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In “Field of Dreams,” Kevin Costner’s Iowa farmer, haunted by mysterious whispered intonations of, “If you build it, he will come,” plows under part of his property to construct a baseball field.

In the real world, though, infrastructure is somewhat meaningless without skilled workers. That’s why Illinois is so intent on strengthening its development and education programs, to both boost local economic numbers and help create a trained crew base that will entice productions to commit to the state.

“If you don’t have a workforce you don’t have an industry,” says Ashley Rice, co-managing partner and president of Cinespace. “So it’s all about workforce development, and creating jobs and pipelines for more crew to be available to be hired locally.”

Of course, ambitious plans take a village. So it’s an all-hands-on-deck approach to creating more visible pathways of entrance. In 2019, Illinois Film Office director...

General Hospital boss Frank Valentini dropped a fun bombshell on Tuesday night, revealing in a video posted to twitter that two-time Daytime Emmy winner Hillary B. Smith will be appearing on ABC’s sole surviving sudser — and as her One Life to Live character, legal eagle Nora Buchanan.

RelatedNBC’s Timeless Casts General Hospital Vet as Ernest Hemingway

The video is capped by a fun little wink from Rebecca Budig, who currently plays Gh‘s Hayden but who “back in the day” used to work down the street from Smith, when she was All My Children‘s Greenlee.

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This year’s Denver Underground Film Festival, held back on Nov. 11-13, featured two nights of short film programs and one feature film documentary screening. For the short films, the fest handed out a handful of awards and listed about half-dozen honorable mentions. The full list of winners and mentions is below.

In addition to just naming the winners, the fest included the reasons they felt each film earned its award. Awards were given out based on cinematography, audience reaction, film themes, filmmaking techniques and other reasons. These reasons are also included with each winner in the list.

Award Winners

Best Narrative Short

Wind, dir. M. Manikandan

In recognition of its imaginative usage of a minimal number of stage elements and props in a purely natural environment to tell a simple, but powerful story and for its superb cinematography.

Best Experimental Short

Beauty Evaporates, dir. June Kyu Park

For its...

Rescued from the jaws of limbo, the Denver Underground Film Festival comes roaring back to life for three days of short films and one intense feature-length documentary. The fest runs Nov. 11-13 at the Unitarian Society of Denver.

The feature doc screening on the fest’s last night is Iconoclast, Larry Wessel’s epic profile of musician and artistic rabble-rouser Boyd Rice.

The rest of the fest is an eclectic mix of short films, including programs devoted to contemporary Spanish and Canadian cinema, plus a look back at profiles of Andy Warhol caught on film by Jonas Mekas and Stephen Dwoskin.

Some mind-blowing short films to look out for are Jaimz Asmundson’s stunning portrait of his artist father, C. Graham Asmundson, The Magus and Greg Hanson & Casey Regan’s ass-kicking nunsploitation flick, Thy Kill Be Done.

The full lineup of films at the Denver Underground Film Festival is below.