Joe Carabeo, programming director for DC Shorts, says the 14-minute film’s surprisingly sensitive tone made it not just a striking selection in its own right but a fitting choice for a festival he curated with an emphasis on the unexpected. Viewers will go in “thinking it’s one thing,” he says, “but it flips you on [your] head.”Shot over four days in August 2022 at a South Dakota Avenue apartment, “Safe Word” uses a submissive relationship as a metaphor for Pita’s struggles with self-esteem.
For Pita, the sensual scenes required him to expose himself physically and mentally in challenging ways. But the experience of making the film, and the warm reactions from festival audiences over the past year, helped put him on a life-imitates-art path of self-acceptance.“Shame is always saying because you are gay, because you are into this, you are not worthy of being loved, so keep it to yourself,” Pita says. “I still struggle. It’s not, like, overnight.
This year’s festival is broken into daily themes: international films and documentaries on Wednesday, stories driven by music and performing arts on Thursday, genre movies on Friday, dramas on Saturday and local highlights on Sunday. Each day is then further separated into programs, which feature six to 12 films each and range from 1½ to 2½ hours. Among those showcases: “The Worlds Beyond” for fantasy and sci-fi , “Date Night” for romance , “Laugh Medicine” for comedies and “We Make Movies Here” for locally produced narrative films — a program, Carabeo points out with pride, that “Safe Word” also would have fit under.DC Shorts Film FestivalSept. 20-24 at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema D.C., 630 Rhode Island Ave.
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