Once again this year, I was a judge in the New Filmmakers Forum competition of the St. Louis International Film Festival. The past two years, the winners were, by pure coincidence, directors with local ties: Brian Jun (”Steel City”) and Kirt Gunn (”Lovely by Surprise).” This year, the five jurors picked a film from New York, Mary Bronstein’s unsettling “Yeast.”

But we could have picked a California film about a Chinese-American girl coming of age in the midst of a global meltdown (Jennifer Phang’s “Half-Life”); a neo-noir thriller that a Wash U. grad filmed in Louisiana with troubled actor Tom Sizemore (Jeffrey Goodman’s “The Last Lullabye”);  a “Big Chill”-style comedy with a weight-loss theme that was shot in Montana by a Mississippi native (Tate Taylor’s “Pretty Ugly People”); or a basketball drama set in St. Louis’ roughest neighborhood (Matthew Krentz’s “Streetballers”).

The latter movie attracted a big crowd to the Tivoli on Saturday night. Krentz burrowed deep into the community to film his story about two Forest Park hoospters who play in an outlaw steetball league. Many of the cast members are pro and semi-pro basketball players, including star Jimmy McKinney, a Mizzou grad now playing in Germany, and Jutin Tatum, a SLU grad who makes a menacing gangster.

Krentz even recruited some real gangsters. He told me that he reached out to an East Side kingpin–by taking him to dinner at Applebee’s. The dude was so impressed by Krentz’s respect and commitment that he offered to put his foot soldiers at the director’s disposal.

“Streetballers” had a budget of more than $1 million. “The Last Lullabye,” which is polished enough to go straight into theaters, had a budget  of probably two or three times that much. Yet the winning film, “Yeast,” was made for about $2500.

Bronstein’s psychodrama about three co-dependent young women is reminiscent of John Cassevetes at his most claustrophobic. None of us jurors–Variety critic Scott Foundas, St. Louis Art Museum assistant education director Bill Appleton, novelist Scott Phillips and P-D critic emeritus Harper Barnes–confessed to actually “enjoying” it; yet none of us could forget it either. It was a welcome reminder that there are still all kinds of ways to make a film. As Jeff Goodman said, with all the technology at a director’s disposal, there’s never been an easier time time to make a movie–even if there’s never been a harder time to make money at it.