{"id":307270,"date":"2026-10-15T15:22:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/307270\/"},"modified":"2026-10-15T15:22:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T15:22:30","slug":"two-local-filmmakers-show-why-berks-county-pa-is-a-film-hot-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/307270\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Local Filmmakers Show Why Berks County, PA Is a Film Hot Spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"<\/a>
\n Both Films Sell Out ReadingFilmFEST, One Costs Less Than a Trip to Sundance<\/p>\n

Reading, PA (The Hollywood Times) October 13, 2026 \u2014 Martin \u201cMarty\u201d McGowan did the math before he submitted Left Unsaid anywhere. Sending one person to Sundance costs more than $10,000. His entire feature, counting the crowdfunding, his own savings and the laptop that died mid-edit, cost less than that. \u201cLet\u2019s pretend Left Unsaid is amazing,\u201d he told The Hollywood Times. \u201cIt\u2019s the best movie you\u2019ve ever seen, and movie B has Robert De Niro in it. We\u2019ve already lost.\u201d<\/p>\n

So McGowan kept his film on his home turf; in Reading Pennsylvania. Left Unsaid, about a brother and sister reeling from their mother\u2019s sudden death, screens in ReadingFilmFEST\u2019s Made in Reading lineup. So does Robert J. Morgalo\u2019s Children of a Fatherless Child. Both screenings sold out weeks ahead, which surprised both filmmakers. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Is that even possible at a film fest?\u2019\u201d Morgalo said. \u201cLightning struck twice.\u201d Talk to them for an hour and the reason comes into focus. Berks County has quietly built what independent film needs most and can rarely afford: a community willing to show up in front of the camera, behind it and in the seats.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

McGowan casts from Reading\u2019s theater scene. He once watched a 17-year-old perform The Crucible and decided on the spot she belonged in his movie; a few years later she starred in Ava, his first feature. His Left Unsaid lead, Andrea Keck, had never acted on film. She works at a dog kennel, and when McGowan met her at Panera to pitch the role, she was, he later learned, just waiting for him to stop talking so she could say yes. \u201cWe all have nine-to-fives,\u201d McGowan said. \u201cYour cast and crew are excited because they don\u2019t do this every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

The core team was about eight people. McGowan made Ava for $200, possible only because the actors volunteered and he already owned the house. For Left Unsaid he set a $2,500 Indiegogo goal to cover a $100-a-day per diem, the same for everyone on set. \u201cIf my boom operator\u2019s not there, it doesn\u2019t matter if my actor just won the Oscar,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re not gonna hear it.\u201d The campaign closed at more than 190 percent of its goal.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Andrea Keck plays Brooke in Left Unsaid<\/p>\n

McGowan, 30, describes his career as a chain reaction he never could have planned. His producer Santo Marabella urged him to submit Ava to ReadingFilmFEST, which forced him to finish it. Ava premiered at the 2023 festival, sold out and won awards he didn\u2019t know he\u2019d been nominated for. Sight & Sound, the Lancaster faith-based theater company, saw it and hired him for its film Great Awakening, a job he says turned his finances around and paid for Left Unsaid.<\/p>\n

Support kept arriving from unexpected places. Jeremy Wolf, a high school classmate, made amateur films as a kid before building a fulfilling career in another field. When Ava came out, he was glad to see McGowan had stuck with filmmaking, and when the chance came to join Left Unsaid, he said he just wanted to make it as good as it could be. He was on set more than half the shooting days, before and after shifts at his day job, making sure the cast and crew were taken care of.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"McGowan on set locally<\/p>\n

