As Elliott Street looks forward to this year’s Rails to Reels Film Festival, he and other organizers are casting a wide cinematic net.

“We want something extraordinary,” said Street, an experienced actor from Meridian with a long list of film and television credits. “Our real mission is (exploring) our whole southern and American culture.”

The fourth annual festival is slated for Oct. 20 and 21 at the Temple Theatre in Meridian, with times to be determined once films are lined up. This year, there’s also a “FLASH Film Festival” in which three directors that Street has hired will work with people who sign up in advance — or possibly just come into the Temple Theatre Ballroom on the spot — to create films within 48 hours. Those films will be screened before the “Spike Awards” presentation at 9 p.m. on Oct. 21.

Street suggested that the FLASH Festival could provide a kind of instant venue for the area’s acting talent.

“Around this town, we’ve got a lot of people who are very good actors,” he said. “It would be nice to have a setting for people.”

Street is inviting people to email portfolios, resumes, work samples and acting demos to angelstheatre@gmail.com to “allow early access from the FLASH Directors to make choices,” as he writes in a flyer.

Street said the directors will be Michael Williams, Charles Walter Jett and Miles Doleac. He noted that a small version of the FLASH Film Festival was conducted two years ago, but it has not been a regular staple of the overall festival.

Thomas Burton, director of the Rails to Reels Film Festival, said this year’s festival will feature something else that hasn’t been present in past years.

“We’re going to have a music documentary entered this year,” Burton said. “It focuses on Meridian musicians, and it’s really got a lot of Meridian talent.”

As Burton noted that documentary — called “Little City, Big Voices,” by Dale Tice — he underlined a desire to feature local talent in the festival. He said entries have come from various parts of Mississippi and from other states, as well, including Louisiana, Alabama, Texas and Connecticut.

“We never have a problem getting out-of-town people, but we want to get more of the Meridian community involved,” he said.

Burton said the regular deadline for film submission is Sept. 15, with a late deadline of Sept. 25. The late deadline results in a higher submission fee — and the fees vary according to film genre. People interested in participating can go to RailstoReels.com, and Burton said help is available for people who have trouble paying the fee.

Roger Lee Smith, manager of the Temple Theatre for the last nine years, said he too wanted to look widely for local talent.

“All these kids that are frustrated, instead of keeping diaries they’re making films,” he said. “And a lot of them are good.”

Smith said that when he first arrived in his position, his “goal was to showcase talent of the youth and everybody — in all forms.”

Street suggested that certain themes may emerge more readily from this region than from others. He considered the “Southern Gothic” as unique to the region.

“I’ve never heard of Hollywood Gothic,” Street said. “I’ve never heard of Rochester, New York-Gothic. There is a certain thing that we expect from what might be considered a southern film.”

Alvin Moore, a Meridian filmmaker who’s planning to enter the festival this year, also contemplated the question of regional themes as he and Street chatted in the Temple Theatre office.

“There’s always that whole (issue of) slavery that you can’t find anywhere else, other than the southern region,” Moore said. “Because of that, we also have a lopsided education system. I think everything kind of trickles down from that time period … To me southern stories are different from everywhere else because of the past.”

The piece Moore plans to enter is the first episode of a drama series he’s working on called “Walk a Mile in My Shoes.”

“It centers around a school teacher with some students,” he said. “She’s going beyond the limits to reach those kids, and in doing so she ends up kind of putting her own life in jeopardy.”

Moore said the work explores what the characters “go through after the bell rings.”

Moore majored in theater at Tennessee State University, he explained, and he’s taught subjects such as theater, creative writing and English at the high school level. He wrote and worked on the film he plans to enter in Meridian and Magee, and Lawrence D. Wallace, who lives in Magee, directed it.

“I probably drew upon my real-life circumstances,” Moore said. “My wife’s also a teacher, so we share stories a lot of times. And I really wanted to share another aspect of education. Oftentimes we look at what students go through, but we don’t look at what the teachers go through, or what the principals go through. I really wanted to share from both sides.”

Moore explained that he lived in Nashville for 10 years and that during that time he produced work for BET and placed DVDs of what he described as inspirational stage plays in Walmart and Target.

The Rails to Reels Film Festival began with the help of a grant from the Mississippi Film Office, Street said. The festival also receives funding from The Phil Hardin Foundation, Burton said — and it generates revenue on its own, as well.

This will be the third year the festival has taken place at the Temple Theatre, a site that Burton lauded, along with the local businesses he said have supported the work.

“We always say that the Temple Theatre is probably the best venue in our area to show a movie,” he said, “because of the history, and because it’s located downtown.”

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