NORTHAMPTON — The chances of a large theater chain showing “How to Put Everything in Its Right Place,” an animated short film by University of Massachusetts Amherst film student Jared Pearson of Leverett, are probably slim.
But on Sunday, in front of an audience of local film enthusiasts and critics at this year’s Northampton Film Festival, Pearson’s movie, which tells the story of a boy growing up in the foster system battling depression, received due recognition. The depression is depicted by a tiny clay astronaut who maintains his heart. The film was one of a few winners in this year’s Five College Film Festival.
“It feels good to be recognized after months of work,” Pearson said, following one of the Northampton festival’s film showings Sunday at The Northampton Community Arts Trust on Hawley Street.
Programming for the local festival started on Thursday with a film and media networking event and ran through Sunday night at the Hawley Street arts building and at other venues throughout the downtown area like Click Workspace and Historic Northampton. The Northampton festival included work from the Five College Film Festival and the Black Maria Film Festival, which is a traveling international juried film competition that’s based in New Jersey.
Compared to the last few years, Albert Williams, director of Northampton Community Television and the Northampton Film Festival, said this year’s festival was well attended by film enthusiasts and others who might not otherwise watch independent or experimental films, averaging between 15 and 50 people at each event.
“It’s a collection of multimedia experiences that you wouldn’t have access to on your own,” he said, noting a podcasting workshop that happened on Thursday and another on making movies with 16-millimeter film, in addition to the film showings.
While it was originally a corporately run event, the film festival was taken over about five years ago by Northampton Community Television. This year, it was organized by a team of Pioneer Valley-based filmmakers and featured a juried film competition for the first time.
At one showing on Sunday of eight experimental nonfictional short films, videos ranged from a six-minute-long animated film examining image censorship to a shaky 14-minute, 20-second video of a goat running loose through Port-au-Prince.
Among his favorite pieces that were shown throughout the weekend, Pearson highlighted an animated film that was made using individual frames from martial arts instructional books.
Those more experimental pieces gave audience members a chance “to see the world in a different way,” said Sarah Lanzillotta of Easthampton, who was in charge of curating the festival’s juried experimental film competition. Two winners were selected Sunday night.
Over the past year or so, Lanzillotta says she narrowed down more than 250 video submissions that were sent from filmmakers around the globe to 25 selections.
“It was all over the place. I had to make a lot of tough decisions,” she said. Some of the selections, such as a 15-minute piece shot on film that explores the intersection between cinema and architecture, were selected to push back against “what people think about film,” she said.
At the heart of the event, while focused on filmmaking as an art form, was community. When watching a movie at a theater or festival, everyone sees the same thing at the same time, Williams said. And unlike other artistic media like painting or drawing, which can be a little more abstract and leave interpretation up to the viewer, filmmakers have the power to precisely direct the focus of their audience.
“You’re watching something that’s specifically directed,” he said.
Looking to future film festivals, Williams says organizers are still refining the event and trying to figure out what local film enthusiasts want to see. He’s hoping that next year’s festival will be bigger and more successful.
“We want to create an experience that’s unique,” he said.
Andy Castillo can be reached at acastillo@gazettenet.com.