The 45th Parallel Film Fest sold out Salem Cinema last year. (Courtesy/45th Parallel Film Fest )
Salem’s community television station wants to see your films, documentaries and animations.
Capital Community Television has announced a call for entries for the 45th Parallel Film Fest. Entries are accepted through August 15.
Kirimi Flitter, programming and promotion coordinator at CCTV, said the film fest, now in its third year, started as a way for people to have their voices heard and to celebrate local filmmakers.
Last year the awards event was sold out at Salem Cinema, but this year Flitter said a lot about any such ceremony is still unknown.
She said CCTV hopes there will be an in-person awards ceremony on Oct. 17, but that decision is months away and the event could be live streamed instead.
“We want to keep it going even if it looks a little different this year,” Flitter said.
This year there will eight categories: animation/stop motion, documentary, experimental/other/music video, outdoors, series, Salem is awesome, and long and short form narrative. Long and short-form narrative is typically the most popular category, Flitter said.
There will also be new awards for an emerging filmmaker 18 or under and the people’s choice award.
The films have to be produced by a current Oregon resident within the last two years, but don’t have to be filmed in Oregon.
Even so, Flitter said there’s a definite Salem flavor to the films. The film “Blackfinger,” a spoof of the 1964 James Bond movie “Goldfinger” won best narrative the first year the festival was held in 2018.
“Blackfinger” follows a man in a banana suit that “smokes a lot of weed,” according to the film’s trailer.
Flitter said the film was produced by a Salem resident using CCTV equipment.
“A lot of the shots were done at different businesses downtown,” she said. “That’s part of what we love about this festival.”
In 2019, history film “Around Oregon” won general excellence at the film competition.
Last year CCTV offered a filmmaker course so people could learn techniques but because of the coronavirus precautions, the CCTV building is closed to the public and people can’t come in to use equipment.
One new addition this year will be screenings of submissions that are free to view for the public. Flitter said the screenings would be in early September.
A panel of Oregon residents with video experience will winnow down the entries to two finalists and a winner for each category.
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