No-Ho Hank manipulates Barry into another job, Barry accidentally lands a big acting role, Sally has trouble on her new job and Fuchs has a close call with the Chechens.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
Fuches/Noho Hank: Bill Poulin
Barry: Geoff May
——
This script is a greatly structured story about the challenges of someone who isn’t familiar with her culture and is trying to integrate herself into it. Dealing with that while also being appointed CEO makes for a story with high stakes. Mixing the chaebol culture with an Americanized protagonist makes the story relatable and accessible for those who are unfamiliar.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Steve Rizzo
Justin: Bill Poulin
Tae-Min: Sean Ballantyne
Showcase of the best SHORT FILMS in the world today.
AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:
Best Film: OURSELVES, IN STORIES
Best Direction: THE SIEGE
Best Performances: 3
Best Cinematography: THE SIEGE
Best Sound & Music: BALANCE OF THE FORCE
Theme of night: Life
NOTE: Festival took place during the COVID-19 virus lockdown so all screenings were held in private.
Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Videos:
 OURSELVES, IN STORIES, 24min., USA, Documentary
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 BALANCE OF THE FORCE, 15min., USA, Star Wars Fan Fiction
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 THE SIEGE, 16min., Hungary, Action
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 3, 11min., Australia, Action/Thriller
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The beginning of a (temporary) new era.
See you at the festivals. Whenever that happens!
– Matthew Toffolo
Marjee Chmiel has been working in educational media and science storytelling for over 20 years at PBS, National Geographic, the Smithsonian Institution, and currently at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her directorial debut, Ourselves in Stories, breaks away from her professional area of science to focus on art and creativity. Marjee is completing a certificate in Documentary Studies from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University was selected to be a member of the 2020 Docs in Progress Fellowship, a cohort of documentarians in the Washington DC area. Marjee has a PhD in social science research and is a former Fulbright Scholar. Her small press comic, Luci’s Letdown, was nominated for best small press and promising new talent in 2011. She lives with her husband and two small dogs in the Washington DC metropolitan area.
Director Statement
Growing up in an immigrant family in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, I remember how alienated I felt watching the sitcoms and films of the 80s. I was more likely to (and in fact did) see a cat-eating, wise-cracking alien on television than a family of manual workers shopping for appliances at flea markets, or multiple generations in a household.
When I was in high school in the early 90s, I picked up a comic book by a woman named Heather McAdams and it felt like a veil had been lifted. She was funny, weird, gross, horny, and awkward. All traits I could recognize in myself and my friends. All traits that were absent in the beautiful, perfect, smooth-haired girls I saw on screen with psychiatrist dads and homemaker moms.
Since then, I’ve thought a lot about who “gets” to write, tell, and show their stories, and what it means for our culture when those stories come from a limited point of view. In the United States, our stories are among our greatest exports, viewed by audiences around the world. The stories we tell and share shape how humanity sees itself, its past and its future.
For me, independent comics have been a place where all the usual gatekeepers are absent. Agents, editors, distributors, and funders don’t need to sign-off on, accept, review, or otherwise bless the fantastic worlds drawn on a legal pad during the downtime of an artists’ daily hustle. Copy machines and social media are all that’s needed to transport readers into a variety of lived experiences that Hollywood and major publishers overlook as unprofitable.
In 2010, I wrote and published my own independent comic. It did well, it sold at comics conventions and was nominated for a few awards. Beyond that, the comic shared parts of myself, my values, anxieties, beliefs in a way that nothing else has. It was clarifying for me and allowed for connections I had not expected, including conversations with men who bought the comic and confessed to me this was the first story they had ever read with a female protagonist and their surprise that they could find a woman’s experiences to be relatable to their own.
This is the magic of independent comics: anyone can tell their story and they are so cheap and accessible, that you never know who is going to end up reading it, and in turn, understanding your world. Independent comics allow artists direct access to an audience that is hungry for something new, different, real, and raw.
And this is resonating beyond niche audiences.
Indie comics have become Oscar-winning films and genre-defying hit series on Netflix. I’m convinced that if you want to see the stories, we’ll all be talking about in 2025 and beyond, you can start now by meeting the independent comics creators of today
That’s why I want to take you to the Small Press Expo, a beloved annual event, where we can meet the people that are putting ourselves in stories.
In the last 25 years, the independent comics community made deliberate efforts to be inclusive and elevate under-represented voices. This is the story of how the community has changed over those years and evidence that if you want to change a culture, you need to change its stories, starting with the storytellers.
Project Links
Steven LaMorte Director / Producer
Steven LaMorte was born in New York City. During his studies at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Steven majored in Film and Television Production. After studying under Czech Cinematographers and Directors at the 35mm Film Production Program at Prague’s film conservatory, FAMU, Steven moved to Los Angeles to make his feature film directing debut “Never Leave Alive” starring WWE Superstar John Morrison and Joseph Gatt (Dumbo, Thor). His other features include “One Stop Away” starring James Boland (HBO’s Vinyl) and Bury Me Twice starring Theodus Crane (The Walking Dead). Steven also directed WWF legend Rowdy Roddy Piper’s final film in 3D, “Fighting with Fire”. In 2019, Steven directed Miss World America in Las Vegas, Nevada, which aired for a global audience of over 100 million people in over 30 countries. Steven has been nominated for various industry and festival awards for his various commercial and new media productions.
Working with some of the world’s biggest brands to develop innovative content, Steven specializes in taking productions from the smallest idea through to their final delivery, supervising every facet of production from preparation all the way through post production and sale. Steven’s work puts the story first, with emphasis on content filled with heart, humor, and spectacle.
When a Bounty Hunter and a Jedi Knight find themselves stranded on an uninhabited planet, they find themselves pitted against each other while trying to retrieve a mysterious Imperial cargo.
Project Links
AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS:
Best Short Film: RUN GIRL RUN
Best FAN FICTION Short Film: ROGUE SEVEN: A STAR WARS FAN FILM
Best Direction: CAUGHT
Best Performances: PAMELA & IVY
Best Cinematography: BLIND RUNNERS
Theme of night: Life
NOTE: Festival took place during the COVID-19 virus lockdown so all screenings were held in private.
Watch the Audience FEEDBACK Videos:
 PAMELA & IVY, 16min., Canada, Fan Fiction
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 CAUGHT, 7min., USA, Action
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 RUN GIRL RUN, 14min., USA, Action
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 BLIND RUNNERS, 6min., USA, Action/War
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 ROGUE SEVEN: A STAR WARS FAN FILM, 16min., USA, Fan Fiction
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The beginning of a (temporary) new era.
See you at the festivals. Whenever that happens!
– Matthew Toffolo
A new version of “Superman III” where Lex Luthor tricks the US Government into trusting him with planetary defense when Earth is threatened by a giant Kryptonite meteor. After banishing Lex to the Phantom Zone, Superman finds himself against a super-intelligent biomechanical being with a digital network consciousness, the Interactive Construct of a scientist known as Vril Dox from the planet Colu, who searches the cosmos endlessly for civilizations to capture, shrink, and add to its collection.
A young thief must save Rebel fighter pilots from an Imperial armada and an overconfident bounty hunter.
Project Links
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FAN FICTION Film and Writing Festival 
