The cameras have been put away and the projectors brought out in preparation for the Ellensburg Film Festival this weekend.

The festival, in its tenth year, will run from Oct. 3-5 with showings of a wide variety of films, from documentaries about lawns to Spanish language animated short films.

Sanders is grateful to have the event in Ellensburg, noting that residents and students in the film and video studies department would have to go all the way to Seattle to see independent films without the festival’s presence.

More than 35 films will be shown over the course of the three-day event, and they won’t all be independent. The 2004 animated feature, “The Incredibles,” will be shown for free during the festival.

Craig T. Nelson, the voice actor behind Mr. Incredible in “The Incredibles” and four-time Golden Globe nominee, will be at the screening for a meet and greet. Attendees are encouraged to come dressed as their favorite superheroes.

Nelson, who currently stars in NBC’s “Parenthood,” will appear at three other events, which include a Q&A after a screening of 2005’s “The Family Stone,” in which Nelson plays the father of an eccentric family. According to the Ellensburg Film Festival’s site, “The Family Stone” is a favorite of Nelson’s.

Locals and Central alumni join in the film fun with screenings of their short films.

Sanders, who has worked at Central for eight years, will be screening her film “Jessica Walking” for the first time in public at the festival. The film is about a young woman from Seattle who visits Ellensburg and gets lost. She meets an older woman and they make a connection while the two search Ellensburg for a lost phone.

“It’s an Ellensburg story,” Sanders said, “It’s sort of a tribute to some of the beautiful images we found here.”

The decision to premiere the film at the Ellensburg Film Festival was also partly because the story is set here. Sanders wanted to support the festival.

Sanders completed her first draft of the film, then called “Temperance,” in 2009, but wasn’t able to produce it until 2013. After a private screening at a conference, other film professors suggested she change the name.

“It was kind of a long post-production process,” Sanders said.

The film was shot in June and July, but it’s taken until recently to finish the score, edit and get it in shape technically.

“To write an original story and then try to figure out the best way to tell it and to go through all the decisions that have to come with that… it was the most involved I’ve ever been in a film.” Sanders said.

She’s worked on films before, but only as an editor, never as a writer and director.

“It’s a much more intense experience. Doing it for the first time was daunting, but because I’ve been teaching for the last eight years, I did have the confidence that I could pull it off.” Sanders said.

2013 Central alumnus Duke Senter’s nine-minute documentary “FISH People” tells the story of Ellensburg’s local food bank.

Ashley Scott, a recent Central graduate, will screen her film “3 Gobblers.” The short film, set in 1935, is about three young boys in a California migrant camp who find turkeys near Thanksgiving time. The film is based on a true story.

Ellensburg High School graduate, Julian Smart’s award winning short “Day by Day” will also be shown. According to the Daily Record, the young producer didn’t have a formal video production program to work with at school.

Despite the lack of a program, Smart’s PSA about bullying won him an award. Smart won a Pillar Award, the highest award granted in the High School Awards for Excellence category at the 2014 Annual Northwest Regional Emmy Awards.

Started in 2004, the Ellensburg Film Festival now boasts over 2,000 attendees over the three event days.