Exeter filmmaker Fred Levine—best known by the under-5 set and their parents for his mesmerizing “Little Hardhats” series of live-action, reality-based children’s videos featuring giant trucks, earth moving machines and airplanes—recently traveled to the Big Apple for the private premiere of “Elizabethtown,” courtesy of director Cameron Crowe. The Hollywood hitmaker (“Jerry McGuire,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Almost Famous” and “Vanilla Sky”) wrote a scene in the movie in which, according to Levine, young children are watching a video with rapt attention. Crowe tried to replicate the Levine look, but decided it would be better to hire Levine. “I got a message one day that someone wanted a quote on me videotaping a house being blown up,” Levine recalled in a recent e-mail. “I thought it was an odd request since that is all the fax said, I didn’t know what to think, but it turned out to be something very cool.”

A little penguin who learns to surf will emerge from Bob Svihovec’s imagination at a special sneak preview of “Little Blue: Live the Dream.” The event takes place at the Banks Gallery’s Market Square location in Portsmouth on Saturday, Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. Svihovec, who has a background in cell animation for television production but put it all aside to spend several years as “Mr. Mom” in Rye, has now sent his kids off to college and spent the last two and half years with the animation program Maya and his penguin Little Blue. The process of homegrown animated filmmaking is more time consuming than a live action film by far, though perhaps the crew is easier to manage. “In computer animation you have to develop a whole three-dimensional stage, so to speak, then create a character and place a camera on that stage,” he says. The film also includes a special soundtrack. In addition to Billy Joel’s “River of Dreams” performed by the Street Corner Society, it includes background music by composer Ron Brown, father of Banks Gallery owner Jamie LaFleur.

Philadelphia photographer and filmmaker Judy Gelles is coming to town with her new documentary, From Philadelphia to the Front, which presents six Jewish men in their 80s who left Philadelphia to serve in World War II, only to experience anti-Semitism within their own ranks. The film, which has shown at several northeastern film festivals, will screen at Temple Israel, 515 Sixth St., Dover on Saturday, Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public. Call 603-742-3976 for more information.