Location | San Diego and La Jolla |
---|---|
Established | 2001 |
Founded by | Karl Kozak, Robin Laatz |
Awards | Golden Eagle, Kumeyaay Eagle, Gregory Peck Award, Chris Brinker Award |
Artistic director | Tonya Mantooth |
Website | sdfilmfest |
The San Diego International Film Festival is an independent film festival in San Diego, California, produced by the non-profit San Diego Film Foundation. The main event has traditionally been held annually in the autumn at venues in the Gaslamp Quarter, La Jolla and Balboa Park.
The festival hosts celebrity awards banquets, panel discussions, retrospectives, parties, premieres and contemporary independent narrative, documentary and short film screenings. Competitive juried categories vary year to year and have included foreign language, animated, Native American, military, social justice, equestrian, thrillers and local films made in San Diego.
Special advanced screenings for VIP members [1] and educational programs [2] for San Diego area high schools are held year round in addition to an annual formal "Oscar watch party" in the winter. [3]
The San Diego International Film Festival (originally just "The San Diego Film Festival") and its non-profit foundation were founded in 2001 by event planner Robin Laatz and her filmmaker husband Karl Kozak. [4]
In its first decade, films premiering at the festival included Roger Dodger, The Blair Witch Project, Fahrenheit 9/11, An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting for Superman, Napoleon Dynamite, Primer, The Machinist and Born Into Brothels.[ citation needed ]
The festival has been designated "Best Party Fest" and "Best Beach Fest" by the "Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide". [5] It has also been criticized along the same lines for being "more intent on throwing parties than putting quality films on the screen." [6]
In 2012, leadership passed to husband and wife producers Dale Strack and Tonya Mantooth. [7] According to Strack, they were modeling it after Napa Valley Film Festival, with a "longer term goal" of rivaling Sundance or TriBeCa. [6]
The festival expanded to a second location in La Jolla the same year.
Another new change was the establishment of a "Native American Advisory Board", whose name was changed in 2017 to "American Indian Advisory Board". [8] Tribes represented on the AIA board include Sac and Fox, Luiseño, Kumeyaay, Seminole, Lipan/Mescalero Apache and the Barona Band of Mission Indians. Notable members of the board include character actor Saginaw Grant ( The Lone Ranger , Breaking Bad ), Randolph Mantooth ( Emergency! , Sons of Anarchy , brother of Tonya Mantooth) and Erica Pinto, the Chairwoman of Jamul Indian Village. [9]
Notable films premiering at the festival during this time include Silver Linings Playbook, 12 Years a Slave, He Named Me Malala, Goosebumps, The Imitation Game, Wild, Lion, Tiger, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Call Me By Your Name, Marshall, The Favourite, Widows, Boy Erased, Jojo Rabbit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Marriage Story, The Irishman, and Parasite.[ citation needed ]
In 2013, New York area film critic Jeffrey Lyons was added as festival host and made honorary jury chairman. He acted as host or as co-host along with his with son Ben Lyons or with Access Hollywood film critic Scott Mantz, up until 2018, when Mantz hosted solo.
The festival added "International" to its name in 2016, having previously been known only as the San Diego Film Festival. [10]
In 2016, the festival established a Film Insider Series for VIP members to watch featured official selections and festival winners, premieres and special advanced screenings throughout the year. [11]
In September 2019, the festival began hosting free screenings of popular movies on Mission Beach. [12]
In 2019, the festival expanded to six days and hosted a second opening night film ( The Irishman ) at the La Jolla Village. [13] [14]
Notable films premiering at the festival during this time include Nomadland, The French Dispatch, Spencer, The Power of the Dog, The Lost Daughter, The Banshees of Inisherin and The Inspection.
In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the festival was reduced to four days and presented 114 films both virtually and on drive-thru screens. [15] [16]
As of 2020, the San Diego International Film Festival is a qualifying festival for the Canadian Screen Awards. [17]
In 2021, limited in-person screenings resumed at new venues including the Museum of Photographic Arts and the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park, as well as the Catamaran Resort in Mission Bay. [18] A special screening was held on the deck on a historic aircraft carrier at the USS Midway Museum. [19]
In 2022, after organizers at the Women's Museum of California's had ended their Women's Film Festival due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they joined forces with the San Diego Festival to present a women's series of films. [20]
In 2023, the film festival's opening night is being held at Westfield UTC AMC on October 8. Where, for the festival's 22nd year, they will have a showing of the Oscar winning film, The Holdovers. [21] The Festival will be occurring October 18–22 at Balboa Park's Museum of Photographic Arts, during those 5 days there will be showing 91 films of the 3,200 films that were submitted. The theme of this years Festival is "Celebrating the power of film", meaning films will be outlining the importance of film and its impact on our society and community. [22] [23]
The Gregory Peck Award for Cinematic Excellence has been presented by the family of San Diego native Gregory Peck at the festival since 2014. Recipients at the San Diego festival include Andy Garcia, [24] Laurence Fishburne, [25] [26] Keith Carradine, Patrick Stewart, [27] Annette Bening [28] and Alan Arkin. [29] The family originally presented the award at the Dingle International Film Festival in Ireland. Previous recipients include Gabriel Byrne, Jim Sheridan, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Laura Dern. [30]
The Chris Brinker Award was created by the family of Chris Brinker, a San Diego area producer best known for The Boondock Saints movies, who died of a brain aneurysm at the age of 42. [31] The award is given every year to the best first time director in competition at the festival.
