A walk down the main hall at Youngstown Cultural Arts Center surrounds you with creativity. Art lines the walls while open doors provide a glimpse into workshops, studios and the cluttered offices of community organizations. At the end of the hall double doors open up to a small theater. With its retractable bank of theater seats and simple stage, it gives the impression that this too is a place where presentation isn't far removed from creation. All in all a perfect place to view newly minted films.

And that was the first pleasure of the Ravenreel Film Festival's d/but on June 10. Because let's face it, if you were watching, for example, a Seattle International Film Festival movie wouldn't it be a more satisfying experience at the Harvard Exit than at a multiplex in South Center? And in a sense that's what Ravenreel brings to West Seattle: a Seattle International Film Festival experience shrunk down into a very entertaining one night event.

The brainchild of Victoria Brown, arts education director for The Nature Consortium, Ravenreel is a festival dedicated to short films from local filmmakers. Ravenreel offers West Seattleites much needed access to their own film community.

Now for a moment of full disclosure, my great fear walking into the theater was that I would be hit with an onslaught of amateur efforts that would play out like long night at the in-law's watching vacation videos. Instead I was treated to a fascinating stew of inspired ideas and poignant insights - a triumph of creativity over budget. Isn't that the great pleasure of film festivals, a chance to get close to the creative process? To see the product - sometimes delightfully imperfect - of individual vision rather than corporate formula?

Over the course of the evening Ravenreel's 26 entries spanned every possible combination of sophistication, style and topic. Almost every possible genre of film was represented. The subject matter was always surprising (football with a frozen turkey anyone? Or, how about a serious documentary on flip book animation). Like that old joke about Scottish weather, if something didn't suit your taste just wait a few minutes, it was sure to change.

Seattle's professional film community was well represented. One of the big crowd pleasers of the evening was Meredith Binder, Andy McCone and Joe Shapiro's production of "Rent's Due." This homage to Buster Keaton movies took classic silent film elements - the poor widow, the heartless landlord, the Keystone Cops style chase - and transported them into a laundromat where all the characters lived and worked in clothes dryers. Where this idea came from I can't begin to imagine but it worked beautifully and had the audience in stitches.

For those of us who like action films Noah Dahlstrom's "Un Bain De Foux" offered one of the most bizarre kung fu duels ever fought in defense of a hot tub.

There were two music videos. Tyson Theroux's "Godspeed Girl" with its high contrast lighting provided the most eloquent cinematography of the evening. And Josh Ottum's " Do You Really Wanna Know?" featured a room full of teenagers lip syncing (is that the term for it?) guitar backup.

The kids were not to be out-done with three very clever entries from Sanislo Elementary school. Ian Whitlock did a classic turn as a toilet paper encased mummy in the aptly named "Mummy Magic Madness". The delightfully minimalist "The Ghost Bag" resists description but let me try by saying this much: imagine the shark from "Jaws" reincarnated as a paper bag, scale the public pandemonium appropriately you'll get the general picture.

And finally, "The Creature From Sanislo Elementary" may have coined one of the iconic lines of school librarianship when our young heroes alert their librarian to the devastation in the book stacks caused by a mysterious creature only to have her give the exasperated response "Have you been chewing on these?!" I can't make any promises but if this movie is ever screened at a librarians' convention my guess is that it will get a standing ovation. "TCFSE" also employs an ingenious POV of the creature giving those scenes a convincing aura of creepiness. Well done, guys.

The filmmakers' dedication to eloquent scriptwriting was - as is true in the larger world - uneven. The temptations of a visual art can seduce a director to short change words (just ask George Lucas). In this case, some of the best writing came out of the Reel Grrls program, most notably the bittersweet meditations of "The way I see it" and Sami Mullenburg's "From Me to You, aka Dear Stranger".

The documentary category has some fascinating entries. Bryan Gough's "The Flip Book" follow's Seattle's short lived by utterly entertaining flip book animation contest.

"Tent City" is Scott Squire and Amy Benson's look inside a homeless camp that has been migrating through the nervous suburbs of the Eastside.

An annual tackle football game that does indeed employ, at least for part of the game, a turkey as the football (along with a guy in a utilikilt at strong safety and a golden retriever at left tackle) was the subject of "Coalfield Classic 7". This good natured mugging in the November mud played out like "Animal House" meets "Friday Night Lights" and delivered a surprisingly compelling bit of spectator sport. I believe the final score was two dislocated shoulders to one split lip.

Jillian Rood screened rough footage of her documentary "Guardians of the Jungle" that tells the story of the Huaroni people, an indigenous people of the Amazon that have found themselves in the politically treacherous position of sitting on top of a major oil discovery.

Ravenreel was a chance to connect with the kind of free-wheeling creativity that only seems to flourish on a local level. It may be somewhat akin to the experience you had the first time you saw Freemont's Solstice parade-one of those events that make you feel very smug about living in the city rather than the suburbs. And, if we're lucky-very, very lucky-it will be around next year for all of us to enjoy.

Bruce Bulloch usually writes about the movies at The Admiral Theatre and can be reached via wseditor@robinsonnews.com