Hollywood. Cannes. Sundance. Highlands.

You may not think of that last location as a buzzing film capital, but a small group of dedicated film enthusiasts are working to bring film to a new elevation in this small Macon County town.

The 2nd Annual Highlands International Film Festival, a five-day celebration of all things celluloid from Tuesday, Aug. 23, to Saturday, Aug. 27, will feature a wide range of styles and subjects from short indie films and foreign flicks to documentaries and feature-length films. A busy schedule throughout the week includes daily and nightly films at the Martin Lipscomb Performing Arts Center in Highlands, a free family night movie at the Highlands Recreation Park and a seminar on the life and work of suspense master Alfred Hitchcock.

Thanks to some generous local sponsorship and leadership from Festival Director Sue Gail, the festival will offer 19 films this year over five days.

Among the stars expected to be on hand will be Raquel Bitton, one of the world’s most acclaimed French singers who stars in “Edith Piaf: Her Songs, Her Story,” and Georgia Bonesteel, legendary quilter and narrator of the documentary “The Great American Quilt Revival” (directed by her son, Asheville’s Paul Bonesteel).

Adding an international flair to the festival will be “The Sea Inside,” which won the 2005 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, “The Chocolate Fetish,” a film short selected for the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, and other subtitled films from the Czech Republic, Italy and Iran.

“We’re offering something up here that’s totally new to the area,” Gail said.

Gail and her husband had been coming up to Highlands from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where she has been actively involved with the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival for 11 years. A few years ago, Gail was approached by some friends about starting a film festival in Highlands. There are no movie theatres in Highlands, which is situated near the North Carolina/Georgia border, so it seemed like a unique opportunity.

At about the same time, the Old Edwards Inn in Highlands was undergoing a major, multi-million-dollar renovation. Gail saw the Inn as a great site to lure actors and directors for a film festival. Through her connections to filmmakers and her love of international and independent films, she and a committee set to work on organizing the first Highlands Film Festival last summer. There were two films a day over four days. After generating even more interest this year, organizers expanded last year’s inaugural event from eight films to 19 and received funding from presenting sponsors Horst and Margaret Winkler and The Old Edwards Inn. Major sponsors also include The Highlander and Crossroads Chronicle, Macon Bank, Advantage West and the WNC Film Commission.

McKenzie Thompson, a recent graduate of Highlands School, won the contest and prize money to design this year’s program poster.

Tickets for all festival films are $8 a piece. Films will be shown at the Performing Arts Center in Highlands except for “Robots” (the animated movie starring Robin Williams, Halle Berry and Mel Brooks), which will be shown free at the Recreation Center Ball Field on Thursday, Aug. 25, at 8 p.m. A festival pass to attend all the films as well as the opening gala and closing wrap-up party is $175.

While the public gets to sample all sorts of films from all over the world, independent film directors, producers, actors and film crews get to showcase their work with the hope of getting bigger distribution and broadening their fan base. Unlike some of the bigger festivals like Sundance, South by Southwest, and Indiefest, the Highlands Film Festival will not have a competition among its visiting filmmakers.

“We’re not really big enough to do that — not yet,” says Gail.

Besides the Bonesteels, there are several Western North Carolina connections to the festival. On Friday, Aug. 26, “The Thread of Life is Thin,” a documentary about the Peeks Creek flood disaster last fall, will be shown to raise money for survivors of the Macon County disaster. On Sat. Aug. 27, one of the afternoon films is “Songcatcher,” which was filmed in Western North Carolina and features a who’s who of traditional Southern Appalachian musicians and singers.

“We’re excited to be involved,” says Paul Bonesteel of Bonesteel Films.

At last year’s Highlands Film Festival, Bonesteel showed “The Mystery of George Masa,” a documentary about a Japanese-American photographer who helped lay the groundwork for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and helped scout the Appalachian Trail section through North Carolina. His film company, which he started in Atlanta and moved to Asheville in 1997, keeps a busy slate of commercials, post-production editing and documentaries, including one on Folkmoot USA, which has been nominated for a 2005 Emmy Award after airing on North Carolina Public Television.

For his latest entry in the Highlands Film Festival, Paul was able to draw on his mother, Georgia Bonesteel, who has a national reputation in quilting.

The two collaborated on a quilting documentary by interviewing quilters and quilting experts, and exploring some of the key events in quilting that have helped revive the art form in the 20th century. From Marie Webster selling books and samples out of her Indiana home and industrializing the art of handicraft to the New York City Whitney Gallery quilting exhibit in 1971 that launched the craft into a fine art sensation to the quilts in memory of the 9/11 tragedy, the documentary focuses on the reflection and recognition of a time-honored tradition.

“The quilt is woven into our history unlike any other art form,” Paul Bonesteel said.

On Aug. 24, there’s a day-long tribute to Alfred Hitchcock including a retrospective documentary on the life of the legendary director, two showings of Hitchcock’s feature-length movies, and a seminar from Western Carolina University film studies professor Jubal Tiner.

The idea behind the Hitchcock day is to entertain and educate the public about one of America’s foremost directors. Tiner explained that he will be delving into the techniques of the cinematic auteur, who has influenced movie directors like Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, and TV shows like “The X-Files.”

While Hitchcock may be most famous for the killer thriller “Psycho” and that ominous, bloody shower scene, he used the elements of dramatic suspense rather than relying on blood and gore to excite the audience, Tiner said. Educating the public about these film nuances can help create a better-informed film audience that will appreciate more complex material, he added.

“I think it makes the experience richer for them,” Tiner said. “I’m really looking forward to it. It should be a lot of fun.”

For more information about the Highlands International Film Festival or to reserve tickets, call 828.526.9938, ext. 402 or go to the website www.highlandsfilmfest.com.

(Michael Beadle can be reached at beadlepoet@yahoo.com)