Since 2014, honored celebrities and winning filmmakers have been presented with a "Golden Eagle" themed statuette, sculpted by Apache artist Ruben Chato. [32]
An annual award presented to the best film competing in the American Indian track. [33]
The festival offers other awards - Auteur, Vanguard, Humanitarian, Rising Star, etc. - that vary year to year. Honorees include:
Films frrom San Diego that win or are nominated in the 48 Hour Film Project are screened during the festival every year.
The San Diego International Film Festival has partnered with the San Diego County Office of Education and the San Diego Unified School District to bring films about social issues like homelessness, water pollution and refugees to area high schools. [39]
The festival - along with the GI Film Festival, FilmOut San Diego, San Diego Asian Film Festival, San Diego Latino Film Festival, Horrible Imaginings Film Festival - submits films to San Diego Film Week, a city-wide spring showcase produced by Film Consortium San Diego. Submitted films are eligible to win San Diego Film Awards. [61]
A Film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and depending upon the festival's focus, can include International and Domestic releases. Some film festivals focus on a specific filmmaker, genre of film, or subject matter. Several film festivals focus solely on presenting short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events. Some film historians, including Jerry Beck, do not consider film festivals as official releases of the film.
The Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival is an annual independent film festival held each March in San Jose, California and Redwood City, California. The international festival combines the cinematic arts with Silicon Valley’s innovation. It is produced by Cinequest, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization that is also responsible for Picture The Possibilities and the distribution label Cinequest Mavericks Studio LLC. Cinequest awards the annual Maverick Spirit Awards. In addition to over 130 world or U.S. premieres from over 30 countries, the festival hosts writer's events including screenwriting competitions, a shorts program, technology and artistic forums and workshops, student programs, and a silent film accompanied on the theatre organ. Founded in 1990 as the Cinequest Film Festival, the festival was rebranded in 2017 as the Cinequest Film & VR Festival and expanded beyond downtown San Jose to Redwood City. It took its present name in 2019.
Fantasia International Film Festival is a genre film festival that has been based mainly in Montreal since its founding in 1996. It focuses on niche, B-rated and low budget movies in various genres, from horror to sci-fi. Regularly held in July/August, by 2016 its annual audience had already surpassed 100,000 viewers and outgrown even the Montreal World Film Festival.
The San Francisco International Film Festival, organized by the San Francisco Film Society, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in international film and video production with an emphasis on work that has not yet secured U.S. distribution. In 2009, it served around 82,000 patrons, with screenings held in San Francisco and Berkeley.
The Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) is an eleven-day film festival held in Santa Barbara, California in February annually, since 1986. The festival screens over 200 feature films and shorts from different countries and regions. SBIFF also includes celebrity tributes, industry panels and education programs.
The Midwest Film Festival is the USA's only film festival solely dedicated to Midwest films. Only films from the eight-state Midwest region of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio and Wisconsin are considered for screening.
Saginaw Morgan Grant was a Native American character actor. He appeared in The Lone Ranger, The World's Fastest Indian, Community, and Breaking Bad and was a musician, pow wow dancer, motivational speaker and the Hereditary Chief of the Sac and Fox Nation.
Jodi Cilley is an American college professor and film producer known for founding Film Consortium San Diego and San Diego Film Awards.
The Gregory Peck Award for Cinematic Excellence is an award given at the San Diego International Film Festival (SDIFF) to honor the career achievement of a film actor, producer or director. It is named in memory of iconic actor Gregory Peck with the support of his family.
Brian Patrick Butler is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, and film producer. He is known for writing and directing the film Friend of the World (2020), writing and performing in the film Hemet, or the Landlady Don't Drink Tea (2023), and appearing in the films South of 8 (2016), Thane of East County (2015) and We All Die Alone (2021).
The Oceanside International Film Festival (OIFF) is an annual film festival based in Oceanside, a town in North County of San Diego. It was founded in 2009 by the Oceanside Cultural Foundation.
The Horrible Imaginings Film Festival (HIFF) is an annual film festival originally based in San Diego until 2018, when it moved to Santa Ana. It was established in 2009 by Miguel Rodriguez.
Ray Gallardo is an American film director and cinematographer known for his direction of Cafe Con Leche (2018), Callejero (2015), Above the Tin (2018), Entrenched: Prologue (2019) and his cinematography in Friend of the World (2020),The Fifth of November (2018) and Touch (2022).
Jonathan Hammond is an American film director, film editor, screenwriter and film producer known for Expect A Miracle: Finding Light in the Darkness of a Pandemic (2020), Isabel (2018), Kathy (2018) and We All Die Alone (2021). Hammond won the Copper Wing Award for short film directing at the Phoenix Film Festival and received multiple nominations for a Pacific Southwest Emmy Award at National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Hush is a 2016 horror drama short film written and directed by Michael Lewis Foster. The film stars Rachel Barker, Luke Bedsole, Eric Casalini and Ghadir Mounib. It screened at San Diego International Film Festival and Catalina Film Festival and won awards at Oceanside International Film Festival and Horrible Imaginings Film Festival. The film was distributed by Seed&Spark and Bloody Disgusting.
Daisy Belle is a 2018 science fiction short film written and directed by William Wall. The film stars Lily Elsie, qualified for an Oscar at Bermuda International Film Festival, won five Pacific Southwest Emmy Awards at National Academy of Televisions Arts and Sciences, was distributed by Dust and shot in San Diego.
Michael Lewis Foster is an American filmmaker who directed the film To Fall in Love (2023) and wrote and directed the short film Hush (2016). He has won awards at Horrible Imaginings Film Festival and Oceanside International Film Festival.