The Eventful Life of Al Hawkes, a film about Al Hawkes, Event Records, and Maine country music, will be on the television stations of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network tomorrow and Saturday, as well as New Year's Day and January 6.

(Times: Thursday, December 2 at 8 pm | Saturday, December 4 at 3:30 pm | Saturday, January 1 at 11 am | Thursday, January 6 at 10 pm)

We're partial to awards with the word "Phoenix" in them, as well as locals doing cool stuff, and locals' cool stuff getting recognized elsewhere around the country. So with a trifecta, we congratulate The Rivals, a feature-length documentary by South Portland's Lone Wolf Documentary Group about the rivalry between the Cape Elizabeth and Mountain Valley high school football teams, for winning the Best Picture award at the 10th annual Phoenix (Arizona) Film Festival!

Make your plans to head to New York City now - Hard Rock Havana, which won Film of the Year in last year's Portland Phoenix Maine Short Film Festival, has been selected to compete at the Tribeca Film Festival, reports director Nicholas Brennan.

He is also at work making a new film that's shooting all over the coast of southern Maine, starring a your Maine veteran, who is also an amputee, in the lead role.

As Maine slashes the last of its AIDS-prevention funding in an attempt to somehow "save taxpayers money," the Portland department of public health is observing World AIDS Day, and offering free HIV/AIDS testing at the Maine College of Art (522 Congress Street, in Portland) from 10 am to 3 pm today.

As part of the event, they're showing the winning films in the Portland Phoenix Maine Short Film Festival

An independent film, co-written by Kennebunk resident Steve Hrehovcik, filmed some scenes in Kittery over the weekend.

27 Down, due out in 2009, tells the story of a Boston cop who gets involved in a hit-and-run and then moves to the fictional town of Canada, Maine (Hrehovcik is obviously fascinated by the abudance of shared place-names in Maine; see below).