After three years, some new things have been added to filmSPARK, the celluloid section of this year's SPARKcon festival. Instead of the local arts free-for-all's inviting guest curators to round up short films to play at Moore Square for a night, the festival will include events at which film will be both shown and discussed.
"Beforehand, it was just a screening," says filmSPARK organizer Nene Kalu. "Someone organized a screening on the last day of SPARKcon, which is a Sunday. And that was about it. I mean, it seemed to get a lot of response, but I wanted to do something different. I wanted to expand it a little."
Kalu is a 23-year-old Raleigh native (she'll be 24 on Monday!) and Princeton grad who moved back to her hometown in May. How did she immediately become filmSPARK's resident organizer? Well, she asked.
After checking out SPARKcon online, she attended one of its planning meetings in July and rolled up on co-organizer Aly Khalifa about being a part of the festivities. "I talked to Aly and said I was interested in heading up filmSPARK, because I had done some short-film stuff in San Francisco," remembers Kalu, referring to the work she has done with indie film co-op Scary Cow. "And he said, 'That's great! There you go!'"
With that OK, she got cracking to see what she could bring to the table. She placed an ad on Craigslist for filmmakers to send in submissions. That's where she also got in touch with Kathy Justice, a marketing consultant and freelance film critic who has aided her in this endeavor.
And that's why this year filmSPARK consists of a trio of events that will take place all weekend at Artspace in downtown Raleigh. It starts tonight at 5:45 with an event called "The Dude Who Took Down Viacom: One Filmmaker's Story," in which Rockingham County filmmaker Chris Knight speaks of his battle with Viacom after the media giant charged him with copyright infringement after he posted a clip from a VH1 show on YouTube.
On Sunday afternoon at 2, there will be a panel discussion called "The State of Film in N.C. Roundtable." N.C. Film Office director Aaron Syrett, N.C. State film professors Devin and Marsha Orgeron (who both curated the first filmSPARK in 2006) and Independent Weekly culture editor David Fellerath will be the roundtable members. With the recent passage in the General Assembly of a 25 percent film tax break, Kalu is most psyched about this event. "Film is pretty big in North Carolina, or at least it used to be," she says, also noting that she rounded up these experts to "participate in a discussion on film and what it's gonna look like in North Carolina. What it looks like now, actually."
Finally, there will be the short-film screening at 7 on Sunday night, when 13 filmmakers from Raleigh and other parts of the state will show 20 of their short films. The shorts will be divided into three programs: comedy ("Make Me Laugh. I Dare You."), open-for-interpretation ("Freaks, Geeks, & Weirdos") and animation ("Animate!"). Kalu will even screen a short film of hers, a screwball comedy called "Geeking Out."
All in all, whether it's at the filmSPARK events or any other events at SPARKcon, Kalu just wants the people of Raleigh to recognize this city's underappreciated creative types who will have their chance to shine this weekend.
"The whole SPARKcon is about bringing all of us together and showing the community what we have to offer," she says. "And so, filmSPARK is kind of in that same mode. Like, we as filmmakers want to come together, you know -- connect, network, show off our talent and really just have a good time. That's really what it's all about. So I guess it sounds more like a hippie kind of notion, but, to me, it's just more communal."
