RUMFORD — In just a few weeks, Mountain Valley students and fans will converge on Hosmer Field and the lights will come up for the start of one of the River Valley’s great Friday night traditions — high school football.

On this Friday night, many of those same students and fans filed into a stuffy Muskie Auditorium at Mountain Valley High School as the lights went down for a film that celebrates that tradition, “The Rivals.”

The benefit screening drew about 750 viewers, including the film’s producer/director, Kirk Wolfinger, and many of the people featured in the 87-minute documentary. About 250 people were lined up outside a half hour before the doors opened to get a good seat. 

“The Rivals” follows two divergent communities, Mountain Valley and Cape Elizabeth, and their respective football teams through the 2007 season. It builds to their dramatic regular season finale, which both entered undefeated, and their rematch in the Western Class B championship game.

Coaches Jim Aylward and Aaron Filieo, of Mountain Valley and Cape, respectively, figure prominently in the film, as do a number of players and their families from both sides. The movie’s undercurrent is the contrasting economic plight and passion (or sometimes lack thereof) for high school football in both communities.

It was easy to tell which side the crowd at Friday night’s screening was behind. There was a smattering of applause early in the film when Mountain Valley’s Thaddeus Bennett crushes Cape Elizabeth quarterback Jim Bump in a 2006 contest and a disapproving buzz when a Cape coach explains why having cheerleaders would be beneath the students.

Mountain Valley viewers applauded the film’s honest portrayal of their team and the community that supports it.

“It was great to watch something with two different communities coming together and learning about respect for each other,” said Pam Sicotte of Mexico, whose son, Derek, is one of the players featured in the film. ”

“It was great. I thought they did a great job,” said Chris Gorham of Rumford, whose nephews, John and Hanson Gorham, played for the Falcons. “I’m glad I came tonight.”

Unable to make it was one of the stars of “The Rivals,” Dean McCrillis, who was a senior tight end for the Falcons that season. McCrillis is interviewed extensively in the film and has his art work featured. He is about to enter his sophomore year as an art major at the University of Southern Maine.

“I hope people not only take a look at what football is like for our kids but how the community gets behind the and how our community comes together to help the kids out,” McCrillis said in a phone interview before the screening.

McCrillis’ father, Phil also makes a couple of appearances in the film.

“It’s a great slice of Americana. It’s very unbiased,” he said. “(Having the cameras at home) was a pain in the rear end, but I think it was well worth it.”

Wolfinger, whose son plays for Cape Elizabeth, and co-producer Dan Sites shot over 300 hours of footage for the film. Much of what was left on the cutting room floor could have made a pretty interesting film on its own.

“We have hours of Jim Aylward material that we never got to use, and we tried to squeeze it in here and there,” Sites said.

Aylward’s mixture of passion and humor comes through in the film. Nobody drew more laughs from the local audience during the screening, but they also saw Aylward’s hard side, which was fine by him.

“I think anybody who’s watched me coach knows I wear my heart on my sleeve,” he said. “I’m passionate and you can see that in the film.”

“I think it’s a pretty fair representation of what you see if you follow us around for a year,” he added. “It reflects what we do.”

“The Rivals” will be shown at a few film festivals before it gets a bigger audience on The Smithsonian Channel in 2010. Aylward said he wants viewers who never heard of Mountain Valley and Cape Elizabeth to keep the film and the football in portrays in the proper perspective.

“I just hope people understand that the people who are coaches and the kids, we’re just playing a game,” he said. “We take it very seriously for a couple of hours a day and that’s it. And that’s the way it should be.”

All proceeds from the screening will be donated to the family of Danny Garneau, a Mountain Valley student and football player currently undergoing treatment for leukemia. Wolfinger will also be holding another screening to benefit the Garneaus in Cape Elizabeth on Aug. 27.