Despite recent headlines about major productions considering leaving North Carolina after changes to the state’s film incentives, Cary was a bright spot for current and aspiring filmmakers on Friday afternoon.
At Beyond: The Cary Film Festival’s first shorts block of the four-day festival, the collection of four films played to an audience of about 40 people at 2 p.m. in The Cary Theater.
Beyond is known for its short films, with five blocks of short film showings in total.
The short films are curated around different themes, and “Together We Rise” was described as “portraits of communities confronting adversity and injustice through resilience, advocacy, and collective care.”
The films included:
In “Barriga Llena, Corazón Contento (Full Belly, Happy Heart),” directed by Jordana Rubenstein-Edberg and Marshall Hanig, documentary filmmakers followed a mutual aid effort to provide food to people around the Ridgewood neighborhood in Queens, New York.
“Still Standing,” directed by Victor Suarez, told the story of Altadena, California residents whose homes weren’t among the 9,400 homes destroyed–but may be unsafe.
“Not Much Has Changed,” directed by Max Zampieri, turned a documentary eye toward the work of North Carolina farmworkers and the advocacy work of NC Field.
“Escalation,” directed by AJ Schnack, used the data behind the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker along with the first-person stories and graphic videos of journalists injured or arrested by law enforcement while covering protests.
A short Q&A with two of the directors, Rubenstein-Edberg of “Barriga Llena, Corazón Contento” and Zampieri of “Not Much Has Changed,” followed the screening. Yesenia Cuello, NC Field’s executive director featured in “Not Much Has Changed” also answered questions from the moderator and the audience.
Questions from the audience ranged from filmmaking to community action. After a question from a young attendee, Zampieri recalled climbing onto the sweet potato truck with two large cameras to capture the farmworkers hoisting buckets of the harvested root vegetables.
“Follow your passion and follow the story,” he said.
Beyond: The Cary Film Festival continues through the weekend in Downtown Cary with more shorts screenings, a workshop, an industry talk, and a trivia night.
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