Long Beach film festival of fun and fundraising

Someone with a camera phone secretly went around West End bars filming bartenders, patrons and dance scenes, the clips of which were part of an award-winning movie. 

  It tied for second-best film, neither at Cannes nor TriBeCa but rather at a competing short-film festival in Long Beach. West End residents Antoniette Diamon, Bronagh Lawe and Pat and Babs Mullaney spliced together “After Hours,” a dream sequence that reveals what goes on in the bars in their neighborhood when night falls, which was a crowd favorite at the third annual George Ennis Film Festival at the Cabana restaurant on West Beech Street on May 8.

  “It was a comedy with a lot of familiar faces in it, so it was pretty well received,” said George Ennis, who organizes the festival that bears his name. 

  Ennis assembled 10 judges — including Nassau County Legislator Denise Ford, Long Beach City Council President Tom Sofield Jr., and Adam Taylor, winner of the 2nd annual GEFF for “Dracula” — who were given the tough task of choosing the best among 10 short films by movie-makers from the West End to Manhattan to South Carolina.

  The judges awarded the top prize to “The Clown,” by Tate Steinsiek, a Manhattanite, which Ennis described as “a dark, disturbing” picture about a man abused by clowns as a child who grows up and dresses as a clown and goes on a killing spree.

  The other runner-up was Ryan O’Leary’s “Cecil & Demon,” a sitcom-like film about a regular guy who lives with a devilish roommate.

  While high wind gusts blew sand off the nearby beach and an unseasonable chill gave the event a more autumn-like feel, even though it was pushed up from April to May this year, the festivities got started when “celebrities” showed up in a white limo to walk the red carpet rolled out in the Mexican restaurant’s parking lot. Pat and Babs Mullaney dressed as a reunited Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, and another of Ennis’s friends, Amy Martin, came as Amy Winehouse, tatoos and all. They and an orange tuxedo-clad Ennis showed up after a champaign party at his California Street home. Ennis’ wife, Maureen, and their daughters Nikki, Danielle and Lexie, were decked out in 1930s-style Hollywood dresses and veiled hats.