More Winners Ahead In Second Half Of Denver Film Festival

There’s been razzle. There’s been dazzle. During the first half of the 39th Denver Film Festival — ending Sunday with an awards brunch and a full day of screenings — there’s even been a shot of the surreal, with a chaser of “Whaa?!” Case in point: It doesn’t get much weirder than having a making-of-a-movie within a fiction movie screen at the festival of its vague but authentic inception, with its filmmakers and cast standing in front of a rapt and amused audience trying to explain the reel-not-real-then-again qualities of said movie. You follow? Well, that’s what happened at a couple of zesty festival screenings of directors Mike Ott and Nathan Silver’s mind-bender “Actor Martinez,”  which began as a conversation between two indie directors and fest volunteer Arthur Martinez in the festival’s filmmakers’ lounge two years ago. “It was really an amazing weekend for the film,” said producer Katie Shapiro on the phone from Aspen, where she lives.