Leonardtown, MD – The Steering Committee for the Southern Maryland Film Festival is proud to announce this year’s special guest panel speakers for the free Friday night reception which will be held at St. Mary’s Ryken High School from 6 – 9 p.m. on Friday, July 13, 2018. With a wide variety of backgrounds, the panelists will draw upon their skills and experience in documentary filmmaking, journalism and broadcasting to discuss the topic of “The Art and Action of Storytelling”.
“Too often people think that documentaries are dry and boring, but our guests, who specialize in non-fiction storytelling, have brought films, ideas, techniques, and viewpoints that show they are anything but,” says Steering Committee President Theresa Wood. “We hope the panel discussion ignites a new passion for telling both simple and amazing real-life stories from a variety of perspectives.”
John Heyn and Jeff Krulik are Washington, DC-based filmmakers, who produced the 1986 documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which ignited the “parking lot genre” that continues to resonate today with sequels, screenings, concerts, a reality-TV series, and fan-generated films and art. The local cult attention given to the film in the early ‘90s led the filmmakers to produce the sequel Neil Diamond Parking Lot ten years later, in 1996. Both documentaries were filmed at the Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland, and feature many rowdy Southern Maryland music fans.
Originally from Frostburg, MD, Michael O. Snyder is a photographer and filmmaker whose work has been featured in magazines and galleries by National Geographic, The Guardian, Vox, Roads & Kingdoms, The Washington Post, High Country News, and Condé Nast. Based on the premise that stories “connect us to each other and to the planet that we live on”, Snyder founded Independent Pictures and has directed documentary films in the Amazon, the Arctic, the Himalaya and Uganda, where his submission for this year’s Film Festival was submission was based. His work has been named Official Selection to over 40 film festivals and he has won numerous awards.
Les Owen is a Transitioning Video Producer for The United States Army Band and owner of LDO Video Productions. Owen’s documentaries and short films have received national recognition, with Owen himself receiving two Meritorious Service Awards from the Army for his work, which included documenting the band’s USO mission to the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. But his labor of love is Victory Remembered a stirring documentary that tells the inspiring story of The First Special Services Force, a secret Allied commando unit during WWII, known as the Black Devils. The film explores their history and battles through interviews with the veterans and their descendants, archival footage and on location shooting, including the families’ journey to Italy and France 70 years after the war.
Former military broadcast journalist and current educator, Eric Milham heads the two-year TV/Video Production program at the Dr. James A. Forrest Career and Technology Center here in Leonardtown, teaching a new generation how to tell their own stories. Milham grew up in St. Mary’s County, working part time for WPTX/WMDM during his senior year at Leonardtown High School, then full-time in broadcasting and media after graduating from Salisbury. Milham then enlisted in the Army as a broadcast journalist and spent five years as an active duty military broadcaster, serving the majority of his time in Frankfurt, Germany at the AFN-Europe network headquarters. He produced command information spots and reported and anchored for the AFN Evening News.
Join our panelists as they discuss the foundation of all great movies—the story the filmmaker tells their audience. From candid, impromptu filming of concertgoers in a parking lot to emotionally powerful interviews with veterans; whether here at home or in exotic locations, there are real life stories everywhere that deserve to be shared with the world. You can see the stories mentioned here, as well as stories about Leonardtown, Great Mills, and beyond by joining us in Leonardtown Saturday, July 14th from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $10 per person, available at smdff.org or at the box office in the Square the day of the event (cash only).