By David Benoit
Special to the Reporter

The scene is set at a window over Adams Street, where an elderly woman stands alone and lost. She is waiting for the return of her grandson, who she thinks went to the store. She doesn't understand that he went to war and isn't coming back.

With that as his plot base, Dorchester screenwriter and director Michael Kennedy creates his new short "over the river" that will premiere tomorrow at the Roxbury Film Festival.

This will be Kennedy's first film festival as a director and he is proud that he gets to start with a local one.

"I grew up there, I shot my first film in Dorchester in '94, it was short and with some friends and none of us knew what we were doing," he said. "Most of the stuff I've shot is based on the neighborhood I grew up in. Where I grew up, not just the location, but the people are like a mini United Nations within a block. Those characters kind of seeped into what I wrote."

He got his start screenwriting at the Boston Film and Video Foundation and continued it at Boston University, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts. He described his interest in film as a result of his passion for watching films and movies, something he did often as a kid. He says his favorite movies are older musicals in the style of "West Side Story" and "Brigadoon," but admits that he'll watch anything.

"If you pick a movie I'd probably like it," he laughed.

"Over the river" was something that Kennedy wrote a few years back for some friends to use in a class. When they didn't use it, he had put it aside and had almost forgotten about it. But when another friend took it up as a stage production, Kennedy decided it looked good enough to be a film. He shot it in one weekend with a group of friends in an apartment off of Adams Street.

"I had kind of given up on it before that, and I got to see it performed and that kind of brought it back into my conciousness, and I decided to try and film it myself," he said. "I finished it for class and I got a good grade on it, and a couple of film festivals were coming up and we got into Roxbury."

Kennedy describes his story as a "modern day fable" built off of the story of "Little Red Riding Hood."

"Her whole world is basically her apartment. She's got some issues, it's almost dementia brought upon by severe depression, and she lost the only thing that she cared about," he said. "The long back story, which isn't in the film at all, is that he left for the first Gulf War and never came back. And she thinks he went to the store and is coming back any minute. She finds a replacement and he is an escaped convict. I try to play up the conflict of does she know him and who he really is and is he going to harm her."

He cast Bobbie Patrick, whom he met in a Boston University class as the grandmother, and Steve Richardson as the convict. His crew was rounded out by three other friends from BU who he had worked on various projects; Chris Messina, Trevor Joyce, and his new fiancé Erin Francis.

Kennedy has worked with the movie since he handed it in for a grade, adding music and doing even more editing leading up to its acceptance in the 8th annual Roxbury Film Festival. The festival features over 60 films this year, with an emphasis on people of color. Films will be shown from local directors, as well as by directors from Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, and France, and one is co-directed by actress Rosie Perez about her Puerto Rican heritage. "Over the river" will premiere tomorrow at 4 p.m. in the group of short films "Delusions and Illusions."

"The cool factor for me is ridiculous. It's only a short in a local festival, but to me it's Sundance," Kennedy said, referring to the acclaimed festival in Utah. "It might not be a big deal for the kids out in Hollywood, but to me it is the equivalent to that because it is a local thing, and that makes it even more special. In a way it's like my festival."

He hopes his appearance opens doors for not only his career, but for his actors as well. He knows that with Dorchester serving as the setting for such big-time productions as Ben Affleck's "Gone Baby, Gone" and Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" his neighborhood is becoming a place everyone sees.

"It raises the local film industry, the mainstream, non-industry people are now aware of it," he said. "It raises the possibility that it can be done in Boston on a big level."

And while he might not be at that level quite yet, Kennedy is simply excited about his newest opportunity and the connections he will make. It would seem nothing can bring him down heading into tomorrow's viewing.

"I don't even care if the projector breaks," he joked.