Last Friday and Saturday Vineyarders, along with moviegoers in 200 cities across six continents, participated in the Manhattan Short Film Festival. Local cineastes crowded the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven for a billing of 10 international short films and voted on their favorites. This week the votes are tallied worldwide and a winner is crowned.

“I don’t know of any other film festival like it,” said Richard Paradise of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society, which presented the series.

The Martha’s Vineyard Film Society is collaborating with the Vineyard Conservation Society on a new series of films on the environment called Green on Screen. On April 28 at 7:30 p.m. they will present the film One Day on Earth at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.

The Martha’s Vineyard Film Society made a giant leap toward its dream of a permanent home on Thursday night when the Martha’s Vineyard Commission approved a new 6,000-square-foot, 190-seat theatre at the Tisbury Marketplace overlooking Lagoon Pond off Beach Road in Vineyard Haven.

The developer for the project is architect Sam Dunn, who built the marketplace in 1984. The tenant will be Richard Paradise’s itinerant, nonprofit film society.

This Saturday and next the folks at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society are bringing to the Island a cast of short characters for their annual screening of all the Oscar nominated short films.

Richard Paradise glides around the nearly constructed building on the corner of Tisbury Marketplace, walking quickly to show off the next feature, spreading his arms wide as he elaborates on what is to come. “So just like in a new theater on the mainland, it’s gonna have stadium seating where every seat is a great seat,” he says while standing on the wooden platform.