IOW: Only the Freekin’ best!
East central Illinois can finally claim to be the home of Freeky films once again! Now that the first ever Freeky Creek Short Film Festival is in the books, we’d like to give you a taste of what went down (although we’ll refrain from replicating the tastelessness contributed by your pal and ours, the Easter Bunny) in the form of clips from the three award-winners as voted by attendees.
First up is the complete three-minute short BEDTIME FOR TIMMY, the newest puppet animation created by UI ECE graduate student Thomas Nicol and his better half, Becky Griesheimer, the same duo responsible for the charmingly disturbed IT’S A PENGUINFUL LIFE. In this soon-to-be local classic, shown during an event programmed with an unusual amount of animated films, wide-eyed little boy Timmy attempts to meet the sandman one blustery night but audible scuttlebutt frays his wits to no end. Therefore, he must investigate. Watch the winner of the “Funniest Film” award:
Next up is the American Film Institute produced short subject, SIDE EFFECT, a tense and creepy “bad babysitter” affair written and directed by Danville native Liz Adams, who decided to switch career paths to pursue filmmaking. In this scenario, a prelude to events in her projected horror-film feature BLOOD LEVEL, said babysitter Lauren (Virginia Newcomb) is entrusted with the two young children of an affluent suburban couple (Suzy Cote, Jonathan Nail) and, a few too many unidentified “pep” pills later, finds that she’s cruising on her chores and homework but failing miserably in her people skills. Cringe at the trailer for the winner of the “Scariest Film” award:
Last up but not least, considering that it stalked away with the “Best Film” award, is THE WINTER STALKER from director Stephen Reedy and ZeroFriends of San Francisco. In an aggressively edited and color-washed sequence, a grungy older man with snowy white beard whiles away in his workshop as he patches together a doll that may or may not be a present for a fetching young woman seen in cutaways as foreboding voice over longs – no, lusts – for her:
Congratulations to all the filmmakers whose works populated the Freeky Creek Short Film Festival. We hope to see a lot more of the scary at this time next year!
~ Jason Pankoke