Filmmakers Andrew Strachen, Don Murray, and Matthew Sahagian stand outside of the Wolf Performance Hall for a photograph, just a half hour before their short film premiers as part of the Forest City Film Festival
Tuesday, Oct. 19, was the start of the sixth annual Forest City Film Festival. The festival looks to shine a light on filmmakers with ties to Southern Ontario, showing off independent films at a number of venues across London, Ont. as well as online. Over 92 films are slated to be shown, mixing full-length narratives, documentaries, short films, and experimental projects together. It’s nearly 20 more than 2020’s festival, and more than three times the number of films that premiered at the first Forest City Film festival in 2016.
Romy Goulem, board member of the FCFF and program coordinator for Fanshawe College’s Advanced Filmmaking & Acting for Screen and Stage program, says that the festival’s growth over its six years is due to the festival’s leadership:
“We considered the first year a great success, but it really did feel like a small, little festival in London, Ontario. Very quickly, through the leadership of Dorothy Downs —who’s the executive director— every year it just grew super fast, and it’s actually a very big festival for a smaller town like London now. It’s still going to grow quite a bit.”
New and veteran filmmakers alike have the opportunity to have their work shown on the big screen during the festival. One such group is the trio of Don Murray, Andrew Strachan, and Matthew Sahagian. The three Sheridan College students teamed up to bring to life their short film Make Believe, a story of a young artist living with magical creatures. When he finds success in a book based off the creatures, he comes to realise it comes with a cost. The short features a mix of life-action and stop-motion animation, something Murray says brought the most difficulty during the four-month production process:
Matthew Sahagian (1st from the left) and Don Murray (2nd from the left) sit on stage after the premier of their short film Make Believe. Also on stage is director Josh Litman (4th from the left), whose film ‘The Cluster B Quadrilogy’ also premiered.
“A lot of the difficulties was A: pulling off that combination of [live action filmmaking and stop-motion animation] as our kind of learning experience, and also doing it in the timeframe that we did.”
Strachan elaborates, saying; “part of the challenge is also just convincing people that yes, in four months this will look good. Until that very last moment it’s kind of hard to describe what we envision it looking like. Animation takes time, and takes a lot of planning to get all these things set up. There really isn’t a solid, good-looking end result until very late in the game.”
Their hard work and planning paid off, with a loud round of applause in the theater on Tuesday night after the end of their premier. The short film was shown before the feature length feature ‘The Cluster B Quadrilogy,’ a four-part film, each chronicling one of the four Cluster B personality disorders. While the films have already been shown on the big screen, the Forest City Film Festival has dozens of films still to be shown over the course of the next week, and digital viewings can be purchased on the FCFF’s website.
Interested? Check out the trailer for Make Believe on the Forest City Film Festival’s YouTube channel, as well as the other films debuting this year in London.
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