In past years, the RiverRun International Film Festival has had an office set up at the Sawtooth Building for visitors, patrons and guests. This year, necessity -- in the form of construction work on the Sawtooth has forced the festival's downtown headquarters to another location.
This year, the downtown headquarters is at 500 W. Fourth St., in the offices that to housed the Obama campaign headquarters.
The new location has worked out well so far. "We've seen a good response," said Billie Cole, one of the supervisors working at the RiverRun headquarters. "It's a good location, and we've had a lot of foot traffic."
With the move, RiverRun has expanded what it offers at the headquarters. In addition to general information and such merchandise as T-shirts and tote bags, there are free screenings of experimental shorts, demonstrations of free software and complimentary snacks. There is even an Art-O-Mat vending machine.
The "Experimental Theatre" shorts, in a screening room at the back of the offices, run for just over a half-hour, with eight short avant-garde films -- most of them without narration and relying solely on imagery -- that range in length from one to seven minutes. They are on a continual loop during the office's hours, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. today through Sunday, and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Wednesday.
In another room, the Center for Design Innovation is having demonstrations of Scratch, a child-friendly animation program designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Scott Betz, who teaches 2D and 4D design in the fine-arts department at Winston-Salem State University, is on hand several hours a day to demonstrate the program, which is available free for PC or Mac at http://scratch.mit.edu. Demonstrations will be held from noon to 2 p.m. today; 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday; and at other times next week.
"It helps kids understand computer-science script," said Betz, who has been demonstrating the software at schools and libraries.
He hopes to attract more youngsters to visit Saturday and Sunday after "Saturday Morning Cartoons," a block of child-friendly shorts being shown at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Stevens Center and at 11:30 a.m. Sunday at the UNC School of the Arts Gold Theatre. Admission for those shorts is $1 for ages 18 and under, or $8 for adults.
■ Tim Clodfelter can be reached at 727-7371 or at tclodfelter@wsjournal.com.
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