The 38th Annual Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts isn't all about the art, but Filmstock sure is.

Filmstock, a three-day film festival to be held Thursday, Friday and Saturday, will take place in 22 Deike Building on campus this year in conjunction with Arts Fest. The festival will feature dozens of independent films from around the country, many accompanied by visits by their filmmakers.

Levi Abrino, Penn State graduate, filmmaker and organizer of Filmstock, described how the festival came to happen.

"Elaine Meder [co-owner of Webster's Bookstore Café, 128 S. Allen St.] acted in my film and she organizes Wordstock, so she suggested I might get something together last summer, but I passed," Abrino said. "This summer, I had a little more time, so I called up some people I've met at various film festivals and invited them to come show their work."

Abrino is not only coordinating the festival, he's also exhibiting a film of his, Burying Dvorak.

"It's a 19-minute short, a coming-of-age comedy about a 14-year-old boy and his taxidermy-stuffed basset hound," Abrino said.

Ted Passon, director of the award-winning 18-minute short Robot Boy, will likely be attending the festival to screen his film.

"It's a story about a young boy, born to particular parents who replace his human parts with robot parts," Passon said.

Passon described his dedication to making the film.

"I ended up basically dropping out of school for a year to make it," Passon said. "I dropped all my other classes but that one so I could focus on making it."

Passon has some friends worth mentioning.

"All the music was done by Kimya Dawson and Adam Green of [indie-folk group] The Moldy Peaches," Passon said. "In fact, just last week I directed a video for Kimya Dawson for her new single. And there's a guest appearance in Robot Boy by [NYC rockers] The Butchies, so look out for that."

Rod Murphy, director of the feature-length Greater Southbridge, found inspiration in his upbringing.

"It's a documentary about the central Massachusetts town I grew up in," Murphy said. "They were hit hard by a plant closing, and the movie is pretty much just a document of what's been left in the wake of that."

Though he says it's often compared
to Michael Moore's similarly-themed Roger and Me, Murphy said the focus of Southbridge is more personal than Moore's.

"There's a lot of eccentric people," Murphy said. "The movie's about the kind of people who other folks might see in their own town, you know, just peeling the layers back."

Murphy said one character of Southbridge in particular stands out.

"The main star of the film is this guy, Jerry," Murphy said. "He's this big, stuttering, bald guy who collects cans. He's basically homeless. He's something else."

Will Jerry be making an appearance at Filmstock?

"He'll be there, probably," Murphy said. "He goes to a lot of the festivals, and really changes the tone. He's a very bright guy, really well read. The movie is pretty much his story."

Murphy emphasized how important festivals like Filmstock are to his kind of movie making.

"I like these kinds of festivals," he said. "It's so easy to get sucked into that whole formulaic Hollywood thing. I've been to big ones and small ones, but I love the small ones the best. They're run by real people, not just some guys still looking out for advertising money or royalties or anything."

Abrino said the filmmakers exhibited at Filmstock are dedicated to this labor of love.

"There's all these people making these films out there," Abrino said. "I mean, I'm happy being a middle-class filmmaker for the rest of my life. None of these people who're coming are making a whole lot of money from these films."

By inviting his friends and colleagues, Abrino said he feels Filmstock is featuring only the best.

"The only place to see these kinds of films is festivals," Abrino said. "We're offering an alternative to the crappy big-budget Hollywood films. All these movies are good and worth seeing."