Homer’s 48 Hour Film Slam is part of the Alaska World Arts Festival. This year filmmakers created short films within 48 hours after receiving a theme from coordinators. The theme for this year's Film Slam was "playground." The event, hosted by Katia Holmes, involved around five films, with participants from the Kenai Peninsula, mostly from Homer artists. The films were shown at Homer’s Porcupine Theater, with a brief question and answer session following each. Films varied in length from one to seven minutes long.
Katia Holmes provided a brief definition and description of what the event entails:
“What it is: is filmmakers meet usually at six or 7pm on a Friday, and then they have no idea what they're going to make. Hypothetically, they don't have - they don't come with an idea because the theme is released at that meeting, and they have 48-ish hours to make something, write something, make something, edit something, and then send it in to us, and then we get to show it at the porcupine.”
2026 is the third year of the event. Holmes has been involved in the past few years as an actress but this is her first year hosting the Film Slam. She contributed a film to the show as well. Sally Oberstein is coordinator of the Alaska World Arts Festival and has the responsibility of organizing the event’s performance at the Porcupine.
Equipment that people use to make their films varies based on personal availability. As Holmes explains:
“For my film, I just used my phone, and that was it, basically, because I was working all weekend and fit the theme about what I was going to be doing already, and so I made it just on the docks and just with my phone. But there's a couple people from Kenai and Soldotna who have really great equipment, so we'll see a wide array of equipment and editing.”
Holmes also expressed the role of progress rather than complete finalization of film perfection.
“The cool thing that I really like about the festival is that it’s an embodiment of progress over perfection, like you have to have something completed within such a short amount of time, there's no way it can be perfect. I think I've watched a lot of, I've seen a lot of filmmakers and artists who don't have such a short deadline really stew on getting everything perfect in just the way their vision is, and then it never gets done. So, the cool thing is that within 48 hours, you have a finished thing, whether it's perfect or not, doesn't really matter, it's just more fun.”
Filmmakers who provided presentations on Wednesday evening were introduced casually without a program for their names or film titles though presenters did have the opportunity to share comments and respond to questions after each film was shown to the audience.
Holmes said that there are several short film making festivals like this in other places in Alaska and around the world. Other theater events Holmes is participating in this summer are Our Town and Sense and Sensibility with Pier One Theatre and a collaborative project with Sitka’s Brendan Jones’ to turn his 2016 novel, The Alaskan Laundry, into a film.
Reporting from Homer, this is Emilie Springer.
