Jacksonville film production buffs, look out for the launch of Jacksonville.com’s Cinemania, a community-based group of amateur and professional Florida videographers and filmmakers working to hone their skills. Led by longtime screenwriter Sharon Cobb, the group is designed to help amateur Florida filmmakers and videographers launch their careers and make the jump from part-time purveyors of short films to full time Florida film production professionals.

The group debuts Monday, Feb. 15 with a screening of the four top winners of the 2010 Doorpost Film Project, an annual short film competition. The event takes place at the Five Points Theatre, 1022 Park Street in the Five Points neighborhood of Jacksonville’s Riverside district. Admission is free, but get there early to make sure you’ve got a seat.

The films showing are:

•    The Butterfly Circus, a touching, Great Depression-era story of a circus showman leading his troupe through the America’s devastated landscape, inspiring and being inspired along the way by a cast of characters including a quadriplegic whom they befriend at a carnival sideshow;
•    La Premiere, the story of the Lumiere Brothers, Auguste and Louis, credited with taking motion pictures from the tiny Kinetiscope to the big screen – the invention of the cinema as we know it today;
•    The Rift, a metaphorical tale about a man who wakes up in a dark, despair-ridden place that he fears is Hell and learns a lesson in how one act of love can change the course of a person’s life;
•    Guest Room, a character-driven drama about a man who finds another beaten and passed out at a remote highway rest stop and decides to help, launching a friendship and a journey that proves the people who have the greatest impact on our lives can be the ones we least expect to matter at all.

Cinemania plans monthly film events including film-related workshops and stage screenplay readings, discount screenings of feature films, independent films and films by Florida film production companies Jacksonville video production professionals.

If you’re inspired to launch your own filmmaking career, Digital Video Arts can help. Our Jacksonville video production company is state-of-the-art and our team are industry veterans with unmatched creative energy. Let us help produce your first or next film and give you the professional edge you’ll need to compete and succeed.