A short-film festival that began a decade ago in a Southern California boathouse is expected to draw 1,200 people to Tempe this Saturday.

The ASU Museum’s Short Film and Video Festival returns to the Nelson Fine Arts Center plaza for its ninth engagement, inviting filmmakers, aficionados and families to relax under the night sky.

From video-game takeoffs to eccentric documentaries and animated films, this year’s four-hour festival will feature 27 selections, each lasting one to 10 minutes.

John Spiak, founder of the event, compares it to being on the beach.

“There’s a forced interaction among people that creates a sense of community,” he says.

The festival began at the Griffin Linton Contemporary Art Gallery, which was located in a boathouse in Costa Mesa, Calif. The gallery’s summer series featured eight to 10 films a night every two weeks.

Spiak, hired as curator of the ASU Art Museum in 1994, would attend the gallery on his visits home.

“They had an ice cream truck there,” recalls Spiak. “I loved that.”

When the gallery moved to Los Angeles in 1996, the festival was dropped due to lack of space, and Spiak decided to bring it to ASU in April 1997.

The event now attracts more than 300 entries a year from around the world.

Spiak and Bob Pecce, a Southern California filmmaker and organizer of the original summer series, put together the festival with a budget of $800. They choose all the films.
“We try to pick a variety,’’ Spiak says. ‘‘There is no real criteria (for how the films are selected).’’

This year, the 27 chosen entries, which will be shown on a 12-by-12-foot screen, represent filmmakers from the United States, Canada and Germany.

Eighteen-year-old Alex Calleros, a senior at Corona del Sol High School in Tempe, is one of two Arizonans whose work was selected. His short film, “Kollectibles,” is a mockumentary following four eccentric high school collectors competing in the first annual “Kute Kollectibles Klub.”

“I first became interested in making movies back in elementary school when I saw (Steven) Spielberg’s ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” says Calleros, who plans to study film next year at the University of California-Santa Cruz. “The movie captured my imagination, and I really wanted to emulate it.

“I started making short films with my dad’s old video camera. Now I work on films as a hobby using a Canon GL2 MiniDV Camera and edit my movies on my PC at home.”

“Guitars and Idiot Sticks,” a documentary by Logan Hall of Tucson, also was selected.

Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs or blankets. A vendor selling hot dogs, popcorn and drinks will be available, although people can bring their own food and drink.