the world, bravely getting entertainment done on a shoestring budget.

The Indie Gathering, held annually in the late summer at the Clarion Inn of Hudson, upholds local/international `microcinema' – shorts and features done by independent filmmakers, today most often working (and working wonders sometimes) in digital video.

F3T Fly Fishing Film Tour casts into the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, March 4

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

They’re not often as highly publicized and hyped as the broad-audience film festivals, but “mountain culture” and “adventure” film fests generally don’t have to brag; they’re avidly attended by insiders (of the outdoorsy type).

That goes for the F3T Fly Fishing Film Tour, a festival of angling-oriented short subjects, backed by wilderness outfitters and gear vendors such as Yeti and Costa.

A favorite annual event at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s longstanding Trout Club, the feature-length program of fishing shorts also includes a cash bar, tackle raffles and reps from local adventure clubs – not to mention extreme-sports-fishing imagery in the Museum’s Murch Auditorium.

Admission is $20 in advance, $25 at the door (pending availablity). The festival website is http://flyfilmtour.com/

On the Edge Film Festival brings the Call of the Wild to Cleveland Oct. 14-15

To the uninitiated, a "mountain film festival" might sound like one of those high-altitude annual showbiz markets held in Park City, Utah, or Telluride, Colorado. Hollywood -or Cleveland - movie wannabes dressed in their florescent-colored parkas, matching sunglasses and loads of cocaine, try to be "discovered" by Hollywood talent scouts. Don’t forget to pack lip balm and lots of staples to affix the handouts on your sucky-ass digital BLAIR WITCH knockoff to every available phone pole, bill board, bystander or caribou who don't get out of the way enough.

No, not quite. Mountain Film Festivals, held at different venues around the world, are curious oxymorons, celebrations of adventure-sports movies whose primary message is to get up from your auditorium seat and OUT. Here is where real-life adventurers bring the fruits of their passion for skiiing, rock climbing, cycling, kayaking, BASE jumping, fishing, caving, snowboarding, dogsledding etc. No dealmaking over some hot "Hulk" script cranked out.

Only the truth (so Trump and Hillary need not apply) at the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival Oct. 5-9.

The Chagrin Documentary Film Festival, now in its seventh year, is a unique competitive film-festival event that has rapidly become a top-ticket for local filmgoers. The only drawback: it’s all true.

Sorry, no superhero adaptations – but there is DRAW HARD, the short portrait of John G, a Cleveland comics creator of graphic material more or less in the Harvey Pekar tradition rather than the Marvel one.

Sorry, no OCEANS 11 sequel/reboot/prequel casino caper, but instead WRESTLING ALLIGATORS, a feature about how Florida’s Seminole Indian tribe, one of the few First Nations peoples not carted off to wasteland reservations by the US government, became a billionaire success story in the gambling-hospitality industry.

Sorry, no lost-in-limbo MRS. DOUBTFIRE II that Hollywood dearly wanted to make before Robin Williams’ suicide, but instead there’s UNCLE GLORIA: ONE HELLUVA RIDE! Which purports to be a actual story of a macho homophobe adopting a transvestite disguise after a bad divorce.

Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest celebrates ten years (but for you, seven years, wholesale) September 8-18.

Technically, the annual Jewish FilmFest, put on by the Mandel Jewish Community Center of Cleveland, marks a full decade in 2016. With the asterisk that this week-plus of Israeli and international Judaica cinema is somewhat of a successor to the old Cleveland-Israeli Film Festival of about two decades ago, which brought to the area the rarely-screens films from the Tel Aviv movie industry.

After that had lain fallow into the early 2000s, the Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest began, and broadened that mission to include fiction and nonfiction, shorts and features, live-action and animation, from all over the world.

Screening venues are primarily at the Cedar Lee, but with additional showings at Shaker Square, University Circle, the Parma-Snow Public Library and the Mandel JCC itself.

Besides the imports from Israel, the 2016 milestone has entries from France, Poland, the Czech Republic and even the United States. But, yes, it is from France that we are receiving the definitive documentary on the American screen (and underrated filmmaking innovator) JERRY LEWIS: THE MAN BEHIND THE CLOWN, presumably in English, showing on Sept. 11 at the Cedar Lee.

A Priest, a Rabbi and an Arab walk into a bar...or is it the Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest, October 8-18?

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

A good many more movies than you think hail from the film studios of Tel Aviv (I should copyright the name Matzoh-bollywood before someone else does). But where to see Hebrew film

 fare on the big screen? The Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish Film Fest, that's where. 

This annual fall feast of cinematic Judiaca, fiction and nonfiction, shorts and features, utilizes screening venues all over, mostly on the east side of Cuyahoga County, with the bulk of the films shown at the Cedar Lee multiplex in Cleveland Heights, but with additional curtains raised at the Lakewood Public Library, Chagrin Falls, Shaker Square, the Maltz Performing Arts Center, and the Mandel JCC itself. 

Besides the imports from Israel, the 2015 edition has entries from France, Germany, the United States - and even Uruguay, in the case of MISTER KAPLAN, a 2014 comedy about an elderly South American guy fixated on mounting a ramshackle police operation, amateur MUNICH-style, against an old German saloon owner he suspects is an escaped Nazi war criminal. It screens at the Chagrin Cinemas multiplex On October 17 at 9:30 p.m. 

Canopy Collective raises the awning on a local film-night event, August 28

[Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.]

The Canopy Collective is a group of local artists in various disciplines, from photography to poetry to sculpting to embroidery, who maintain a gallery and performance space at 3910 Lorain Avenue. On August 28 the site will host the first-ever Canopy Movie Night, in which a collection of locally wrought shorts, music-videos and clips from features-in-progress will be screened.

