Colin Covert,  Star Tribune

The way Minnesota Film Arts executive director Jamie Hook sees it, the ever-plummeting cost of making a film is not an entirely positive development.

He recalls a presentation about digital cinema at which someone said, "Now making a great film is no more difficult than making a great painting."

"Making a great painting is one of the hardest things in the world," Hook said. "Just because watercolors are now cheap doesn't mean everyone can use them."

Programming the Emerging Filmmakers Competition for this year's Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival proved his point. With co-programmer Ben Wiggins, Hook winnowed about 200 entries to seven fiction features and seven documentaries. It was trying work.

"There are films I watched half an hour of and I really wished I had 25 minutes of that back," he said. "At some point, every film you put in the machine, you're dreading what's going to come out."

All the more important, then, for M-SPIFF to showcase promising talent. Recognizing and encouraging new filmmakers is a key part of the festival's mission. Hook, who moved here from Seattle after winning last year's competition, has made it his mission to attract other filmmakers.

This year's feature and documentary winners each will receive $40,000 in cash, donated film stock, equipment rental, processing services and even free lodging to enable them to shoot a film in the Twin Cities this summer.

"We're working to make this a marquee attraction of the festival," said Wiggins, a 20-year-old cinema studies major at the University of Minnesota. "I was calling little film organizations from Iowa and Utah and everywhere we possibly could get films from" in search of undiscovered treasures.

They succeeded in finding some, Hook said.

James Vculek's locally produced "Two Harbors," which Hook watched after 20 "bombs," rekindled his enthusiasm. A darkly comic love story involving junk stores and extraterrestrials, it "takes two or three weird hairpin turns" from realistic comedy to surreal humor to tragedy.

"The performances are stellar," Hook said. "Alex Cole, the lead actor, is riveting and hilarious. It's a phenomenal performance, and his co-star, Catherine Johnson, is great with him."

(9 p.m. Thursday, Lagoon Cinema, Minneapolis.)

He had high praise for "Stay Until Tomorrow," a story about a woman in her 20s settling down after years as a carefree traveler. It's not so much the plot as the film's postmodern structure that won Hook's admiration.

"A character in the film will simultaneously be the character and the actor, and he begins commenting on the film as you're watching it," Hook said. "It's weird and unexpected and charming."

Robert Redford liked it, too -- enough to help raise funds for the production.

(9:30 p.m. Monday, Crown Block E, Minneapolis, and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Lagoon Cinema.)

Hook's favorite documentary is "Anytown, USA," in which the 2003 mayoral candidates of Bogota, N.J., and their rowdy supporters behave in ways that would make a civics teacher cringe. The incumbent, a budget-slashing Republican, was opposed by a Democrat and a write-in candidate in an egg-flinging, sign-tearing, name-calling brawl.

"It's politics played as burlesque and charade," Hook said.

(5 p.m. Saturday, Lagoon; 7:30 p.m. April 15, Bell Auditorium.)

Wiggins favors "The Fearless Freaks," a documentary about the eclectic Oklahoma band Flaming Lips.

"They're crazy guys, but their music is really moving and they have a great fan base and are so well-respected in the music community," he said. "They're always trying to get over the hump and break into the mainstream, and the director got the most intimate access to the band."

It was produced by Rick Harder of Minneapolis' Harder Fuller Films, which has made videos for Prince, Liz Phair and Barenaked Ladies.

(9:30 p.m. April 15 and 7:30 p.m. April 16 at the Bell.)

The winning films will be chosen by Neal Block, head of distribution for Palm Pictures; Lois Vossen, producer of the PBS series "Independent Lens," and Christine Walker, Minneapolis-based producer of "Factotum." To add an element of suspense, the committee will watch the films at their festival screenings and announce the winners next week.

Colin Covert is at ccovert@startribune.com.