Apr 24, 2013 2 min read

All the great movie directors started off small, whether it was wielding a home-movie camera or putting together short films where they could master the arts of editing and mise en scene.

If you stop by the Highland Ridge Film Festival Saturday, who knows – you could end up seeing the maiden work by a burgeoning Spielberg, an incipient Hitchcock or a fledgling Scorsese.

Put together by the Highland Ridge Community Development Corp., the film festival is following seven months after the first-ever Highland Ridge cinematic shindig. Fred Fleet, president of the nonprofit organization, said the group was shifting the festival up on the calendar so it wouldn’t coincide with the start of school and the flurry of activities that accompany the launching of a new academic year.

“They kind of advised us that if you want to get the kids, then (April) would be a better time to do this,” Fleet explained.

Open to “kids of all ages up to 99,” according to Fleet, it will be at the Life Church – the site of the Basle and Midtown moviehouse many years ago – on North Main Street in Washington from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., with some movies also being shown at the nearby Tuscan Tavern at 21 W. Chestnut St. The emphasis is on short films, and some of the entries this year will feature local young people talking with their grandparents in a kind of oral history project, where they ask them about their earlier lives and what Washington was once like.

“We’ll help kids learn about film,” said Fleet, who recently returned to the area after a 30-year stint in Los Angeles, where he made short films and wrote scripts in the off-hours of his day job as an account executive for the American Building Maintenance company.

Fleet added, “There are not a whole lot of festivals like ours, that get high school students involved.”

Along with locally crafted movies, the film festival will feature a screening of the 55-minute documentary “Men in Masks,” which explores the flamboyance of the Mexican wrestling industry and its heavy use of masks.

Admission is free, but donations will go to the Highland Ridge Community Development Corp. “This helps us put money back in the community,” Fleet said. For information, call 724-678-4225.