A busy weekend ahead for downtown Gainesville

GAINESVILLE - Downtown Gainesville will be a busy place this weekend, highlighted by Mule Camp Market and a film festival, but a championship boxing match will also come into play.

Mule Camp, sponsored by the Gainesville Jaycees, begins Friday and continues through Sunday and, as usual, will feature a variety of arts and crafts, music and food. As a result, a number of streets in the downtown area will be closed from 5 p.m. Sunday until the festival closes Sunday afternoon.

One facet of Mule Camp, however, will not be held downtown this year. The carnival rides have been moved to E.E. Butler Parkway and Monroe Drive because the of the reconstruction of the parking lot across from the Georgia Mountains Center and Main Street and Jesse Jewell Parkway.

The Cine-Macabre Film Festival will be held at the Georgia Mountains Center Friday through Sunday.

Tobe Hooper, director of such horror classics as Poltergeist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, will join the festival organizers as the recipient of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Highlights of last year's 2003 festival were the Best Feature Film winner "Ghost of the Needle" and Film Threat Award Winner "Savage Island". Films submitted to date include Jack-O-Lantern, Stragglers, Vlad, Freezer, Thanatos Road, Hush Little Baby, Sins, Deadly Predator Vengeance, Darker Suggestion, Chosen, I.Zombi, A Stranger Within, and Vampires Die!, among others. The short film, Open Road, will have its World Premier debut.

Cine-Macabre is produced by T E H Productions, and is sponsored by Hayes Dodge Chrysler, PC Doctors, and Square-Deal Collectibles.

Theaters at the Georgia Mountains Center are open to the general public, who may attend at a cost of $5.00 per person (or by a Day Pass). Films will be shown all day Friday, Saturday and Sunday - Oct. 8, 9 and 10 - at the Georgia Mountains Center.

The Awards Ceremony will be held at Pearce Auditorium Sunday.

In addition, the mountians center will be the venue Saturday night for "Painsville in Gainesville," a world championship boxing match."

The main event will feature Ebo "The X-Treme Machine" Elder of Atlanta (20-1, 12 KO's) and Ricardo Fuentes (17-3, 6 KO's) for the vacant NABO Lightweight title. Seven more professional fights will fill out the card. Fights begin at 8:00.