The 12th SouthSide Film Festival Linny and Beall Fowler Audience Awards have been awarded to two films with strong local connections.

The Favorite Short Film Award went to "Letters to Frieda" and the Favorite Feature Film Award went to "Arctic Alchemy," this year's opening night film.

Presented in honor of Linny and Beall Fowler, who have provided financial support individually and through the Fowler Family Foundation to the SouthSide Film Institute, the awards were voted on by the audience throughout the June 9 - 13 film festival. The winners were announced at the festival's closing night party.

"Letters to Frieda," directed by Amy Unger, tells the story of Michele Willner Levy's early life in during World War II. Much of the film is told in letters from Frieda's parents, who were still in Germany and hoping to be reunited with their daughter and the granddaughter they had never met. That never happened, and the Willners emigrated to the United States.

Unger is an executive producer and features reporter for the Lehigh Valley's WFMZ-TV. Jaccii Farris, president of Julian Farris Films, was the film's executive producer. Farris, an Emmy-Award winning journalist, is senior news reporter and docujournalist for WFMZ-TV.

"Arctic Alchemy," by director Nastia Tarasova and cinematographer Irina Shatalova, details how Christopher Bowen, an adventurous home brewer and beer historian from Bethlehem, embarked by motorcycle on an unexpectedly harsh 2,000-mile journey to the Canadian Arctic, to recreate an historic and mysterious beer, Allsopp's Arctic Ale.

The story began in England where Allsopp's was first brewed and ended in the Northwest Passage were Bowen and his friends brewed 100 gallons of the ale at a portable brewery using water from the Rupert River.

The SouthSide Film Festival is an annual five-day event featuring international films, guest filmmakers, juried selections, locally-produced films, seminars and networking opportunities for filmmakers and fans of independent film.

The SouthSide Film Festival is a program of The SouthSide Film Institute, a not-for-profit volunteer-run organization promoting the art of the independent filmmaker.