Peter Phillips, a performer who has been part of the area\u2019s theater scene for years, was going through a transition in his life and had written \u201cbe an executive producer\u201d at the top of his list of goals when he came across a post an actor had shared about the film. He donated, and he and McGowan didn\u2019t meet in person until more than eight months later. \u201cYou can\u2019t write that,\u201d McGowan said. \u201cYou can\u2019t plan that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgalo, a retired Army combat medic who served in Iraq, moved to Berks County in 2000, and his daughter was born at Reading Hospital. He came to filmmaking late and fast. In 2020, after losing his mother-in-law to COVID, he wrote a short film in April and had it shot by July. Then he looked at the upstate New York shoot planned for his first feature and asked his team to find locations in Reading instead. That October he shot the feature there in 15 days with Peter Greene of Pulp Fiction, Federico Castelluccio of The Sopranos and Richard Kline of Three\u2019s Company. He says the move saved more than 50 percent of what the film would have cost in New York.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"Morgalo and crew filming in Spain<\/p>\n

Children of a Fatherless Child traveled farther, with scenes in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Havana and Spain, but its Reading scenes came almost free. Franklin\u2019s Diner, sticker-covered walls and all, opened its doors at no cost. Centro Hispano, across the street from the theater where the film will screen, let the crew in on a day the office was closed. A trailer park scene Morgalo hoped to shoot in Los Angeles proved too expensive to film there. Pennsylvania\u2019s film tax credit still trails New York\u2019s, and Morgalo has been pushing to raise it, but he argues the savings on the ground more than close the gap. \u201cReading is just fertile ground,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He builds his own talent pipeline, too. After booking commercial work as a veteran, including a USAA spot with Rob Gronkowski, Morgalo launched a free eight-week acting course for veterans at Reading\u2019s DoubleTree, which donated the space. About five of the 15 who took it now work in commercials and TV, and two or three appear in his diner scene. Jake Beers of the Allentown area, a former student, plays the film\u2019s fourth lead, and many of its background actors came out of his local workshops.<\/p>\n

Both filmmakers rave about what a short drive delivers. \u201cYou can go from the deepest, urbanest, spookiest alley from Spider-Man you\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d McGowan said, \u201call the way up to the middle of nowhere,\u201d in about 20 minutes. The ash-scattering scene in Left Unsaid sits at a vista that is a 20-minute hike from a five-minute drive. Morgalo shot an entire Western in Berks County that passes for the mountains of Montana, and he once considered opening a film studio in Reading. McGowan offers one caveat: \u201cDon\u2019t bring the Avengers here and expect us to get rolling on it tomorrow, but pretty much everything below that.\u201d<\/p>\n

ReadingFilmFEST is the glue. The festival provides hotel rooms for visiting filmmakers, something both men say almost no one else does; Morgalo paid his own way to Tombstone, Arizona, for another festival. He has submitted a film nearly every year since 2020, calls the gathering \u201ca family reunion\u201d of returning filmmakers and new faces, and says every project he makes has the festival \u201cin my headlights.\u201d McGowan, who once volunteered there, sees the sellouts as a win for the whole arts scene. If even half those ticket buyers have never been to GoggleWorks, they now know it shows unusual films all year. \u201cI had no idea this was here,\u201d he remembers guests telling him.<\/p>\n

Neither man is in it for the money. Morgalo can\u2019t attend this year, and some of his own executive producers couldn\u2019t get tickets before the screening sold out. McGowan\u2019s composer is delivering the final score this week, which makes Sunday\u2019s screening the first public look at the finished film. He already knows where his next one will premiere. \u201cI wanna sell out again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"McGowan on set locally in the funeral scene<\/p>\n

Children of a Fatherless Child screens Saturday, November 7, at 9:30 PM in IMAX Theater 1. Morgalo plans a U.S. release on Father\u2019s Day weekend, opening June 18. He is targeting theaters in seven cities, from New York to Los Angeles, and hopes to reach 500 churches before streaming. The timing fits a film he began writing when he learned his father, who left when Morgalo was 10 months old, was dying of cancer. Left Unsaid screens Sunday, November 8, at 12:30 PM at GoggleWorks Center for the Arts. ReadingFilmFEST runs November 6\u20138 in Reading, Pennsylvania, and the full program is at readingfilmfest.com\/program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Reading Film Office and more about the location here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both Films Sell Out ReadingFilmFEST, One Costs Less Than a Trip to Sundance Reading, PA (The Hollywood Times)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-307270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}