Teens' short films are tiny, tasty

Feel like a snack?

Wired magazine terms the world of super-short media "snack culture," saying in its March cover story that "we now devour our pop culture the same way we enjoy candy and chips -- in conveniently packaged bite-size nuggets." Morsels include 60-second "webisodes" delivered to cellphones and three-minute podcasts. Peter Guber , CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, notes , " We are all scrambling to construct a new model to profit from these bits and pieces, but there's so much out there, it's like trying to harness a tornado."

Helping to harness that tornado (while contributing to it) is a group of teens who work out of a space in downtown Boston called Cloud Place. They have curated a selection of short films by teenagers from across the country that will be presented in the Cloud Foundation's third annual film series Saturday from 5-7 p.m. and repeated May 19. The films include fiction, documentary, experimental, and animated works, ranging from autobiographical to comic. Short movies by the teen curators are also online at myspace.com/cloudfoundation.

The students in the Teen Curatorial Program work with Boston filmmaker Jared Katsiane to evaluate submitted movies and make the final program selection. They're in it for the creativity and not thinking about how to make money, says Katsiane, who adds , " The business of filmmaking and surviving as a filmmaker needs to be addressed more in film school."

Cloud Place is at 647 Boylston St. in Copley Square; information at 617-262-2949 and cloudfoundation.org.

TURKISH FEST: Each fall for 11 years, the Boston Turkish Festival has presented a program of music, art workshops, lectures, and film programming. Six years ago, a separate film festival spun out for the spring . This year's program opens Thursday at 7:45 p.m. with Turkey's entry to this year's Academy Awards, "Ice Cream, I Scream," said to be a zany reworking of "The Bicycle Thief." An opening night reception follows.

The first Boston Turkish Film Festival Award for Excellence in Turkish Cinema will be presented to director Zeki Demirkubuz before the North America n premiere of his new film "Destiny," about the dark side of unrequited love. That's next Sunday at 3:45 p.m., with a reception afterward . Returning to town is Nuri Bilge Ceylan's moody "Climates," which played here earlier this year.

Ten films will be shown over a 10-day period at the Museum of Fine Arts. The full schedule is online at bostonturkishfilmfestival.org and mfa.org/film.

MORE FESTIVAL NEWS: The Boston Underground Film Festival wraps up today, with four programs at the Brattle Theatre and two at the Harvard Square Cinema. The closing night award ceremony takes place at Z Square Restaurant in Cambridge at 10 . Information is at bostonundergroundfilmfestival.com.

The Independent Film Festival of Boston, which runs from April 25-30, will open with Hal Hartley's new "Fay Grim," which stars Parker Posey and Jeff Goldblum . It also will feature a conversation with film producer Ted Hope ("American Splendor," "Lovely & Amazing"). The line up is at iffboston.org.

The one-day Doc Kountze Festival, sponsored by the Medford Arts Center, this year is focusing on films and takes place next Sunday from 1-6 p.m. at the McGynn Middle School in Medford. Included are "Making Contact: The Somerville Boxing Club" by students in the Tufts course "Making Films for Social Change"; "Stuttering: Not Bound by Words," by another team of Tufts students; and Medford-native Johnathan Carr's "Candyflip," about substance abuse. Festivities start Saturday at 7:30 p.m. with a 10th anniversary reception and screening of Stanley Nelson's "A Place of Our Own," about the African-American community in Oak Bluffs, on Martha's Vineyard. Full details are at dockountze.com.

CONVERSATIONS WITH: Cambridge psychotherapist Sam Osherson, featured in Doug Block's documentary about his parents "51 Birch Street," will talk about the movie after a 1:45 p.m. show today at the Museum of Fine Arts.

Actor Michael Goorjian, best known for the television show "Party of Five," will be at the Studio Cinema in Belmont tonight at 7:30 for the Boston premiere of "Illusion," a movie he wrote, directed, and starred in. "Illusion" also features Kirk Douglas, and is about a broken father-son relationship. Goorjian will also be at a pre-film reception at the First Armenian Church in Belmont. Details at belmontworldfilm.org.

John Hughes captured -- in broad brush-strokes, anyway -- what it was like to be a white suburban kid in 1980s America: His "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Sixteen Candles," "The Breakfast Club," and "Weird Science" all came out between 1983 and 1987. A new book, "Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes," celebrates the man and his work, and writers Steve Almond, Lisa Borders, Emily Franklin, and Elizabeth Searle, who all contributed, will be at the Coolidge Corner Theatre tomorrow to reminisce after a 7 p.m. screening of "Ferris Bueller." The book is edited by Jamie Clark, who also runs Newtonville Books with his wife, Mary Cotton (617-734-2500 and coolidge.org ).

John Gianvito, a filmmaker and Emerson College professor, will present several works by Russian film and opera director Andrei Tarkovsky Thursday at 7 p.m. at the BU College of Communication, 640 Commonwealth Ave., Room B-05. Gianvito is author of "Andrei Tarkovsky: Interviews."

SCREENINGS OF NOTE: The Found Footage Festival, a national touring program of video clips culled from thrift stores and at yard sales, will run Saturday at midnight at the Coolidge. . . . Also showing Saturday at midnight is "Radical Jesters," by director Tim Jackson with students at the New England Institute of Art, about activist provocateurs The Guerrilla Girls, Bread and Puppet Theatre, Institute of Infinitely Small Things, and others. That's at the Brattle, with Jackson attending (617 - 876-6837 and brattlefilm.org ). . . . "Goodfellas" on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Coolidge, introduced by actress Marianne Leone Cooper ("The Sopranos"), who is in the film.

Leslie Brokaw can be reached at lbrokaw@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ae/movies/blog.