A dream to bring family tradition to life

Feb. 19—Prison City Film Festival is back for another year of films to the Huntsville community from around the world.

Festival Director Corinne Attaya took time to reflect on the Festival.

"Movies have been as much a part of my childhood and formative years as peanut butter sandwiches and riding my bicycle around the neighborhood on sunny afternoons," Attaya said. "From the time I was a small child I can remember looking forward to Friday nights."

Attaya remembers making homemade cheese pizza with her mom, pairing it with her only beverage of choice — root beer.

"We were waiting for dad to get home from blockbuster with what was sure to be the perfect selection for our family entertainment. We were introduced to new releases at the time and intermixed with cinema classics," Attaya said. "The anticipation that infused each of the six days that separated us from the next movie night were intensified during the week that we waited with baited breath to watch each of the movies in the Back to the Future trilogy."

She said as she grew and her tastes in movies developed and matured the family collectively became interested in different genres and styles of film and movies.

"We started dipping our toes in experimental cinema and some fringe pieces. They weren't all our favorites, but we never walked away without something new and intriguing to talk about afterward," Attaya said.

Spending the latter half of her adolescent years in Huntsville, and being Paul Shiver's daughter with the Old Town Theater, she remembers having conversations about different types of ways the theater was used for productions and other types of shows.

"The one time I can recall the theater being used for projected films was a very different type of film festival; a 'horror and gore-fest' film festival, which of course looked like a blast for those attendees," Attaya said. "We talked about how fun that must be and what a film festival that we organized might look like."

While there was certainly a market for certain genre, and the late night film screenings seemed like a particular type of fun, the family knew that they wanted to go bigger.

"We wanted more. Certainly, we wanted to include the fun, campy, horror-type films that had drawn the crowd of that particular festival, but we also loved comedy, and narrative drama," Attaya said. "As I had moved into adulthood, I was very excited about the possibility of seeing the world through new and different lenses with documentaries."

Attaya said when they designed the Prison City Film Festival, they didn't want to limit themselves to one genre or style of film.

"What we did want was to open our doors to filmmakers whose work we might not otherwise have the opportunity to see. Our festival tagline is, 'Where filmmakers 'Break Out." And, yes, we do indeed congratulate ourselves on the cleverness of that, but what we have mostly been pleased to see is how many filmmakers have come through our festival and then continued on to do bigger and greater things."

Now, don't misunderstand Attaya, she doesn't posit the festival as 'responsible' for any of the great things that some of what they affectionately refer to as "our" filmmakers have accomplished, but they do find themselves honored to be a small part of their stories.

"As we move rapidly closer to our 7th annual festival week, we are beyond excited for the incredible films we have selected for screening. One of the primary goals we decided on for this year's festival was to make a greater effort to reach out to the local Huntsville community members and make sure they know just exactly what Prison City Film Festival is, and what it offers to them, chiefly — the films," Attaya said.

If an interested party decides to look into PCFF and finds their way to the festival website, they can view the schedule for each of the four days of the festival. Each day is separated into 2-hour Film "Blocks" and within each block is going to be approximately 1 to 5 (or more) different films, depending on the length of the films.

"If a curious local decided to attend one or more of the film blocks, they are likely going to want to know just exactly what it is that they are going to see, and that is where it all gets fun," Attaya said.

Each film block is curated carefully to have a variety of different genre's, lengths and types of films.

"We thought very carefully about how to organize the film blocks, whether to group them by genre or film type, but we finally settled on having different types in each block," Attaya said. "You may get through the first short film and decide it isn't your cup of tea, but we always say, 'Just wait.' The next one may be your favorite thing that you've seen all week."

Some might decide to go in with an open mind and be surprised with what is screened, but that certainly isn't required, nor is it expected. On the same schedule posted on the PCFF website, you can easily click on the block of films you are interested in seeing and will notice that the name of each film is hyperlinked to a page that gives as much information about that film as is available. Often there is even a trailer included to watch and see if that particular film might be something that holds a particular interest to the viewer.

"Through the years we have received submissions from all over the world but also from incredibly talented locals," Attaya said. "We have film submissions from right here in Huntsville, from our very own Sam Houston State University students. There is always a great collection of comedic short films and sometimes even feature length comedies."

The Shiver family has received some dramatic films both shorts and feature length that have brought them to tears.

"We always have a few music videos from independent artists, and documentary features and shorts," Attaya said.

A few notable films selected to be screened this year include: the world premiere of "Carnage Radio", a thriller about a radio DJ whose world is shaken by one of his late night callers; "Betrayal" is one of the international submissions, a beautiful period piece about a German-Dutch officer during World War II and how his feelings change about the atrocities he is being ordered to carry out; "Leverage" is a comedic action short film about the Russian mob, and a Christmas party; "The man In the Red Beret" is a documentary feature following a chess master in the French Quarter; and "Money Bag" is a creative short about a robbery gone wrong, all shown from a very unique perspective.

These are just a tiny handful of the films being screened between Feb. 28 through March 2 at Prison City Film Festival! For detailed information on all of the scheduled films, trailers, and festival tickets, one can log-on to: www.PrisonCityFilmFestival.com

Contact Brenda Poe at editor@itemonline.com