“The envelope please” – it’s the phrase every budding filmmaker shivers to hear and the presenters did not disappoint as they handed out the “Scrappy” awards at the first annual Small Town Shorts Film Festival held at the Aron Theatre on Thursday, October 3, 2024. As each winner was declared, their efforts were met with cheers across the theatre. What a special night and a big win for festival founders, librarians Graeme Peters and Kim Hornak who conceived of the idea as a way to create a collaborative event for local communities. Even before the event sold out, they had already committed to a second (annual?) event. Next year will also see the community of Tweed join founding communities of Trent Hills, Madoc, Marmora and Lake, and Stirling Rawdon.

As usual, the kids were the stars. Budding filmmakers Lillian and Brett Preston from Marmora and Lake got the audience award in the“12 and under” category for "Doodie Calls" starring a charming young actress tasked with cleaning goose poop off her shoreline. Alongside the audience award voted by ballot that night, each category also featured a jury's award, assessed this year by Dorlene Lin, Trevor Welsh and Marjorie Willoughby. This year’s jury awarded their prize to Sebastian and Eloise Smith from Trent Hills for their work on the stop-motion animation "Mr. Blue and the Search for Connection." Both entries showed a great sense of storytelling and adventure, as well as adherence to the inaugural theme of "community." Shoutout as well to the Trent Hills Kids Summer Library Club's "First Efforts At Stop Motion" – maybe future entries will be sparked by this first taste of filmmaking?

Onto the adults. Two further categories of 18 to 64 and 65+ gave the older crowd a chance to strut their creativity. A sense of fun was apparent in Katz Farrington's "Madoc Under Attack," winner of the audience prize. Anne Marie Kristiansen's “The Cutout Family” offered a poignant reflection based on her poem of the same name. Other films in this category demonstrated both a range of filmmaking techniques as well as topics, from live action in the amazing dalmatians of Bedlam Acres in Hastings and "Birds Over Bridge Street" about an art installation at Campbellford library. The very short animated "Cowmunity" from Marmora and Lake showed that you don't need much time to tell a good story.

The 65+ contribution saw documentary shorts about the Campbellford Rotary Club and other charitable initiatives. But the show was stolen by “Goldie and the No Holds Bar,” the audience award-winning production by director Ron Marshall and his team at Marmora and Lake, who were cheered onto the stage if only to see who these characters were in real life. A sense of fun and musical soundtrack made this one hard to look away from.

Despite the fact that, as emcee and host Patrick Muldoon noted at the start "George Clooney will not be making it as he was stuck on the other side of the bridge," the crowd clearly enjoyed both the films and the chance to rally in community. And now everyone has an entire year to think of their own contributions for next time. The theme? Outside.