The Big Easy International Film Festival is happening this weekend (Dec. 13-14) at Indywood, a small, one-screen theater just one block away from the hopping nightlife of Frenchmen Street.

Saturday features a documentary shorts program, thriller/sci-fi/horror/adventure shorts, and some full-length features in the afternoon and evening. Sunday is taken up by a comedy shorts program and dramatic shorts program, followed by the awards ceremony for participating filmmakers.

Indywood is offering both festival passes and individual program passes for this weekend's events. Full schedule is below:

Saturday, December 13
12pm Documentary Shorts
2pm SciFi/Horror Shorts
4pm Documentary Feature: Potluck the Movie
6pm Narrative Feature: Convergence
8pm Narrative Feature: 1959

Sunday, December 14
2pm Documentary Feature: The Global Warming War
4pm Comedy Shorts
6pm Drama Shorts
7:30pm Awards ceremony

If you still haven't caught "Big Charity: The Death of America's Oldest Hospital," an in-depth look at the life and death of New Orleans 300-year old public hospital, it will be playing at the Prytania Theater everyday at 5:30pm from now through December 18. The film won this year's New Orleans Film Festival Award for Best Louisiana Feature and is striking a cord with many New Orleanians. The ubiquitous hospital touched nearly every local's life in some way for centuries. Check out our writeup from October when it first began screening as part of the New Orleans Film Festival.

December 19-20 brings a bit of light-heartedness to the big screen as local puppeteer, musician, and all-around superstar Miss Pussycat will be hosting the Puppet Movie Christmas Spectacular at Indywood with two nights of puppet-focused films with some kid-friendly content, some holiday-themed content, and some avant-garde features. Miss Pussycat is the resident New Orleans expert on this topic, as her puppetry work has been exhibited at both the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Contemporary Arts Center. Along with her puppets, Miss Pussycat has made a TV show, a mystery movie, an album, a music video, and a holiday special (screening this weekend).

Miss Pussycat's "North Pole Nutrias," in which two New Orleans nutrias win a vacation package to the North Pole, shows on both Friday and Saturday along with the kid-friendly "Brother Buzz and "TV Mouse," plus psychedelic short "Happy Memories." "The American Puppet" documentary and a puppet film by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone rounds out the lineup. Individual or an all-inclusive pass are also available for this event. Full schedule below:

Friday, December 19
7pm The American Puppet
9pm TV Mouse, Happy Memories, North Pole Nutrias, Brothers Buzz
11pm Team America

Saturday, December 20
5pm The American Puppet
6:30pm Emmet Otters Jug Band Christmas (Free screening)
8pm North Pole Nutrias, Brothers Buzz, Happy Memories, TV Mouse
10pm Team America