Screen Scene

Can sexual predators be rehabilitated? Director Bob Byington [1]’s 2008 film Registered Sex Offender [2] offers a jaundiced and, some critics say, savagely funny answer to that question via a mockumentary about a young man recently released from prison who has a dangerous taste for dating teenagers.

With a title like that, no wonder it didn’t land in any local theaters. But RSO has indie cred — former sitcom star Kevin Corrigan [3], Slackers director Richard Linklater [4] and “mumblecore” auteur Andrew Buljalski [5] all appear. Local movie buff Graeme Flegenheimer chose Byington’s comedy to kick off what he hopes will become a regular film series at Burlington’s DesignHaus [6]. He’s even set up a post-film speaker-phone Q&A session with Byington, whose most recent film is Harmony and Me [7].

Flegenheimer is just 17 — he’s headed back to high school at Michigan’s Interlochen Center for the Arts this fall. But he says his friends at Angioplasty Media [8] — a collective whose members “write about Burlingtony musicy things,” according to their blog — will keep things going while he’s gone. Flegenheimer has a whole list of festival films he’d like to bring to Burlington, including Breaking Upwards [9], Modern Love Is Automatic [10] and Winnebago Man [11], a feature documentary about the very angry RV salesman featured in a viral video.

In Vermont, “We don’t have a lot of selections for independent film or films that have run the festival circuit,” Flegenheimer says. “I’m just trying to expose films that wouldn’t be able to come to a smaller city.”