YSFF Opening Ceremony: A Tribute to Rod Serling

Yellow Springs Film Festival will honor Rod Serling with its Opening Ceremony

Doors open at 6:30 p.m.

The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. and include:

• Presentations from authors Anne Serling (Rod’s daughter) and Mark Dawidziak

• Live performance of a Serling radio play, "The Air is Free"

• Screening of a classic “Twilight Zone” episode and a panel discussion.

Panel includes:

Anne Serling, a former early childhood teacher, is the author of “As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling,” which won the Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for best memoir/biography in 2015. The adaptations she wrote of two of her father’s teleplays were published in the anthology “The Twilight Zone: The Original Stories.” She has published poetry in The Cornell Daily Sun and Visions, and 2 articles on Salon.com, The Huffington Post and literary journals (The Write Place at the Right Time and Foundling). Anne has appeared on several radio shows including George Noory’s “Coast to Coast AM” and NPR’S “Snap Judgment.” Currently she is working on a novel.

Mark Dawidziak is the author or editor of 25 books, including “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in The Twilight Zone” and the USA Today national bestseller “A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe,” which was nominated for Edgar, Agatha, Anthony and Ohioana awards. He also is an internationally recognized Mark Twain scholar, and five of his books are about the iconic American writer.

John Kiesewetter has covered broadcasting for 40 years for the Cincinnati Enquirer Cincinnati Public Radio, WVXU-FM and wvxu.org. He has written many stories about Rod Serling starting his career at Cincinnati’s WLW radio and television. In 2020, he produced a radio adaptation on WVXU-FM of Serling’s “O’Toole From Moscow,” a one-hour TV comedy broadcast live on NBC in 1955 about confusion between Russians and the Cincinnati Reds at the height of the Red Scare.

About Rod Serling

Rodman Edward Serling (1924-75) is best known as the creator and host of “The Twilight Zone,” the landmark 1959-64 fantasy anthology series for which he also was the principal writer (penning or coauthoring 92 of the influential show's156 episodes). Serling was a versatile writer whose work was honored with six Emmy awards, three of which were before “The Twilight Zone.” He wrote some of the most acclaimed scripts during television's golden age of live drama, including “Patterns” and “Requiem for a Heavyweight.” His writing was marked with a profound understanding of human nature and a strong sense of social justice, frequently addressing such issues and themes as prejudice, greed, scapegoating, authoritarian dangers and how we treat children and the elderly.

Serling enrolled at Antioch College in 1946 following military service in World War II. Beginning college as a physical education major, he discovered writing as a way of working through his war experiences, earning a literature degree in 1950. The young writer contributed short fiction to the campus literary magazine, The Antiochian. He married classmate Carolyn Kramer in 1948 and managed the student-run Antioch Broadcasting System, where he wrote and produced award-winning radio dramas. Serling got his first media job at Cincinnati’s WLW radio in 1950. He started selling scripts to national networks while living in Cincinnati, ultimately spending eight years in Ohio. Following the third season of “The Twilight Zone,” he returned to Antioch to teach writing in 1963.

'The Air is Free' radio play by Rod Serling starring Rich Carrillo

Rich Carrillo is an actor and producer based in Brooklyn, NY with over 15 years of experience on stage and screen. He is the Artistic Director and a Lead Performer at Unit J, an events space in Brooklyn which showcases up-and-coming creative work in NYC. Carrillo’s work on stage includes, Poison (Lot Vekemans) and Blackbird (Adam Rapp) and he recently starred in the short film/series, Loft and Found which won Best TV Short at the Holly Shorts Film Festival. Currently Rich has been cast in the new film Clara Boone, Directed by Katina Medina which begins filming in October of 2025.

FILM BADGES ACCEPTED.

Host or Publisher Yellow Springs Film Festival