Faculty filmmakers' comedy selected to screen at North Hollywood Cinefest

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. — “Spooky Action,” the fifth feature film from a pair of Penn State faculty filmmakers, will premiere at the North Hollywood Cinefest in Glendale, California, on Sept. 29. The film will start at 5:15 p.m. at the Lock Dine-In Cinemas Auditorium 4. 

The husband-and-wife faculty team behind Ma & Pa Pictures, Rod Bingaman and Maura Shea, both associate teaching professors in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, earned the West Coast opportunity thanks to the film’s composer, Bri Weigand. Weigand attended the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022 and interacted with representatives from North Hollywood Cinefest. 

“I’m most excited for the cast and crew because it’s an opportunity you don’t take for granted. It’s quite a privilege to screen at a major independent festival with this type of exposure in a quality theater,” Bingaman said.

Principle photography for the 104-minute film started in 2019, was interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, and resumed in July 2021. The film was shot entirely at locations in and around Centre County. Bingaman wrote and directed the film while Shea served as producer and editor.

A number of Bellisario College alumni, along with some crew members, plan to travel to the festival to support the film in California.

Tickets for the screening of “Spooky Action” — a comedy summarized as “a story about love, destiny and quantum entanglement” — are available for purchase online. The film focuses on time travelers who kidnap a 1990s NASA scientist and loop him into the future to steal his anti-aging research. Meanwhile, his wife suffers a sexual identity crisis and becomes the prime suspect in his disappearance.

In July 2023, “Spooky Action” was recognized as the “Best Feature Under $250,000” by the International New York Film Festival.