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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Now Showing: Film Festivals Spread in Valley

Starting this month and continuing into the fall, the San Fernando Valley plays host to several film festivals to showcase the work of up-and-coming filmmakers as well as established veterans. The added bonus to this “festival season” is the attention they bring and more importantly a flow of money to the area. But Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, shouldn’t shake in its ski boots about losing any of its glamour and cache in the entertainment world from the Valley events. At least not yet. “We have great media exposure, great celebrities and it’s a wonderful event,” said Don Franken, executive director of Method Fest, which kicks off later this month in Calabasas. Method Fest, now in its ninth year, follows by a week the San Fernando Valley International Film Festival, taking place in North Hollywood. In September there is the Valley Film Festival and in November the Student International Film Festival, also both in North Hollywood. The inaugural version of the Universal City International Film Festival takes place at Universal Studios in October. Recognition and exposure for filmmakers is the primary goal for these festivals. Economic benefits to hotels, restaurants and shops, and injecting some culture become the secondary reasons, organizers say. Franken hopes to have an attendance of 16,000 at this year’s Method Fest. Tracy Adlai said last year’s Valley Film Festival had packed screenings at the 400-seat El Portal Theatre. But even that exposure gets broken down into sub-categories of the films that get screened. Method Fest, for instance, screens films focusing on acting, while the Valley Film Festival highlights filmmakers from the Valley region as well as elsewhere. Robin Saban, the organizer of the Student International Film Festival started his event five years ago because he found that other festivals shucked student films off to the side. His event, on the other hand, takes entries from filmmakers who are still in their teens. “We’re providing to the industry new and upcoming filmmakers,” Saban said. Will these festivals break out and become the celebrity-heavy, media-generating events that occur in other cities in the U.S. and the world? Franken doesn’t see why not and refers to Method Fest as a “mini-Sundance.” Films screening this year will include such actors as Jared Leto, John Travolta, Laura Linney, and Selma Hayek. Adlai once envisioned her festival, now in its seventh year, as reaching the lofty influence of a Sundance or South By Southwest but now aims her goals in a different direction. “My personal goal is to be able to have fun with it and provide an opportunity for the local filmmaker and other filmmakers,” Adlai said. The Valley Film Festival uses the El Portal Theatre for its home base, the same location formerly used by the International Student Film Festival before it moved to Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn. That North Hollywood hotel also hosts the San Fernando Valley International Film Festival, which kicks off its week long run of screenings March 16. Student Film Festival organizer Saban said he would like to use the El Portal but finds it difficult to book time because of other shows taking place there. Drawing films from an international pool of filmmakers does mean out-of-town visitors staying at Beverly Garland’s or the Colony Inn, patronizing local restaurants and going to CityWalk at Universal City, Saban said. “There is definite a benefit,” Saban said. The International Student Film Festival is one of two festivals supported by the Valley of the Stars, an off-shoot of the Economic Alliance of the San Fernando Valley that helps with publicizing the event. The Alliance gets involved for two reasons, explained its President and CEO Bruce Ackerman to call attention to the importance of the entertainment industry on the Valley’s economy; and to attract visitors. “I don’t know how much it draws people coming from outside but it certainly gets a lot of attention and a great response from the film community, particularly the student film community,” Ackerman said of Saban’s festival. Missing in all this are exact numbers of the monetary benefits a festival brings to its host area, even Calabasas. (“I’d love to see them do that I think there is a strong impact locally,” Ackerman said.) Adlai doesn’t venture to guess what Valley Film Festival attendees might spend in North Hollywood before or after a screening. She does, however, make it a point of keeping expenses associated with the event local in that the company providing the awards is in North Hollywood and companies in Studio City and Burbank meet the festival’s printing needs. Patronizing Valley businesses is important to Adlai because she sees so many events branding themselves as local but all their money goes out of the area. “If I am presenting a festival that highlights local filmmakers I want to highlight other things that are local as well,” Adlai said. As dedicated as Saban and Adlai are to their creations, Franken and Method Fest exist on another level. Franken, whose background is in marketing, doesn’t like having the event lumped in with other Valley festivals. Method Fest has become a brand of its own, the venue for U.S. premieres of films from foreign festivals, and the celluloid bazaar from which 80 films have been picked up by distributors in its nine years. “Method Fest of all the festivals we’ve dealt with has the potential to be a superstar event,” Ackerman said. “Not that the other ones don’t but this one has a huge draw.” Despite a lack of exact figures, Calabasas comes out ahead by hosting the festival. Franken tells of festival attendees who purchased cars from dealerships, and filmmakers who have returned to shoot their work there. Restaurants and hotels tend to be heavily used anyway, said Chamber of Commerce Board Chairman Stephanie Warren, but festival attendees do give a boost to the economy. “It showed them a part of the city they didn’t know was there,” Warren said. As to whether the city will ever be the draw of Park City, Warren finds the comparison inaccurate in that Park City with its ski resorts was already a tourist destination unlike Calabasas. “We are not looking to bring in tourists but we like to have things that enrich the arts,” Warren said. Putting on the festival takes a budget of $250,000 and a full-time staff assisting Franken with choosing the films and organizing screenings and related events. Adlai is on her own to put on the Valley Film Festival save for the two assistants she takes on six months before the festival takes place. Franken lines up multiple corporate sponsors for Method Fest. Saban’s main backer is the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. He has tried to get corporate sponsors for the International Student Film Festival but without much luck, Saban said. “People who are running these other festivals they are well connected to the corporations,” Saban said. “There is politics involved.”

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