Artist Adam Cooper-Terán, shown here in front of the Ancestors Project Installation at the 2007 All Souls Procession, hosts the All Souls International Film Festival at The Loft Cinema.

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It'll be death by cinema at the sixth annual All Souls International Film Festival next week.

Or death with cinema, at least.

The two-day festival, with a different program of short films each day, explores mortality through art, said Adam Cooper-Terán, a multimedia artist who will host the festival.

Each night will also feature live music. Not Breathing will perform on Wednesday, and Glenn Weyant Thursday.

The festival is presented by Many Mouths One Stomach, a local arts collective that also runs the All Souls Procession, inspired by Mexico's Día de los Muertos.

Cooper-Terán said the festival is a way for the public to get a taste of the early November parade they may have missed. Some of the shorts are based on the procession.

"For an event so large, many don't get to see all the details of costumes, floats, puppets and altars created throughout the procession weekend," he said. "The festival is also focused on showcasing work centered around the themes of death, grief, ancestry, rebirth."

Cooper-Terán said he expects a half-dozen local filmmakers to be present to talk to the audience about their films.

The shorts come from little-known local filmmakers, as well as such luminaries as Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin ("My Winnipeg") and animator Don Hertzfeldt ("The Animation Show"). The films were solicited online and chosen by Cooper-Terán and four others, and have come from as far as Greece and Spain.

Local filmmaker and puppeteer Tom Hodgeson started the festival in 2003 at the Screening Room. The festival moved to the Loft last year to accommodate larger crowds, Cooper-Terán said.

After drawing 200 moviegoers last year, organizers decided to expand to two nights. Cooper-Terán, a 23-year-old graduate of Amphitheater High School, has worked with the festival for more than four years . He views submissions, designs advertisements and plans the programs.

"Death is such a heavy theme in general to take on alone, so we try to take a lot of brevity in presenting progressive shorts having to do with the topic for the film festival. For me it's about really trying to get a whole different array of viewpoints having to do with that theme. It ranges from funny pieces to animated shorts to documentary pieces. We try to build out enough diversity that any person who comes to the event will see one or two pieces they like. It's not some goth-fest or something."

"I've been saying to myself over the past year that this is pretty much a temporary thing that I got involved with. I have, like, ADD. I'm always doing some other project. I'm always collaborating with people and, depending on what I was doing every year, this event being at the very end of the year has always (fit my schedule)."

"For starters, there are a lot of animated shorts, and the event is only two hours long. And it's a pretty full two hours. Plus, they serve beer at the Loft so you can drink beer and watch movies and musical performances. It's out of this world. Really, really different and experimental."