4 | APRIL 8 - 14, 2022 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
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Massachusetts Independent Film Festival comes to Worcester April 13-16 Richard Duckett Worcester Magazine | USA TODAY NETWORK
Worcester is a city without a regular movie theater, but it is going to be home to two movie festivals this year, with directors coming in to discuss their work, starting with the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival April 13-16. MassIFF will screen short fi lms and feature-length fi lms (80 in all, including about a dozen full-length feature movies and documentaries) from around the world, nationally and locally at three locations: WCUW 91.3 FM Studio, 910 Main St.; Hilton Garden Inn Worcester, 35 Major Taylor Boulevard; and Traina Center for the Arts at Clark University. MassIFF has shown fi lms annually since 2011 in the Boston area but has now been taken over by the The Shawna E. Shea Memorial Foundation Inc., which has moved the festival to Worcester. The Shawna Shea Foundation was founded by Skip Shea — an acclaimed Uxbridge-based fi lmmaker, writer, director and producer — in memory of his daughter Shawna E. Shea, an Uxbridge High School student and a creative and artistic young woman who died at 16 in a 1999 automobile accident. The nonprofi t organization supports young people, especially women, in fi lmmaking, performance arts and other artistic and cultural endeavors through fi nancial assistance, collaborative fellowships, mentoring and educational opportunities. The foundation has also run the Shawna Shea Film Festival for several years. Last year it was held in Sturbridge. This fall, the Shawna Shea Film Festival will also move to Worcester, Skip Shea said. Worcester lost its one remaining daily movie theater operation when Show-
A scene from the movie “Magdalena.” MASS INDIE FILM FESTIVAL
case Cinemas Worcester North announced last June that it was closing for good after shutting down early in the pandemic. It doesn’t seem that long ago when Shari E. Redstone, then executive vice president of National Amusements Inc., was being interviewed in 1995 for the groundbreaking of the cinema complex (full disclosure: I was the one who interviewed her). Cinema 320, in its 40th year this year, has kept the movie torch burning with weekly screenings of art house-style fi lms at WCUW 91.3 FM Studio since last September (it previously was at Room 320 of the Jeff erson Center at Clark University) in a space specially renovated to screen movies. Additionally, cinemaworcester has shown independent and
foreign fi lms on a pop-up basis and quite regularly at the Park View Room, 230 Park Avenue. The Shawna Shea Foundation is also planning to have monthly screenings of movies at WCUW. Shea said he will work with Steve Sandberg of Cinema 320 and Andy Grigorov of cinemaworcester on the screenings. “I think the more the merrier,” Shea said of the number of fi lm-showing organizations. “I think people will see there’s a really cool movie scene happening in Worcester.” Shea is also planning monthly poetry readings along with putting on some music performances in Worcester, and will co-host a podcast. “We’re expanding our reach in
Worcester,” he said. “We want to make Worcester our home.” At the Shawna Shea Foundation, “We’re Worcester County people and this really brings it home to what it should be. I’m excited, and I can tell you there were years I didn’t think that,” Shea said. Shea’s movies have included horror shorts and the award-winning 2016 fulllength feature “Trinity,” based on an event that happened in Shea’s life when he ran into the priest who had abused him when he was a child and who was now working in a local bookstore. MassIFF has shown new independent features, shorts, documentaries and acclaimed foreign fi lms. Shea had served on the board of MassIFF. “The director of Mass Indie was stepping down. No one seemed to want to take it over,” he said. When the announcement was made about MassIFF coming to Worcester last year, it said that fi lms would be shown at the BrickBox Theater at the JMAC. “It just didn’t work out,” Shea said of BrickBox. The Shawna Shea Film Festival has described itself as “a fringe independent international fi lm festival. We love quirky and experimental fi lms as much as we love straight narratives. All are welcome.” When it was mentioned to Shea that it looks like he’s going to be busy, he said, “I don’t think we’re busy enough yet. Mass Indie, Shawna Shea Film Festival, we’re a little fringe. It’s not a mainstream cinema.” Still, “With the two together we can do more work for the foundation,” he said. Over 400 fi lms were submitted for MassIFF, Shea said. Submissions ranged from world-wide to Worcester County. See FESTIVAL, Page 5
