I love Main Street. Who doesn't? Around about downtown, Main Street provides a really terrific metaphor for the history of our city - one I honestly can't get enough of.

So what better way to honor the downtown stretch of the formerly bustling strip -which is being toasted this Saturday afternoon and evening with art, bands, crafts and the like - than with a screening of films made on the legendary drag?

Cobbled together by local emerging filmmaker Ryan McKenna, the Mainfesto shorts program will be screened outdoors at the Edge Gallery (611 Main St.) parking lot at dusk, and will showcase the work of some of our best local filmmakers. Here is a quick tour of a few of the titles that have been locked in.

First up is John Paskievich and Mike Mirus' Ted Baryluk's Grocery. Released in 1983, the film is a collection of still photographs taken inside and outside the legendary Point Douglas groceteria. It's a surprisingly engaging snapshot of life, one which garnered Mirus and Paskievich a Genie award for Best Theatrical Short.

Also showing is current Winnipeg ex-pat Matthew Rankin's new short, Hydro-Lévesque - a 16-minute cinematic opus of black-and-white francophilia and a strange oneiric glimpse into the pan-Canadian mind, all wrapped up in the lore of René Levésque. In it, odd Main Street horrors haunt the inaugural Winnipeg visit of a Quebec nun.

Winnipeg's self-anointed neo-neo-realist Daniel Gerson premieres his tough look at life on the streets of Chinatown in Welcome, a film also photographed by program curator Ryan McKenna.

Closing out the show is a 1973 documentary by Leonard Yakkir, entitled Main Street Soldier. Following the life of one of the former residents of the Bell Hotel, this landmark film was successfully argued as proof of the need for a Prairie cinema during the 1974 Canadian Film Symposium held at the University of Manitoba. That conference, and the corollary screening of Main Street Soldier, would eventually give rise to the government funds that were used to found and sustain the Winnipeg Film Group. But, aside from its historical importance and the fact that it will be shown on a rare 16mm print, Main Street Soldier proves that, like his own filmmaking, programmer Ryan McKenna likes to save the best for last.

Walter Forsberg is a filmmaker with l'Atelier national du Manitoba.