I witnessed some great talent in Tacoma last night. And I don’t mean The Beebs.

I managed to avoid the gridlock crawling towards the Mecca-like Justin Bieber concert, heading north instead for Day 6 of The Grand Cinema’s Tacoma Film Festival. This particular evening’s selection called itself Grit City Flicks, a Go Local-sponsored series offering a peek into the minds of seven Tacoma filmmakers.

Inside we find a few devils - suicide, domestic violence, funny suicide, more domestic violence. But some lighter fare as well: video games, rock-and-roll, and of course film itself. The lineup ricocheted viewers from the backwards comedy of Bryan Johnson’s Film Esrever (available to watch on YouTube), to the poignant hopelessness of Ron Lagman’s Tapat Sa Pangako, and back again for more. I felt a little schizophrenic by night’s end, but then, doesn’t our own Grit City sometimes feel like Split City too?

 TFF ends this Thursday, October 11 - catch some before it splits for another year.