Collar City Film Fest features Appio brothers
— Frank and Zach Appio
The Baby Monitor, a psychological-suspense thriller, depicts a mother putting her baby to bed and preparing for her husband’s return home at the end of the day. When the Appio brothers, who made the film, cared for their ailing grandmother, they used a monitor so they could hear her if she called for help. “We were talking one day about the static and the horrible noises,” said Frank. “We were getting creeped out listening to it,” said Zach of the monitor.
ALTAMONT — Villagers and indie filmmakers Zach and Frank Appio are “pretty excited,” Zach said, to have The Baby Monitor shown at the Collar City Film Fest in Troy on Jan. 30.
And one of the things they’re most excited about? Competing in the festival against the professor in whose RPI class they made the film.
Sixteen filmmakers from the Capital Region and the Hudson Valley will show short films. The Appio brothers will show the eight-and-a-half-minute suspense film they made last year.
RPI Associate Professor Nao Bustamante, who taught the Appios in her class, “Producing and Directing the Short Film,” is an internationally known video and performance artist. She will be showing the 19-minute Tableau she made in 2013.
Bustamante told The Enterprise that Tableau, shot entirely in Troy, is about “a weirdo filmmaker in a small town who is striving to make an epic post-apocalyptic movie. No one will work with him, so he ends working with these tweens next door and his dog.”
Bustamante said jokingly of competing against Zach and Frank, “Bring it on, Appio brothers! Bring it on!”
In a more serious vein, she said, “They’re so talented. I see them as real innovators. I hope that filmmaking doesn’t lose them to another field eventually.”
The Collar City festival, Zach Appio said, “will be our toughest competition yet.”
They’ve done pretty well so far. At the 15 Minutes Max Saint Rose and Times Union Student Film Festival at Albany’s Madison Theater in October 2014, they won first prize and also took the Audience Choice Award. Zach told The Enterprise recently that The Baby Monitor got “like 90 percent” of the audience votes.
Competition aside, another thing the Appios are looking forward to in Troy, Zach said, is “seeing other people’s good work.”
****
The Collar City Film Festival will be held Jan. 30 at 8 p.m. at Collar Works, 137 Fourth Street in Troy. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, see the Collar City Film Fest Vol. 3 event on Facebook.
