FARMINGTON — Becka Rebert remembers putting on plays at New Hope Baptist Church in Farmington, where her father, Brian, is pastor.

Her mother, Sandi, wrote the scripts and Rebert, a teenager at the time, learned about filming and editing plays while taking some minor acting roles in the church dramas.

Additional Photos

Farmington native Becka Rebert appears in “Milltown Pride,” a film produced by Bob Jones University. She plays a supporting comic relief role, and worked on the film crew, too. Bob Jones University photo

The experience helped Rebert, now 23, land a role in a feature-length film produced by Bob Jones University, the Christian college and seminary in South Carolina from which she graduated last May with a degree in cinema.

Performing in her hometown for family, friends and other members of her father’s congregation, however, didn’t quite prepare Rebert for seeing herself on the big screen.

“It was very surreal to see it up there and kind of scary to see yourself magnified on the screen,” she said of the recent premiere for a crowd of more than 5,000 people.

“Milltown Pride,” a film about an aspiring professional baseball player in a small Southern town in the 1920s, debuted last month on the college’s campus in Greenville, S.C.

Brian Rebert said the college is known for producing movies with an evangelical Christian message, with churches asking for permission to hold public showings of the movies, which also are sold as DVDs.

He is hosting a free public showing of “Milltown Pride” on Friday and Saturday in Lincoln Auditorium on the University of Maine at Farmington campus.

The 56-year-old pastor, who attended the premiere, said his daughter showed she has talent on both sides of the camera.

Becka Rebert plays a supporting comic relief role, a ballplayer’s girlfriend, and she also worked on the film crew during the shooting of the movie, which is more than two hours long, her father said.

“In a sense she’s not really a star (in the movie), but to us she is; and she is a humble star, because in a way she knows both sides of the camera,” he said.

Becka Rebert, now living in South Carolina, is not sure whether she can make it home for the showing in Farmington, she said by phone last week.

She is a little anxious about the hometown premiere, but said working on the movie reminded her of growing up in Farmington.

“It has that feeling of a small town, like Farmington, where everybody knows one another,” she said of the movie.

She works for a distance-learning company associated with Bob Jones University, Rebert said.

It’s a job that lets her continue to work in film by producing educational DVDs for churches and people who home-school their children, according to Rebert, who was home-schooled in Farmington.

Rebert said she hopes to make a career out of filmmaking, on either side of the camera.

“I would love to continue working with film. I love the screenwiting, and editing and acting as well,” she said.

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