Reel talent: Easthampton Film Festival returns for fourth year, May 1-4

Easthampton Film Festival will return for its fourth year from Thursday, May 1, through Sunday, May 4, bringing with it a slate of movies that were created, in large part, by local filmmakers.

This year’s lineup includes a screening of offbeat comedy shorts on Thursday, May 1, at Abandoned Building Brewery; a local feature movie, “Tallywacker,” on Friday, May 2, at E-Media; documentaries at CitySpace, dramatic shorts and a shorts category called “It’s Complicated” at E-Media, and horror shorts at CitySpace on Saturday, May 3; and a slate of “queer stories” shorts on Sunday, May 4, at CitySpace.

The festival also features several panel discussions, plus a live concert by the band Tallywacker at the Jupiter Club after the movie screening.

Festival Director Chris Ferry said that what the festival means to the city of Easthampton is that it brings the potential “to really help community-build from a new angle,” he said. “The local music scene is already existing; it’s already striving.” This festival, however, helps to “create and develop and foster a local film scene that’s not gonna be quite the same animal, but I think it can be community-building in a similar way.” (In fact, he admitted, he created the festival as a way to make friends after moving to the Pioneer Valley in 2020.)

One of Ferry’s favorite movies in this year’s festival is the “queer stories” short “Our Last Summer” by Northampton High School student Elly Hiranandani, about two childhood friends who drift apart, then have to deal with complications created by one friend’s new relationship.

“It’s so accomplished and sincere and moving and heartfelt,” Ferry said. “I knew it was a student film; I thought it was somebody in film school, and I was flabbergasted when I found out it was 16-, 17-year-olds making this.”

Another favorite: “Kill For Love,” by Max Wilhelm, a “Thelma and Louise”-esque crime thriller about two friends on the lam. “It’s a little rough around the edges in some ways,” Ferry said, “but, man, it’s got heart.”

He did say, however, that picking favorites is difficult, as picking the lineup itself can be: If, for example, the selection committee has one 20-minute slot left to fill and there are four different films about microbreweries, “Maybe the decision is just as banal as runtime.”

“We had to say no to over 10 films that we all loved,” Ferry said. “There’s only so much you can handle in one season at our scale.”

Easthampton Film Festival is relatively young – its first year was 2022. Since then, Ferry said, one of his biggest takeaways has been that “there’s an enormous amount of talent in this area – full stop, but specifically I’m talking about filmmaking.” In his first year, he was worried that he wouldn’t get any submissions he’d want to show, but “right out of the gate, that was not a problem. I was like, ‘Wow!’” What surprised him, though, was how uncommon it is for those creatives to know each other, even if they’re based in Easthampton: “We literally live five minutes apart!”

In the future, as the festival grows, he wants it to be not only a destination event that gets the whole town involved, but also a major developmental opportunity for local creatives – “I don’t want this to just be a fun thing we do once a year,” he said.

“It needs to be something more than just a celebration of screening people’s films. I want it to be an incubator. I want it to be a production house. I want it to lead by example and actively get involved and say, ‘Hey, if you’ve got an idea, let’s forward that to the next stage.’”

Even so, he’ll have some logistical issues to contend with as he builds the festival – namely, a lack of hotels and a lack of a movie theater in the town, which he cited as the biggest obstacles in the way of immediate growth.

In any case, Ferry isn’t deterred, and he’s excited for this year’s festival.

“It’s a lot,” he said. “It’s gonna be our biggest and best season yet.”

Tickets to each slate of films are $15 online or at the door with cash or Venmo. Admission to the panel discussions is free. To purchase tickets or see the full film lineup, visit easthamptonfilmfestival.com.

Carolyn Brown can be reached at [email protected].