Inuvik (July 28/06) - Three amateur projects were the highlight of the first film festival in Inuvik.

The features, which were produced by students of Dennis Allen's four-day filmmaking workshop, premiered on Friday night at the Top of the World film festival.

Allen opened up the festival by thanking all the participants for taking part in the crash course in 'guerrilla-style filmmaking'.

"These people got a taste of the industry, they had late hours and little sleep," said Allen.

The first project was produced by Terry Halifax and Lillian Wright and starred Ayla Gully.

Their feature was called "Ayla and the boy who ran" and was about a girl who had to find a new way to get to school after her car keys get locked inside the vehicle.

At first, she reluctantly walked to school but as the days went on, she met a boy who ran right by her house.

By the end of the short feature, once her keys were recovered, Ayla decided to keep walking to school in order to meet the boy who ran.

The film had an interesting use of different camera angles, and quick short shots.

The second feature, called "Faith Preserved" was produced by Jonathan Churcher and Julian Tomlinson and starred Ruth Wright.

It was a comedic look at gardening and how frustration can override common sense.

Ruth's character was someone who tended to her celery plants every day, until she realizes that her plants have been taken out of her plot.

She looks around and sees some leaves on the ground leading to another gardener, who is eating vegetables.

She assumes that they were hers, and deflates a tire on a truck outside the greenhouse.

After she realizes that it was actually someone else that took the plants, she quickly grabs a pump and inflates the tire again. The whole feature was shot with little speech and resembled a silent Charlie Chaplin film, with the animations Wright used in her performance.

The third film, which was made by the Katz family, Gadi, Etai and Sharon, was called "Stitch and Bitch."

It was about two artists, who chose the same model for their paintings.

The two took pictures of a woman sewing, and painted identical portraits of the woman's face. The true comedic skills came with the confrontation between the two painters who realized what had happened.

Insults were thrown back and forth between the two. The gems included "I could google this for days and still not have a clue what this is supposed to be."

The dispute is put to an end when the subject of the paintings scolds the two of them for being childish.

In the end, both artists become attracted to each other and leave the scene together for coffee.

The festival started Friday night, and ended late Saturday evening following a day full of features by filmmakers from the Delta and around the territories.