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Parkersburg High School graduate, film director to speak

MARIETTA — Parkersburg High School graduate Sarah Anthony, an award-winning film producer, and Sara Taksler, director/writer of the documentary “Tickling Giants,” will be speaking at the Colony Short Film Festival Saturday at Peoples Bank Theatre.

The 13th annual film festival, which opens Friday, showcases local and international short films in downtown Marietta.

Saturday afternoon, the festival will screen two special documentary features, followed by a panel discussion with their producers: “The Price of Free,” produced by Anthony, and “Tickling Giants,” directed and produced by Taksler.

Screening at 1:30 p.m., “The Price of Free” is a 2018 Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning documentary about Nobel Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi and his crusade against child labor in India. With the help of a covert network of informants, Satyarthi and his team carry out raids to rescue and rehabilitate imprisoned children from slave labor in overcrowded factories.

Anthony grew up in Vienna and graduated from Parkersburg High School in 1993. She attended Northwestern University and graduated in 1997 with a degree in Theater and Communication. After a few years in Los Angeles working on narrative feature films, she moved to London and began her career in documentaries, with films on subjects ranging from the Iraq war to the Ming Voyages of the 1400s.

Anthony’s credits include projects for PBS Frontline, Showtime, Netflix and HBO. In addition to her award-winning work on “The Price of Free,” Anthony was a producer on the Grammy-winning HBO documentary series “The Defiant Ones.”

Screening at 3:30 p.m., “Tickling Giants,” directed, written and produced by Taksler, follows the story of Bassem Youseff, the “Egyptian Jon Stewart,” who decides to leave his job as a heart surgeon and become a late-night comedian in the wake of the Egyptian revolution and after treating the wounded from the Tahrir Square demonstrations of 2011. The movie is described as how Youseff finds creative, non-violent ways to protect free speech and fight government actions.

A longtime senior producer at “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, and later, Trevor Noah, Taksler has pitched stories and jokes, and researched footage since 2005. Taksler directed and produced the feature documentary “TWISTED: A Balloonamentary,” a comedic look at the world’s premier balloon-twisting convention. At the intersection of entertainment and social justice, Taksler explores current events and topical issues of the day, from freedom of expression to religion and government, while emphasizing the power of humor to bring attention to important causes, according to a press release.

Anthony and Taksler will participate in a filmmakers panel at 5:30 p.m. Saturday facilitated by Marietta College Associate Professor of Communication Marilee Morrow.

This year’s official selections include 27 short films from filmmakers from across Ohio and the throughout the U.S., as well as international submissions from Nepal, Ireland, Norway, Canada and France. The films represent a variety of genres, from documentaries to experimental films and animated shorts.

Another special feature at this year’s film festival is a 1919 Silent Comedy Night with the Peacherine Ragtime Society Orchestra at 7 p.m. Friday. This event celebrates the Peoples Bank Theatre’s centennial.

The program features three comedic short films: Charlie Chaplin’s “The Pawnshop” (1917), Buster Keaton’s “Cops” (1922) and Laurel & Hardy’s “Big Business” (1929), all accompanied live with their historic orchestral scores, as they would have been in the days of Marietta’s New Hippodrome Theatre.

During this family-friendly program, Peacherine and Director Andrew Greene will also play the rollicking rhythms of the early 20th century, featuring favorites by Scott Joplin, Irving Berlin, and the creators of America’s first popular music: Ragtime.

The first of the film festival’s official selections will begin screening Friday at 9:45 p.m. On Saturday, the film festival continues at 10:30 a.m. with more short films selected by festival judges.

The festival concludes with a final screening of official selections entries at 7:30 p.m. and presentation of awards at 9:45 p.m.

Film festival admission is $25 on Friday and $15 on Saturday. Full event information and ticket details are available on the Colony Short Film Festival website at colonyfilmfestival.com. Tickets are available online at peoplesbanktheatre.com or by calling the box office at 740-371-5152. Walk-up hours at the box office, at The Stage Door, 224 Putnam St., are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The Colony Short Film Festival is a program of the nonprofit Hippodrome / Colony Historical Theatre Association, which also manages the historic Peoples Bank Theatre at 222 Putnam St.

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