SMCC student filmmakers will be showing their films on the big screen this month with the return of The Maine Mayhem Film Festival.
The festival, now in its 11th year, showcases the high-quality work of SMCC filmmaking students in public theaters each year. The 2020 festival was canceled due to the pandemic, but Professor Corey Norman has arranged for this year’s nine short films to be shown at the Saco Drive-In on May 20.
Norman said this year’s event will feature six films that were produced this year, and three carryover films from 2020.
“We’re back, and this year’s films are among the best I’ve seen in all the years we’ve been doing this,” Norman said. “It was hard for students and for me to not hold Maine Mayhem last year. The festival helps transform them from feeling like students to feeling like professional filmmakers.”
The festival each year features the work of senior students who have been working on films as a senior elective in a filmmaking class offered through the College’s Communications & New Media Studies program.
This year’s 2 1/2-hour festival will be held at the Saco Drive-In, starting at 7 p.m. on May 20. Tickets are $20 per carload, and can be purchased online at ticket site Eventbrite.
This year’s films are:
- Controller. Directed by Chad Ackerson, produced by Ackerson and Parris Leary-Caver.
- Freedom. Directed by Savannah Green, produced by Green and Jonathan Nelson.
- Late Nights. Directed by Benji Otte, produced by Otte and Amelia Ricks.
- 20 Minutes. Directed by Hailey Moore, produced by Moore and Joshua Clyde Wheeler.
- Overnight Deliver-Z. Directed by Marcus Taylor, produced by Taylor and Justin Edgar.
- Listen to Yourself. Directed by Sam Martel, produced by Martel and Alexander Wood.
- Masterpiece. Directed and produced by James Redpath.
- Bomb Wedding. Directed by Aleena Warren, produced by Warren, Nicholas Halle, Grant Bodine, Gweneth Thornton and Chloe Dearborn.
- Homecoming. Directed by Daniele Amandolini, produced by Amandolini and Krysta Black.