PORTLAND, Maine — Are you ready for Maine Mayhem? It may sound like a night of professional wrestling, but Maine Mayhem is actually a festival that showcases the work of student filmmakers from Southern Maine Community College’s Department of Communications and New Media Studies.
The festival will feature six films, each of which runs between 15 and 20 minutes. The students write, produce, and direct, and often they act as well.
But that’s not all—they also solicit money to help pay for production. Elora Griswold raised about $4,000 for her film, “City of Servers,” a documentary that looks beyond Portland’s image as a glitzy foodie city to the workers in the restaurant industry whose lives are anything but glamorous.
In the past, the Maine Mayhem screenings have been held at the Nickelodeon Cinemas in Portland. They will still be there on May 11, but this year, for the first time, the festival is expanding outside of Portland with screenings at the Magic Lantern in Bridgton on May 12 and at the Bangor Art Exchange on the 13th.
To find out more about Maine Mayhem, watch our interview with Professor Corey Norman and student filmmakers Elora Griswold and Hannah Shepherd Perry.