Flicker Spokane Film Festival expands shorts

Reel changes lie ahead for the eighth annual Flicker Spokane Film Festival.

The short film fest is starting a day earlier than usual and has expanded to include a third showing of local, regional, national and international entries.

The Flicker Spokane Film Festival celebrates films that are 15 minutes in length or less. Typically the festival has happened on Sunday, but this year organizers moved it to Saturday, allowing for a late-night showing in addition to the afternoon and evening presentations.

“In the past the second show was a repeat of the first, but we’ve got so many submissions and so many great films that we couldn’t afford to toss anything out,” said co-founder Travis Hiibner.

While the 2 and 6 p.m. programs will each show local and independent films, the 10 p.m. show is a sort of “best of” the first two programs.

“Not only did we receive a whole lot from overseas, a lot of Europeans, which is always cool, but we’ve also been slowly building up the collective of filmmakers for Flicker who submit every year,” said co-founder Lonny Waddle.

In addition to entries from Spain, France, Germany and Canada, organizers also note the event’s diverse points of view, evidenced in substantial female representation and experimental genres.

“We have films that use stop motion, paper animation. … Some of the more experimental filmmakers have painted on celluloid film or taken found footage and manipulated it,” said another festival co-founder, Derrick King.

There are also a few documentary films, or mini-docs, showing at Flicker 2010.

Jessica Oreck’s “Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo” was shown at last year’s Spokane International Film Festival. For Flicker she submitted a new short from her upcoming documentary about mushroom pickers in Romania.

“The basic goal is to have the festival show films that you’re not going to see anywhere else,” said King. “We want to bring different shorts into town and let people see and experience a different outlook on what can be done on film.

“A lot of these films aren’t romance-comedy or action-adventure. It’s artists trying to express something on film.”

Flicker promotes experimental and local filmmaking that transcends Hollywood formulas. It’s also focused on the now-novelty of making films with actual film – regular 8mm, super 8mm, 16mm and super 16mm – as opposed to video.

“We’re trying to give short filmmakers a venue to get their films seen to remind people that, contrary to popular belief, film is not dead,” Waddle said.