What’s with the Pendragwn Youth Film Festival? Are Pendragwn films chill-wave music videos? Society for Creative Anachronism shorts?

It’s a bigger deal than the dungeon master–ish name might suggest. The Grand Prize winner—who will be announced at a ceremony at the Atlas Performing Arts Center on May 15—will receive a scholarship to the Interlochen Center for the Arts’ Motion Picture Arts Camp. There’s a prize for the Creative Lens award winner as well: a pass to Silverdocs. The best prize of all may be the free Final Cut Pro class (at Future Media Concepts) to be awarded to the Audience Choice award winner.

Pendragwn has the incentives down but yet lacks the name recognition of other D.C. film events, such as the 48-Hour Film Festival or the aforementioned Silver Docs. That’s where Philippa Hughes (or is it PHLPPΔ HGHZZZ?) comes in. She’s been tapped to open the festivities on May 15.

A Pendragwn press release describes Hughes—who lends her Pink Line Project heft to fewer events these days (as the City Paper reported in a cover story on Hughes last October)—as the city’s “connector and gatekeeper.”

Which leads to a couple questions. Does Hughes serve as the connector for all creative genres—not just visual art, the focus for Pink Line? Could she help the beleaguered D.C. Office of Motion Picture and Television Development? And if Hughes is the gatekeeper, who is the keymaster?