Love this post! (And I LOVE regional festivals!!!)
BTW, I’ll be at Nashville Film Festival with my new documentary “Pencils Vs Pixels” - if any of y’all will also be there please give me a shout so I can check out your films and we can meet up!
OMG, I forgot one of my favorite festival experiences ever! IndieMephis (Oct24-29) is an awesome festival with a great vibe and always great programing. Thanks Randy for reminding me!
The US regional mid summer through fall regional festival circuit is THE festival for US independent films and filmmakers. At Slamdance w recognized this long ago and is what made us become Premiere agnostic almost 20 years ago. Besides many including films that might have show at Sundance, SXSW, Slamdance and others, so many films we see as submissions we could not program (we only show 24 features total at Slamdance, the Park City real Estate is just not affordable for us to expand to more screens), we see many of them show up this incredibly vital regional festival circuit. It is comparable to many festivals in Europe that happen sequentially, what is unfortunate is that Americans at large do not fully appreciate their own independent film scene enough beyond the films that might get picked up at Sundance, SXSW or Toronto etc... We need to care more.
How gratifyingly terrific the range of your subjects are. Sharing. Thank you for doing this.
Well.... a range within a single one perhaps. Thanks!
You’re right. How’s this for lofty: art is art.
Love this post! (And I LOVE regional festivals!!!)
BTW, I’ll be at Nashville Film Festival with my new documentary “Pencils Vs Pixels” - if any of y’all will also be there please give me a shout so I can check out your films and we can meet up!
Well that was a fun ride/read.
OMG, I forgot one of my favorite festival experiences ever! IndieMephis (Oct24-29) is an awesome festival with a great vibe and always great programing. Thanks Randy for reminding me!
Fixed now. whew.
Thanks for the mention, Ted! Love your newsletter, always something to read and ponder.
The US regional mid summer through fall regional festival circuit is THE festival for US independent films and filmmakers. At Slamdance w recognized this long ago and is what made us become Premiere agnostic almost 20 years ago. Besides many including films that might have show at Sundance, SXSW, Slamdance and others, so many films we see as submissions we could not program (we only show 24 features total at Slamdance, the Park City real Estate is just not affordable for us to expand to more screens), we see many of them show up this incredibly vital regional festival circuit. It is comparable to many festivals in Europe that happen sequentially, what is unfortunate is that Americans at large do not fully appreciate their own independent film scene enough beyond the films that might get picked up at Sundance, SXSW or Toronto etc... We need to care more.