Labor Day Weekend will have some female film flavor to it, as the ladies of the screen will take over the Illusion Magic Lounge for a wide-ranging weekend of selections.
The 17th annual Broad Humor Film Festival begins Thursday and lasts through Sunday, featuring six different programs of short comedic films exclusively written and directed by women. Starting in 2005, the festival brings together women writers and directors for screenings, writing panels, and other events "with the aim of fostering greater opportunity for women as the creators of film content."
After the first shorts program, starting at 6pm Thursday, a feature presentation will take place, that being Brenda Lee’s directorial debut Fortune Cookies. The film is set in a Chinese takeaway in 1990s England, dealing with the dual dreams of a daughter wanting to be an actress and her family wanting to be on their favorite game show.
After a screenwriters lab and party on Friday evening, Saturday has three shorts programs, featuring pieces like the film festival circuit-breaking short Wicked Image screening at 4pm Initially put out during the COVID-19 pandemic, the film was delayed on the festival front before coming out gangbusters in 2022, winning Best Comedy prizes at the Austin Under the Stars, Baltimore Next Media and Borrego Springs festivals.
The short follows a prompt given to creatives Jessica Sherr and Caitlin Scherer, asking them to consider "what if the Devil was three different people?" The idea evolved into Wicked Image, wherein the three devils ("Lucy," "Deville" and "Satine") are women meeting with a corporate public relations agency to rehabilitate their image. The crux of the comedy is that the agency turns out to be "more evil" than even the Devil itself.
Now making its Los Angeles area debut, Sherr said prior film festival curators have told her that the events usually have "really depressing" films, lacking in comedic entries. She felt that she could do something that’s "comedic, but also dark," a perfect fit for the feisty selections at Broad Humor.
"We’ve done really good with it, and I’m happy about that because it’s funny … it’s not slapstick funny, it’s dark humor funny, and I like smart, dark humor," Sherr said.
Introduced to theater and creating her own projects at an early age, Sherr has made appearances on big-name shows like Blue Bloods and Claws, and even voiced the townsfolk in the wildly successful video game Red Dead Redemption. However, her big calling came when passersby would comment that she looked like a young Bette Davis, leading to a challenge from a mentor to make a one-woman show based on the iconic actress.
"I read her Wikipedia page, fell in love with her badassery, and then I wrote a small vignette that was only really maybe 20 minutes … and I did it off-off-off-off Broadway, [but] people came and [said] this is really good," Sherr said.
Originally just a one-off, Sherr "couldn’t stop thinking" about her connection to Davis, and is still portraying the actress over 400 shows and 12 years later. Wanting to shoot Bette for the big screen, Sherr and Scherer realized the expenses involved with shooting a period piece, eventually transitioning into Wicked Image instead.
Other female trailblazers on the film circuit pointed her toward Broad Humor, feeling that the "good people behind it" would be supportive of her inclusion in the shorts program. Adding that she’s "happy to go where there’s good weather," Sherr hopes that another strong outing for the film will help her break into the "always very tough" Los Angeles scene.
"If good works leads me to the next place in my career, it makes me even more excited, so it feels really healthy that our good work is bringing us to the West Coast … [the] connections I make in Los Angeles for myself as a filmmaker is only going to grow my career going forward, instead of just staying in one place," Sherr said.
The Broad Humor Film Festival concludes on Sunday with two more shorts programs followed by an awards ceremony. To purchase tickets and view the entire selection catalog, visit broadhumorfilmfest.com.
thomas@smdp.com
