Three Premieres Featured in Program of Indie Shorts From Local Filmmaker at The Lindsay
As part of its ongoing Emerging Filmmakers Showcase, The Lindsay Theater and Cultural Center (formerly The Tull Family Theater) will host Done Waiting: The Rerelease: a screening of works from local production company RedSlate Films at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 27.
The Red Carpet event will feature three new short films, all premieres, directed by Jesse Hutchins, a resident of Moon Township. He is a co-founder of RedSlate Films along with actors/producers Brian Ceponis of Allison Park and Brian Kadlecik of Washington, Pa., both of whom appear in all of the films, with Ceponis as the lead in each. Also featured in Done Waiting is Californian Stanton Rutledge, who has appeared in national releases The Fast and the Furious and Pleasantville.
Showcase events, a staple at The Lindsay, are designed to encourage exchanges between local filmmakers and the public, and are free to all.
The shorts selected for this event are:
Done Waiting (63 min., action and crime drama)
No longer willing to wait for the police to find his wife, a husband takes matters into his own hands. With the help of an old friend, he may get the revenge he wants.
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Redneck Ghost Rangelrs (20 min, comedy)
A group of enthusiasts who call themselves the Redneck Ghost Rangelrs (misspelling intentional) take their first real gig. As the night unfolds they may not want to hunt ghosts again.
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The Transmission (8 min.,sci-fi thriller)
A father and daughter follow a mysterious signal deep within the woods to discover something might not be of this world.
Hutchins, a self-taught filmmaker, has been creating films for 16 years. He draws his inspiration from his favorite directors: Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
“I love telling stories about the human condition and I am a huge fan of crime films, so this spawned the idea for Done Waiting,” Hutchins says. After premiering the film, audience members had so many questions that he initially planned to shoot a Chapter 2, but then decided to combine the two chapters into a new version, the re-release.
The new version contains “a never-before-seen scene that we think people will love,” Hutchins says. “That’s why we are releasing it to the public now on the big screen, where movies belong, before we put it on streaming.”
“As far as Redneck Ghost Rangelrs, we approached this as a ‘let’s just have fun,’” Hutchins says. “Before we wrote it, Brian Ceponis and I would just improv lines of dialogue. Then we would talk about it around other actors and filmmakers and they loved the idea of what we wanted to do. So we sat down, wrote a script and hired the cast to come be a part of this.”
“With The Transmission, I got the idea from watching the trailer for the movie Contact, which had satellite dishes and they were communicating with something out of this world. I’m a big fan of sci-fi movies and the sense of wonder and things we can’t explain,” Hutchins says.
Recently Hutchins and RedSlate Films released Children as Giants, which premiered at the Theater last September. The fantasy film won several international awards: Best Cinematography (Samuel Diggs) from Gully International Film Festival; Best Fantasy Short from Global Film Festival Awards; Best Actor (Brian Ceponis) and Best Director (Jesse Hutchins) from Shri Narayan International Film Festival.
The 90-minute screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the filmmakers. While admission is free, those attending are asked to RSVP at The Lindsay’s ticketing page to ensure seating for all.
For more information on RedSlate Films, visit their website, Facebook or Instagram, @redslatefilms1.