The Cellar Door Film Festival has opened its doors for a second time to teleport audiences out of this world.
And this time the home base will be a new location in Centretown at Live! on Elgin.
From Nov. 5 to 7, both short and feature films of the speculative genre are being showcased at two locations, the Mayfair Theatre in Ottawa South and Live! on Elgin.
The films on Thursday were screened at the Mayfair Theatre, and Friday and Saturday’s showings take place at the Live! on Elgin location, 220 Rue Elgin. Doors will open Saturday at 6 p.m. for 6:30 p.m. showings and 9 p.m. for the 9:30 p.m. showings.
Live! on Elgin is a relatively new entertainment space in downtown Ottawa. It’s a place, according to its website, “for local artists of all stripes to call home.” Co-owner Lawrence Evenchick says he was interested in hosting the event at Live!’s fully licensed venue and thinks having food and beverages adds a new dimension to the film festival.
This year’s event features a variety of short films and feature films from creative minds all over the world, including Hungary, France, Germany and South Africa. It will also showcase local creativity.
Four of the films being screened are directed by Canadians. The Urge Within: 2, directed by Christopher Angus, is an animated short about a vampire with uncontrollable flatulence when he tries to consume his victims.
Boots, directed by Magill Foote, is about an impoverished worker who takes the opportunity to live in luxury.
George, directed by Jullian Ablaza and produced by Algonquin College graduate Alex Van Pelt, is a horror movie, showing how the scariest monsters can reside within us.
The festival will also be the home to the final showing of Christopher Rohde’s short film Odd One Out, the winner of the Ottawa Independent Video Award for Best Experimental Film. The award is a new initiative by the SAW Video Media Art Centre and was presented in April 2015.
On his website, Rohde, 32, described the film as a sci-fi fantasy story in a “surreal film-noir universe inhabited by faceless mannequins” in a city that becomes devastated by civil war when a monster escapes, ending in an “apocalyptic final confrontation.”
Rohde is an Ottawa-born filmmaker and Carleton University graduate.
“I had always been interested in making films,” he said, “but assumed that was something people did faraway in places like Hollywood. Finding out that there are places in Ottawa … where anyone can take classes and workshops to get training, and rent equipment for a low price, really made a huge difference.”
He added the sci-fi and fantasy genres attracted him because he was able to show people something they could not see in reality.
Rohde is excited about the festival. “Odd One Out has had a good festival run over the last couple of years,” he said in an email, “and I’m glad that the last public screening (for now) will be in Ottawa where I live. It’s always fun seeing it on a big screen, and being able to see it with friends makes it even better.”
In a press release from the festival, senior programming coordinator Pat Mullen said for this year’s line-up, “our team received over three times the submissions from our previous year with films coming in from 45 countries across 6 continents, and the range of films was equally diverse.”
Tickets for the event can be purchased online for each individual showing at the Cellar Door film festival website for $9, or at the door for $12.