The Path of Fear, a Sixth Sense-like story about a group of high school friends who awaken the spirit of a little girl when they visit a haunted movie theater, was named the best locally produced narrative feature Saturday at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.

The festival concludes today at Muvico's Peabody Place 22 cinema downtown.

The movie, shot on digital video, was directed by Brad Ellis and Joey Watson of Germantown, who worked with volunteer casts and shoestring budgets but displayed a real understanding of camera placement, editing and other key components of the filmmaking process.

The five-year-old Indie Memphis festival - dedicated to "The Soul of Southern Film" - is being held in a legitimate movie theater for the first time this year, after previously using museum theaters, college auditoriums and other spaces. Last year, the event took place in various venues on Beale Street that had been converted into makeshift screening rooms. This year, Muvico has given Indie Memphis three auditoriums, each with about 300 seats.

Will O'Loughlen, coordinator of the festival, said attendance has matched or surpassed expectations, although figures were not available Saturday. Festival organizers hoped to attract about 4,500 people, a total that would match last year's somewhat overambitious Beale event.

"I can honestly say everything has gone smoothly," O'Loughlen said. "People seem to really appreciate the variety of films."

The filmmakers panels, as well as such features as The Path of Fear and Take Me Back to Beale, were especially well attended, he said.

Close to 100 documentaries, shorts and features with ties to the South were shown during the festival, which opened Thursday. Prizes were given in both a main category, for national or regional filmmakers, and in the "Hometowner" category, for Shelby County filmmakers.

Several productions, such as Robert Gordon's documentary Muddy Waters: Can't Be Satisfied and Craig Brewer's latest short, Natural Selection, were shown outside of competition.

In the main competition, the $750 winner for Best Narrative Feature was director Zev Berman's Briar Patch, a sweaty, swampy sour mash mixture of James M. Cain, Baby Doll, Erskine Caldwell and such drive-in pictures as Shanty Tramp and Louisiana Hussy. The film, shot in North Carolina, stars Henry Thomas (E.T.) and Dominique Swain (Lolita) as "Inez MacBeth." Briar Patch will be screened again at 7 p.m. today.

The Best Narrative Short award, worth $500 in prize money, went to the 29-minute The Book and the Rose, a slickly produced World War II period piece and love story set mainly in West Virginia and directed by Jeff Bemiss. The film will be shown again during a program of shorts at 5 p.m. today.

In the category that was probably distinguished by the worthiest entries, Mai's America was named Best Documentary Feature ($750). Director Marlo Poras's film - winner of the Audience Award at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin - examines the culture shock experienced by a Hanoi exchange student in rural Mississippi.

The Best Documentary Short ($500) went to Mans Mansson's Clyde, about a homeless Southerner in New York.

In the Hometowner category, the $400 prize for Best Narrative Short went to the deserving Doppelganger, an experimental collage of digital effects and cyberpunk anomie directed by Memphis College of Art graduate Ognian Bozikov.

The $400 Hometowner prize for Best Documentary Film went to Jeff Scheftel's The Sounds of Memphis, a look at the forces and personalities that shaped the city's blues, rock and soul.

The makers of The Path of Fear earned $600 for their Hometowner win for Narrative.

The festival continues today at 1 p.m. Admission is $5 per screening. For a complete schedule, visit www.indiememphis.com.

- John Beifuss: 529-2394