A young woman with bee-stung lips takes a shower, while a young film director pokes his head in and choreographs her movements. Meanwhile, her boyfriend is having sex with her best friend, on another film location. The girl in the shower is actor Kate Lyn Sheil, and both guys (Ti West and Joe Swanberg) are actors playing film directors, but they are also film directors playing actors. The film is Siver Bullets, its director (and male lead) is Swanberg, and it’s one of three Swanberg films screened at the Maryland Film Festival. And those are only three of seven films Swanberg made in the last year or so. Seven.How can anyone make seven films in a year? The answer, Swanberg says, is to skip the whole script-writing thing, shoot them in five days, and put a few on the shelf and save them for finishing later. Ms. Sheil told me the film was actually filmed over a two-year period. In any case, Bullets is an example of self-referential narcissism that would have been tiresome had it not been for Ms. Sheil’s commanding screen presence. (she also starred in another MFF feature, Green, directfed by Sophia Takal). Ms. Sheil’s work was one of many high-points in this year’s Festival.Sex remains tantalizingly out of reach in Alison Bagnall’s The Dish & The Spoon, which puts another mumblecore school actor, Greta Gerwig, in the position of carrying a movie. Ms. Gerwig bears the weight with aplomb and authority in this lovely film, where she seems much more at home than in a Hollywood programmer like Arthur. Bagnall’s pairing of Brit Olly Alexander with Gerwig created some real chemistry.Todd Rohal’s Catechism Cataclysm blows minds, literally, sort of. As with many of the films, actors were present for Q&A, and Steve Little and Robert Longstreet were game for anything. Rohal (yes, he’s Catholic) wrote a rough outline for the story while working his day job digitizing tape for the Rachel Ray show, pretending, for inspiration, that the applause he could hear for Emeril through the studio walls was really for him. He submitted the project to Sundance before there was really anything to submit, and got in. Rohal and the cast wrote the outline/ script on the fly as they were finishing the 12-day shoot. IFC picked up the movie for a tidy sum. Mission accomplished.These feature films all have something interesting in common with Matt Porterfield’s Putty Hill: They were shot without scripts, or at least without finished scripts, and with an eyes-wide-open confidence and openness to improv on the fly. This is a kind of heresy in narrative feature production, and one wonders if it’s a real trend. Short Film programs are one of the best components of a festival, and MFF delivered. In the Beyond the Valley of WTF program, two standouts must be mentioned. Ari Aster’s The Strange Thing About The Johnsons must be the only original thriller I have seen in 20 years. I am not sure it is even a thriller (that’s how original it is), but it is a bona fide nightmare. Lisa Duva’s and Katherine Nolfi’s Mouth Babiesis weirder than it sounds, and they get the award for Best Q & A schtick, ever.

The Opening Night Shorts program was short and sweet, and adroitly hosted by the awesome Ann Hornaday. The kick-off film Pioneer, directed by David Lowery, was a marvel, and the performances by Will Oldham and 4-year old Myles Brooks are not forgettable.

Despite self-enforced sleep deprivation, there were way too many films to see. I went for the off-beat, like Calvin Lee Reeder’s The Oregonian, and missed some of the (relatively speaking) mainstream attractions at the fest. The “John Waters Presents” pick for this year was Domaine, directed by Patric Chiha. MFF flew Chiha in from Paris to attend the fest, and the big room at the Charles was packed. Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff was another must-see screening that I missed. The MFF continues its fine tradition of screening vintage films, represented this year by The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. The honor of choosing the film this year was given to Marin Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the first woman to lead a major orchestra. Bravo. Many great Documentaries were screened as well. Baltimore- based films Cafeteria Man (Richard Chisolm) and The Learning (Ramona Diaz) were high points, as were rock docs Everyday Sunshine, and Freaks in Love,hosted and directed by Skizz Cyzyk.

The MFF is a huge success. The streets and restaurants were buzzing, the screenings were well-attended (often packed), the mixing and general hanging out were a blast. Jed Dietz, Eric Hatch, Scott Braid, and the entire MFF family deserve a huge round of applause for bringing this stellar, beautifully mounted event to Baltimore. See ya next year.