Just steps from the Healdsburg Arts Festival over the weekend, behind the doors of the Raven Theater on North Street, another local festival with an almost cult-like following in the hundreds played out behind the scenes: the Healdsburg International Short Film Festival. Signs around town of these loyalists were subtle—a blue festival pass tucked inside a shirt collar, or a program splayed open on the bar at Duke’s or John & Zeke’s between screenings. Those in the know, knew.
The event kicked off with a champagne soiree and a screening of around 10 short films on Friday night, then spilled into Saturday and Sunday with three more two-hour screening sets each day, for a total of 44 films from 18 countries—France, Jamaica, Ghana, Italy, Australia and more. Some movies were just minutes long; each opened a door to an entire world outside Healdsburg.
“It’s hard to talk, actually, after that,” host Karin Demarest said at the end of Night One. “What an amazing evening.” The audience grunted back in agreement, still dazed and transported.
Festival curators whittled down the selection of 44 from an original 500 submissions, and their final pool contained many more hits than misses.
A couple of the hits even originated from the small nation of Sonoma County. One of those, a combination of live action and animation called Moving Day that followed the Toy Story-esque adventures of a Sharpie scribble on a cardboard box, won the festival’s new “Cinematic Trailblazer Award,” a nod to its bang-for-budget factor. Petaluma filmmaker Sean Mirkovich won $500 in prize money, donated by the Taste of Tea restaurant next door.
Another big winner: The Diamond, a bizarro friendship journey from Sweden, took the weekend’s Grand Prize, as determined by a panel of remote celebrity jurors that included actor Ed Begley Jr. and everyone’s favorite local underground rockstar, Tom Waits. (Waits himself has played the Raven in years past, for those lucky enough to catch him, and used to run with the theater’s founders. It’s the kind of lore that feels thick in the dark when the lights go off.)
The two audience favorites at the short film festival this year, chosen by theatergoers via QR code at the end of each screening, were Once More, Like Rainman, following a young autistic actress to one typecasting audition after another, and Jerome, a portrait of an inner-city Black kid struggling in the absence of his father.
Among this particular audience member’s least favorite films were the interspersed music videos, some of which would have been skip-able on YouTube—a throwaway vibe that seemed out of place among the other mini masterpieces.
Festival organizers have time and space to perfect the format. They put on their first short film festival in Bodega Bay in 2011, according to organizer Pamela Demorest, then moved it to the unlikely film-crazy town of Healdsburg in 2012. Last year, the festival made a triumphant return to the Raven for its largest run yet, and grew even larger this year. Organizers say it will now become a regular annual event at the Raven—our yearly portal to life outside the bubble.
