People celebrate the holidays in different ways.

Lucas Fappiano and Colin Hodgson are doing it by hosting a free screening of movies by area filmmakers, with the goal of bringing people together to recognize some of the Valley’s artistic strength and raising money for a good cause.

“Emerging Filmmakers of Western Mass,” which takes place Dec. 22 at Northampton’s Academy of Music, features six short films that explore a number of subjects: a volunteer who spends hundreds of hours repairing a 19th-century clock in Holyoke, a family that faces a new dynamic in moving to a different house, and a community legend of sorts who lives in Leeds.

Ranging from five to 20 minutes long, the films have been pulled together by Fappiano and Hodgson, Northampton filmmakers who have contributed their own work, “Small Lives,” to the event. Their film is a portrait of Jim Mias of Leeds, a well-known figure in the community who coached youth baseball in Northampton in his own inimitable way for years.

In fact, Fappiano and Hodgson, who have known each other for years and graduated from Northampton High School in 2016, played what was known as “Summer Ball” with Mias when they were growing up, when as many as 40 or 50 kids might congregate on baseball fields in Florence and Leeds for what were basically large, extended sandlot games.

Those games took place after the official Northampton Little League season, which Mias also coached in, ended in June.

Speaking of his own experience playing baseball as a kid, Mias says “I had a great time in Little League, don’t get me wrong. But the baseball I really loved … was our own pickup baseball in our neighborhoods.”

“Jim was kind of a legend for so many kids who grew up playing baseball around here, and so many people know him,” said Fappiano. “We thought he’d be a great person to profile.”

He and Hodgson — the latter studied film at Brandeis University and now does varied film work, including for nonprofit groups and companies — were looking for a place to screen “Small Lives” but faced a challenge since it only runs about 16 minutes.

“So we thought we’d try and reach out to some other local filmmakers about their short projects and see if there was some place we could show all of them together,” said Fappiano.

“We wanted to make it a community event, something that families and friends — everyone, really — could enjoy,” Hodgson said. “The theme of the program is really about the resilience of community.”

In keeping with that, “Emerging Filmmakers of Western Mass,” which begins at 7 p.m., is sponsored by Elder Care Access of Leeds and Full Circle Bike Shop of Florence, and the event is free. Donations are encouraged, and all proceeds will be dedicated to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.

“We’re really grateful for the support we’ve gotten,” said Hodgson. “We couldn’t have done this otherwise.”

Hodgson and Fappiano will introduce the program and the different films. The two friends, who run Blue Heron Productions, a production company with a focus on personalized documentaries, say one of the bonuses of pulling the Dec. 22 event together has been getting to know some area filmmakers whose work they weren’t familiar with.

They got in touch with some of their contacts, such as Chris Ferry, who produces the Easthampton Film Festival, to help locate some of those other filmmakers and their work.

“This area really has a lot of talented artists,” said Fappiano.

Curiosities and clock towers

One entry in the Dec. 22 screening is “A Home for Curiosities,” a children’s fantasy story that won a slew of awards and nominations when it first screened at various film festivals in 2019.

Directed by Ben Tobin, “A Home for Curiosities,” filmed partly at the William Cullen Bryant Homestead in Cummington, follows a young boy named Wallace Spaulding as he discovers a way station of sorts for forgotten imaginary friends.

That way station is Bryant’s sweeping old house, where the somewhat dreamy Wallace (Nathaniel Ruth) first finds a buoyant but unusual woman, Adelaide (Vanessa Libbey), who sings in an operatic voice and informs him “Sometimes here is more than one place.”

Along with his friend Alice (Ripley Dresser), Wallace helps bring Adelaide and some these other “curiosities” back to the real world to meet new human companions.

“Keeping Time,” meanwhile, profiles Dave Cotton, of Cotton Tree Service in Northampton, who about five years ago donated hundreds of hours of volunteer service to fix a 19th-century clock in the stone tower of Holyoke Town Hall.

The clock, installed when the building was erected in the 1870s, had stopped running around 1990. But in 2018, Cotton, with the approval of then-Holyoke Mayor Alex Morse, decided it needed to be repaired — and with help from various quarters, but no previous experience working on clocks, he got the dated clock working again.

“Keeping Time,” directed by Kate Way and Dinah Mack, follows Cotton as he climbs narrow, aging wooden stairs to the clock tower, where he demonstrates how the massive machinery works.

The film also showcases his joy in getting that clock running again: As he finishes work one evening, he cracks a big smile and says “This puppy’s all closed up for the night.”

And in “Small Lives,” Fappiano and Hodgson film Mias in some of his familiar haunts around town, including pedaling his old-fashioned, single-speed bicycle, with a wire basket on the handlebars and a milk carton lashed to a rear rack, along the Northampton bike path, where he’s a familiar figure to many.

“As a kid, a bike is essential,” he says, adding that it’s long been his go-to vehicle as an adult, too, as he likely logs 8,000 miles or more on it for running errands, recreation, and just getting around, often with his wife, Robin-Forsythe Miles.

Using old photos of Mias when he coached baseball, and the testimony of people whose lives he’s touched over the years, “Small Lives” paints a concise portrait of a guy who feels he’s been fortunate to make his home in the Valley. He’s a Worcester native who moved here in the 1970s after leaving college and has now retired from a career working at the VA Medical Center in Leeds.

“I lucked out — I don’t think I merit any more than this,” he says. And reflecting on his years of coaching baseball and hosting his Summer Ball program, he adds, “I saw all the kids learn well. What else can you possibly ask for?”

Rounding out the Dec. 22 screening are three other short works: “When We Move,” the documentary about a family moving to a new house, leaving the youngest child feeling lonely; “Shook,” a story of a middle-age man on a healing journey; and a music video, directed by Fappiano, for a new song, “The Optimyst,” by Boston-based indie rockers The Forrest Williams Democracy.

Hogdson said it’s too early to tell if he and Fappiano might try to make this an annual event. But, he noted, “There’s no shortage of good material we could show.”

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.