Entries for festival affirm: Filmmaking alive in Ohio

Ohio is well-represented in the 2017 Columbus International Film + Video Festival.

Besides the locally made “The Street Where We Live,” the schedule includes three other featurelength films with Ohio connections:

The crime thriller “Dead Draw” was directed by Brian Klemesrud, a Chicagobased filmmaker who graduated in 1997 from Upper Arlington High School.

The documentary “Cheshire, Ohio,” by New York filmmaker Eve Morgenstern, examines the Gallia County village that once bordered a massive coal-fired American Electric Power plant. Faced with residents’ complaints about pollution, the utility in 2002 purchased most of the town for $20 million and razed it.

The documentary “Strad Style,” the story of a man in the Hocking County village of Laurelville who claims he can make a perfect copy of a Stradivarius violin.

Also during the festival, two blocks of Ohio-made short films will be screened.

Event executive director Jeremy Henthorm said he didn’t go searching for Ohio movies; the movies found him.

“Ohio filmmakers are starting to express themselves more,” he said. “We’re seeing more professional work in the Ohio filmmaking community. We might be on the cusp of a trend in Ohio work.”

Advances in digital technology have made filmmaking more accessible, said central Ohio director John Whitney, who has been making movies for more than 20 years.

“It’s a lot cheaper to make films, and a lot of people who want to try their hands at it — they’ve got a laptop and a camera and can be the next Francis Ford Coppola if they try hard enough,” Whitney said. “It’s the ease of finishing a film that has really exploded.”

And, as technology has progressed, so has the ability of Ohio directors.

“The equipment has caught up and their skills have caught up at the exact same time,” Henthorn said. “It’s an artistic perfect storm.”