The Yellow Springs Film Festival debuted in the fall of 2023, introducing a spring Mini-Fest as a midpoint between annual events. Every event they’ve hosted since has been met with acclaim and enthusiastic audiences responding to carefully curated programming of films fresh on the festival circuit. The festival also features Q&As with the filmmakers as well as special guest appearances and performers such as Fred Armisen, Wu-Tang Clan’s Raekwon, comedian Reggie Watts and director Jim Jarmusch, to name a few.
This year’s edition of the Mini-Fest is a little different, stretching over two days and branching out to downtown Dayton for a special appearance from beloved writer, director and underground icon, the “Pope of Trash” himself, John Waters.
Waters will present a 25th anniversary showing of his 2000 Cannes Official Selection film, Cecil B. Demented, on the first day of the Mini-Fest, April 17, followed by a Q&A at partnering Dayton venue The Brightside Music and Event Venue, presented in partnership with the Berry Family Foundation.
The showing will match some of the criteria for what Waters tells CityBeat is his favorite way to see a movie: “At a private screening in a theater arranged by a distributor of a weirdo, foreign, feel-bad movie that I might put on my annual Ten Best List.”
It will be a private screening for festivalgoers lucky enough to get a ticket — the appearance sold out weeks ago shortly after being announced, and it fits nicely in the weird category too. The film, starring Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, a young Maggie Gyllenhaal, Waters and regulars also known as the Dreamlanders (Mink Stole, Patty Hearst and Ricki Lake), is about a crew of sex-obsessed mainstream movie-hating terrorist filmmakers known as the “Sprocket Holes” who kidnap an A-list star and force her to act in their guerilla-style movie, all at gunpoint. Lines blur and a type of Stockholm syndrome sets in that mirrors film actress and Waters’ friend Patty Hearst’s well-reported real-life experience decades before.
The always opinionated Waters tells CityBeat who the terrorist group in Cecil B. Demented would likely go after these days: “Any characters based on a video game.”
Yellow Springs Film Festival founder and director Eric Mahoney (Brainiac: Transmissions After Zero, Joan Baez: Rebel Icon), who was just recently called upon to moderate a Q&A with actor Michael Shannon (Boardwalk Empire, Mud, Nocturnal Animals) for a screening of the actor’s directorial debut, talks about the excitement surrounding Waters’ appearance, which has been in the works for some time. “I think there’s a lot of enthusiasm about bringing him to town and then having that conversation with a really iconic, independent artist like that.”
The second part of the special two-day Mini-Fest returns to Yellow Springs the next day, April 18, at the village’s historic Little Art Theatre. “Then we kind of wanted to balance that with a little bit more local-centric programming the next day, bringing it back to Yellow Springs, doing two different events,” Mahoney says.
The first event of day two will be a short film program starting at 5 p.m. at the Little Art Theatre featuring all Ohio-based filmmakers and creators that includes Chasers, a film that recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. The program will also feature most of the filmmakers on hand for a Q&A. “Lots of Ohio-based and/or native artists that are doing really interesting work in narrative, animated and documentary style will all be in the mix for that,” Mahoney says.
The second part of day two will include a special showing and local premiere of another film, the feature-length documentary Seeds, which won the prestigious U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. The film will play at 8 p.m., following the shorts program, also at the Little Art Theatre. Seeds director Brittany Shyne, a Dayton resident, will be on hand for the showing.
“So, it all kind of comes back to that kind of local connectivity, as well,” Mahoney says. “[Shyne] lives just kind of down the street, so it’s really amazing to get to celebrate her work and show that film to the local community and be able to show that film right out of Sundance and she’ll be on hand to do a Q&A. We’ll be able to kind of chat with all the filmmakers and have a really nice two-day offering that goes from really iconic filmmakers to now-up-and-coming, interesting Ohio-based artists.”
Many of the festival’s past screenings have featured appearances and talks from filmmakers but Mahoney says the hope is to do even more. On the importance of that type of interaction, Mahony says, “It really, really adds a lot to the experience. People get to hear from the filmmakers and artists and ask them questions. We’re really trying to do as much of that with our screenings this year as possible.”
The festival has been bringing a lot of notable figures who might not otherwise appear in the region to perform and/or speak for festival audiences, but Mahoney wants to make sure new and up-and-coming creators are getting visibility, as well. “Also, we wanna lean into being as diverse as possible and show younger filmmakers’ work,” Mahoney says. He compares it to a balance of celebrating the known and unknown, giving the region a chance to connect with cult icons like Waters or Jarmusch, as well as giving newer filmmakers a platform.
With Cincinnati recently being passed over as a future location for the Sundance Film Festival, Mahoney, who sat in on the Cincinnati Film Commission panel for Sundance and has been to the festival, says he thinks the city would have been a perfect fit. Of the possible reasons for the loss, he says, “It might have been slightly too big of a leap, maybe culturally or geographically for them. They wanna keep it a West Coast, mountain kind of vibe; maybe that’s what some of that had to do with. I don’t know, but my hat’s off to Cincy — they did a wonderful pitch and I certainly think that city is worthy of a top-tier film festival.”
Maybe the loss of an established major festival opens the door for a regional festival of our own to grow into something truly special. When asked about this possibility, Mahoney tells CityBeat, “We’re still very much in our infancy here, and I think we’re just trying to grow this festival very carefully and methodically and I think that, certainly, we would love nothing more than to kind of grow into a very culturally significant arts festival over the years. So, if we can provide that service for Southwestern Ohio and the Midwest and bring to the table a new arts festival that has really exciting programming that people are excited to learn about and come visit for the first time and continue to grow, I’m very, very interested in doing that and being a part of the film and arts community and doing what we can to enhance the visibility of the Midwest as a player in the arts scene.”
The Yellow Springs Film Festival Mini-Fest takes place April 17 and 18. The main festival will return for its third year on Oct. 2-5 with programming and special guests to be announced. More info: ysfilmfest.com.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s April 16 print edition.
This article appears in Apr 16-29, 2025.