‘The Snowman’
Rated R — Michael Fassbender stars as a detective searching for a missing woman whose scarf is found wrapped around a snowman. The cast of the crime thriller includes Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, Chloe Sevigny and J.K. Simmons.
Max Groah is nothing if not persistent.
The director’s stonerhorror-comedy movie, “Bong of the Living Dead,” took 15 years to complete. He began working on the script in 2002.
“We knew it was a big project and we wanted to do it feature-length, and we knew we weren’t ready to do that,” said Groah, 35, who grew up in the Clintonville neighborhood and still lives there. “Our experience, our skill set and our finances weren’t going to allow us to make the movie, so we spent almost a decade on the script. We ended up shooting the 27th draft of the script.”
Shooting began in 2013 using Columbus actors, crew members and locations. The movie was filmed in 10 days — and then sat again. Postproduction plans were made, special effects were created, money was raised, schedules were adjusted and favors were called in.
“We only thought it was going to take us a year," Groah said, "and it took four."
That persistence attracted Jason Tostevin, Nightmares organizer and vice president of marketing and communications for the Gateway, to the movie.
“The great thing about film festivals is you learn the passion of the filmmaker, the journey it took to make it and you get to see it on the screen,” said Tostevin, who has a bit role in the film. “That’s one of the most satisfying parts about it.”
The festival, in its second year, will screen 135 shorts and 25 feature films, said Tostevin, a veteran filmmaker who has directed a variety of movies, including horror. Many directors and actors are expected to attend, providing audience members a chance to meet them.
“Bong of the Living Dead” begins as a comedy about a group of pot-smoking friends whose childhood dream — a zombie apocalypse — comes to pass. The group gleefully sets out to battle the undead.
When one of the members is injured by a zombie, however, the movie turns serious.
“I really wanted to challenge audiences with a schlocky B movie that turns into something that might make you have a bit of emotion,” Groah said.
8 p.m. Friday, with director Max Groah attending
$10, or $79 for a festival pass good for movies with seats available each day (The higher-level festival pass has sold out.)
614-247-4433, www.gatewayfilmcenter. org; for a complete schedule, visit the website
Unorthodocs
THURSDAY THROUGH SUNDAY, WEXNER CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 1871 N. HIGH ST.
In the late 1980s, director Tony Buba wanted to break the mold on documentaries.
“All these films were being made and they were really good, but they follow the same pattern: They had an interview, archival footage, a Pete Seeger song, more interviews.
“I wanted to break the form and play with the whole documentary format.”
Buba mixes fact and fantasy in “Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy” (1988), screening as part of Unorthodocs.
The film takes place in his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, a mill town outside Pittsburgh. The population of Braddock had been dwindling since 1920, when it peaked at about 20,000; then, in the 1980s, several steel mills closed, throwing thousands of people out of work.
By 1990, the town's population had fallen to 4,600; today, it's at about 2,100.
In the film, Buba chronicles the efforts to retain the mills but mixes in parodies of other movies, a character from one of his earlier films who comes back to haunt
him, and his hopes of heading to Hollywood to become a director.
“What I was trying to do was instead of begin (as) a person like a Frank Capra or being the good liberal director who tells the story and everybody identifies with the director, I was playing the director (who) doesn’t know everything,” said Buba, 73, of North Braddock, Pennsylvania.
The movie demonstrates that the films in Unorthodocs aren’t your father’s documentaries, said Chris Stults, series organizer and associate curator of film/video for the Wexner Center.
“‘Documentary’ isn’t what it used to be,” Stultz said. “The idea of these deadly dull docs that we might have grown up seeing in the classroom — they’re long gone. They’re not the cinematic equivalent of eating your veggies. They’re all really engaging films in their own right.”
2 p.m. Saturday, with director Tony Buba attending
$8, or $6 for members, students and senior citizens; or $40 and $35 for festival passes
614-292-3535, www.wexarts.org; for a complete schedule, visit the website