The Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival is inviting Island high school students to participate in the first ever MVFF High School Critics Challenge. Students currently enrolled at the high school and interested in film are asked to submit essays that address, in no more than 250 words, “The importance of film in today’s culture.” The deadline for submissions is March 11. From the essays submitted, four finalists will be selected to receive all-access passes to all of the festival’s 14 featured films.

Opening Night Program begins at 7 p.m. at the Chilmark Community Center

7 p.m. Life. Support. Music. (Documentary 79 minutes U.S.A. 2009 directed by Eric Daniel Metzgar)

Wendy Weldon Retrospective

A retrospective of paintings by Wendy Weldon will be on exhibit from Feb. 28 through April 4 at the Chilmark Public Library. There will be new work as well as older paintings, all of which have never been exhibited before on the Vineyard. Paintings from her Shrine series, her Bed and Lamp series and her Personal Memoirs series will be included in the show.

An artist’s reception will be held from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 7 at the library. All are welcome.

In this year-long serialized novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe fears and detests Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby.

The Martha’s Vineyard Women’s Network will host Lynn Switanowski of the Boston-based Creative Business Consulting Group to present an interactive seminar titled Embracing the Economic Challenges of Today, aimed at discussing how businesses can thrive during economic downturns and recessions if they know the right strategies to use.