Among those taking part are Turnstyle Films, a production company best known for DRAW HARD, a portrait of maverick Cleveland cartoonist and comic-strip supporter John G. Sickening Pictures is Zach Shildwatchter’s outfit specializing in grindhouse-horror style shorts riffing on serial killers and other unspeakable topics. University of Akron graduate (oh, is the University of Akron still in business? We thought it had sold on Craigslist) Mike Wendt, when not working as a location manager on visiting film shoots, has embarked on projects of his own, such as the documentary short feature about Cleveland rock radio THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.

Expect a few local premieres, refreshments, raffle prizes and Q&A sessions. Admission is $5, and the show lasts from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. For more information, go online to www.canopy-collective.com.

The Indie Gathering wants you, August 15-17 in Hudson

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

As we all know by now, other than LeBron James, the only thing significant about Cleveland is the Indie Gathering. The Indie Gathering is a local affiliate of independent grassroots film groups across the country, linked by the online world. Normally the Indie Gathering has small monthly meet-and-greets around the Cleveland area, but every year there's a big Indie-Gathering weekend, filled with panelists, workshops, and film-festival screenings.

That's what's on tap August 15, 16 and 17 at the Clarion Inn and Conference Center, 240 Hines Hill Road in Hudson (right off the I-271 freeway exit).

The Indie Gathering features three days of low- and micro-budget cinema from around the world, workshops and networking parties, featuring both local would-be Spielbergs and out-of-town visitors, who have made movies their hobby, obsession and occupation.

Run for the Pennsylvania border for The 2013 Eerie Horror Fest Oct. 18-20

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever since LeBron left, the most significant thing about Cleveland is, we can all agree...Well, no there's really nothing. LeBron took all our hopes and dreams with him. There is only emptiness and futility left now. I received a schedule of the upcoming Ohio Independent Film Festival slate of entries and it even has a whole documentary devoted to LeBron's "Decision" to flee and the impact upon this beknighted metropolis and
Cleveland's "recovery" from the humiliation. Kind of like the way addicts and alcoholics are in "recovery," I fear, the sort of "recovery" that goes on forever. Like the recession here.

Well, I guess the Ohio Independent Film Festival is the one thing significant about Cleveland now that LeBron's gone, but it's still several weeks away. How to occupy your time in the meanwhile? Maybe consider a Halloween-themed movie festival that allows a nice, non-taxing road trip out of this desperate, LeBron-less town?

It's the Eerie Horror Fest, happening right over the Pennsylvania boarder in Erie, PA. Yes, you have to drive though Melonhead territory around Mentor/Kirtland
and Harlan Ellison territory around Painesville, but Ellison (like LeBron) left the state long ago, won't likely be on the road to terrorize you.

Go green for Valentine's at the Wild & Scenic Environmental Film Festival

[THE WILD AND SCENIC ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL takes place Saturday February 16th at starting at 6:00 pm at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.]

Reporting by Charles Cassady, Jr. 

It’s the weekend of Valentine’s Day. Where to take your sweetheart for an experience that deepens and defines your releationship?

Okay, guys, first know this about your sweetheart (keep in mind I’ve only dated Cleveland girls; your results may vary geographically):

           --She probably really doesn’t love or fancy you very much. She just thought you might have some good career-related connections. Or maybe she saw you driving your dad’s sporty car as a loaner while your own 1993 Escort was in the shop again for repairs and assumed you had lots of money and/or access to cool narcotics.

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             --She is dazzled by bright, shiny objects and things on screens.

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       --She is, politically correctedly, passionately concerned about the environment, global warming, and the welfare of all living things (except for you).

Then the place for the perfect romantic idyll is University Circle, whose cultural institutions and museum-collections will make memories. Memories that will help you later visualize your sweetheart being axed to pieces by knights in suits from the Art Museum’s Armor Court, or devoured by a T.rex skeleton from the Natural History Museum.

That’s a Fact, Jack! The Chagrin Documentary Film Festival returns, Oct. 3-7 2012

[Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.]

Now in its third year, the Chagrin Documentary Film Festival is northeast Ohio's only film festival uniquely devoted to nonfiction features and shorts. It's a must on any local film fans' itinerary. Because, let's face it, if some guy who thinks he's a Batman villain is going to open fire at a movie house, you can bet it's not going to be at a documentary.

Those draw a whole different crowd – even though a well-wrought nonfiction feature can be just as entertaining as any Hollywood-industry product.Often better.

The CDFF takes place from Wednesday, Oct. 3, through Sunday, Oct. 7, at venues throughout the famously postcard-pretty village of Chagrin Falls on the eastern side of Cuyahoga County. Screening sites range from the big school auditorium on Philomethian Street to the more salon-like environment of the sushi restaurant Umami.

The 16th Indie Gathering takes place August 17th through the 19th in Hudson, OH

Event preview by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Ever since LeBron left the only thing significant about Cleveland is the Indie Gathering. The Indie Gathering is a local affiliate of independent grassroots film groups across the country, linked by the online world. Normally the Indie Gathering has small monthly meet-and-greets around the Cleveland area (shoutout to Li Wah Chinese restaurant!), but every year there's a big Indie-Gathering jamboree, and that's what's in the cue cards August 17, 18 and 19 at the Clarion Inn and Conference Center, 240 Hines Hill Road in Hudson (right off the I-271 freeway exit; you can't miss it).

The Indie Gathering features three days of film screenings, panel discussions, workshops and networking parties, featuring both local would-be Spielbergs and out-of-town visitors, who have made cinema their hobby, obsession and occupation.