When Jaime Gonzalez's documentary short about American outsourcing won acceptance to festivals a few years ago, he was glad for the exposure. But he wasn't so sure about the projection.

"I shot the movie in (high definition), and at most of the film festivals I went to, I saw dim projection and a really small screen," Gonzalez, 25, says of smaller festivals showing movies like his. After seeking out HD film festivals and finding only a few, Gonzalez decided to start his own. With the help of longtime friends and sponsors excited by the idea of an event focused on digital moviemaking, Gonzalez will see the crisply projected fruits of his labor on a 32-by-15-foot screen tonight at Memorial

Auditorium. Running through Sunday, the California Next Gen Film Festival will offer more than 40 shorts, most of them digital and 15 shot in HD. "The next generation of filmmakers are all shooting, for the most part, digitally," Gonzalez says. "Because that's where the medium is going. These filmmakers are able to work more freely and faster than other filmmakers have before."

The inaugural event has attracted prominent names from Hollywood, including Oscar- nominated cinematographer Donald McAlpine ("Moulin Rouge!") and "Apocalypto" star Rudy Youngblood, along with sponsors such as Christie Digital, which provided a high-end projector.

The Next Gen lineup includes just about every type of short. "We wanted to bring in all sorts of different genres and subgenres, from narrative to documentaries to animation," says Gonzalez. He was joined by festival director Hatzune Aguilar, 27, marketing specialist Natalie Minas, 23, and volunteer coordinator Jorge Flores, 24, in a midtown Victorian that serves as headquarters for Next Gen and Jim Gonzalez & Associates, a political strategy firm run by Jaime's father, a former San Francisco supervisor. "The work flow is different in all of those, of course, but the presentation can be amazing in all of them."

Gonzalez, media director for Jim Gonzalez & Associates, and Aguilar, a community organizer from the Bay Area who is now a senior policy analyst with the Gonzalez firm, worked together on a business plan for the nonprofit festival. None of the organizers had put on a film festival before, but, like filmmaker Gonzalez, the others are visual artists. Aguilar and Flores paint and Minas is a graphic artist.

"I get to blend creativity with essentially community organizing - getting people to come, and getting people excited about (the festival)," Aguilar says. Minas helped ring the bell, inviting people to become friends of the festival on MySpace and setting up stands at several Second Saturdays, where "we had huge crowds coming up to us," Minas says.

The price point for the festival might impress as much as the projection. For $10, patrons can spend an evening watching shorts, and $25 buys a four-day pass.

Next Gen organizers set the price low to draw folks who might otherwise spend the Labor Day weekend outdoors, and to "give something back to the community," Flores says. "Everything is so expensive these days."

The event also will provide networking opportunities for film professionals and aspirants. Local media businesses will talk shop at a film fair at 2 p.m. Saturday, and Current TV will host a meet-and-greet at 2:30 p.m. Saturday for filmmakers with ideas for short spots that might someday air on the national cable channel.

At 8 p.m. Friday, Will Bigham, winner of a development deal with DreamWorks through the "On the Lot" Fox reality show, and McAlpine, who traveled from his home in Australia to California to appear at Next Gen, will offer insight into working within the studio system.

Reached by phone in Los Angeles, McAlpine, 74, said he had shot in HD, but never on big Hollywood films such as his latest project, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

He's interested in the technology involved in the Next Gen festival, McAlpine says, but he's drawn primarily by the young people attached to the event.

"I feed off their enthusiasm and curiosity," he says. "I enjoy telling them how it's all worked out (in Hollywood), and that it can work out."

Call Bee movie critic Carla Meyer, (916) 321-1118.