2011 Online New England Film Festival is up and running

 The 2011 Online New England Film Festival went live today with 20 short films chosen from recent regional festivals available for free viewing. An audience award will be given at the end of the festival for the most viewed film in each of four categories: animation/experimental, comedy, documentary and drama. The third annual online "festival" is put together by NewEnglandFilm.com with seven partner festivals from the Green Mountains to Woods Hole.

A sampling finds a wildly different set of approaches to our home region. Vermont writer-director William Peters delivered "Motel" (above), in which Brad and Roger think they've found bargain roadside accommodations only to learn that it's really "three motels, each one stranger than the last." Spooky-weird and funny. Emily Harrold's "Waves" focuses on the beauty of the Wellfleet area in a serious story of a jobless college grad trying to get back to her happy place. In other cases, the main connection to New England is off-screen. Jane Lynch of "Glee" plays a health-nut mom in Yalie writer-director Daniel Persitz's "Alex's Halloween," about a boy and his costumes and his imagination.

And then there's New Hampshire filmmaker Alfred Thomas Catalfo (right in picture, a David Random photo), who manages to connect Custer's Last Stand and the 2002 Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in "Bighorn." It's based on the apparently real fact that General Custer's bandmaster, Felix Vinatieri, was the great-great-grandfather of New England Patriots' Super Bowl-winning kicker Adam Vinatieri, and that he was ordered to stay behind at the fateful day for Custer, saving his life and the Pats' chances.

NewEnglandFilm.com is a web site for local film and video professionals, providing everything from personal profiles and classifieds to a state-by-state directory of filmmaking resources.