East Lansing Film Festival offers eight days of shorts, documentaries and full-length films

The East Lansing Film Festival starts Thursday, with lots of shorts, lots of documentaries and … well, a smidgen of full-length, scripted films.

“I was desperate to find a narrative (scripted) movie,” said Susan Woods, the festival founder.

She eventually took two foreign films that drew praise in other festivals — “The Beasts” (an “edge-of-your-seat thriller”) and “Afire.”

Then the American “Farewelling” arrived; “I kind of squeezed it in,” Woods said.

The festival received 286 submissions this year, with most of the good ones being:

Shorts. There are 27 in the festival, bunched into three packages that will each show twice. Many are extremely well-made, which might be an ongoing trend. “Every filmmaker has incredible tools available now,” said David Maurer, whose quietly moving “Mendo’s Carousel” is in Shorts Package 2.

And documentaries. There’s a package of short docs, plus six feature-length ones.

Related: East Lansing Film Festival opens with documentary on life in the Alaska wilderness

The details: East Lansing Film Festival 2023: Everything you need to know

They include two films with opposite approaches to cancer: “Dance With Me to the End of Time” is solemn; “Mom & Dad’s Nipple Factory” is not. The title had lowered Woods’ expectations; then “I thought, ‘Oh, this is much better than I thought it would be.”

She found humor in “Nipple Factory” and “Holy Frit” and, especially, “The Man in the Red Beret.” The frenetic approach of “Beret” may exhaust some viewers, but its subject — a New Orleans man who takes on all comers in chess — will delight them.

And she gave the opening slot (6:30 p.m. Thursday) to “The Stan Project,” a logical movie for a Northern audience in November.

Ryan Walsh, who grew up in Oakland County and went to Central Michigan University, spent parts of five years filming Stan Zuray near the Arctic circle. Walsh will be here; so (Alaskan weather cooperating) will Zuray and his wife. “He just wants to share his lifestyle,” Walsh said.

Maurer also plans to be here for his two showings. He’ll visit his sister, Mary Maurer, a Thespie-winning actress who has done musicals with Riverwalk, Peppermint Creek and Owosso.

His day job is as a Hollywood editor, both on scripted shows (“StartUp” and the “Fantasy Island” reboot) and lots of unscripted ones, including the first year of “American Idol” and the first two (getting Emmy nominations each time) of “Apprentice.” But he also occasionally likes to have his own project. “There’s something very cool about telling a complete story in 20 minutes.”

Feeling a recent wave of grief (the deaths of two grandparents and an uncle) and reflecting on his seven-year mark for sobriety, Maurer wrote a tender story about a troubled young woman who steals from her late father’s dry-cleaning business. For two quick days (when a dry-cleaner was available) he filmed two former “StartUp” stars (Otmara Marrero and Edi Gathogi) and his friend, Todd Grinnell.

The result is beautifully shot and acted — which seems to be a trend in many of the shorts. Sarah Koehn and Adam Hurtig are subtly perfect in the quietly moving “Playing Life” (Shorts Package 3). In Package 2, Ashley Michelle Grant dominates a stylish cowgirl-revenge tale, “The Ballad of Sadie LaBelle” and Aran Grible, a Williamston Theatre favorite, is just right, as usual, in “Santa Maybe.”

Some people seem to make a career of shorts. Woods points to Patrick Smith, whose animated gem “Pour Generation” is in Package 3. “I’ve been showing his films for 20 years,” she said.

Andy Kastelic has made 15 shorts. He wrote, directed and starred in “The Countryman” (Package 3), which can be described as a short epic — 21 black-and-white minutes that seem to sprawl across the screen like a Hollywood classic.

The shorts and documentaries are so dominant that people might forget the few full-length, scripted films. “Beasts” was a best-film winner at the Berlin Film Festival; “Afire” won a grand jury prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

And “Farewelling”? It faces one obstacle: “Our audience doesn’t like really depressing movies,” Woods said. But it’s sharply crafted (after a so-so start) by director/co-writer Rodes Phire. It includes several good performances and a great one (by Cristen Coppen, in the lead). It stirs feelings; for a film festival, that can be enough.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: East Lansing Film Festival runs Nov. 9-16 at Studio C at Meridian Mall