Location | Bentonville, Arkansas, US |
---|---|
Founded | 2015 |
Website | bentonvillefilmfestival |
The Bentonville Film Festival (BFF) is an American film festival held annually in Bentonville, Arkansas that focuses on diversity. [1]
Bentonville Film Festival was founded by actress Geena Davis and ARC Entertainment executive Trevor Drinkwater. [2] Bentonville was chosen as the location after Walmart, the founding sponsor, suggested it. [1] After Drinkwater learned Walmart was interested in supporting diversity initiatives, he brought in Davis, who he knew would be interested because of her work with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. [2]
The BFF is the only film festival in the world to offer guaranteed multi-platform distribution to its winners. [3] Films that win the Audience, Jury, and Best Family Film awards receive theatrical distribution from AMC Theatres, [4] are shown on Lifetime television, and get a DVD or video-on-demand release from Walmart and Vudu. [5] In 2015, 87% of the films shown were distributed in some way. [6]
The festival is notable is that until 2018, there was no functioning movie theater in Bentonville. This has led to the practice of turning any gathering area in the city into a potential screening location, included the use of "Cinetransformer" mobile theaters throughout the city. [7]
The festival has experienced attendance growth each year, welcoming 85,000 attendees and showing over 90 feature films, 33 short films and 13 episodes in 2018. [8] [9]
Walmart Inc. is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets, discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company was founded by Sam Walton in nearby Rogers, Arkansas in 1962 and incorporated under Delaware General Corporation Law on October 31, 1969. It also owns and operates Sam's Club retail warehouses. As of October 31, 2021, Walmart has 10,566 stores and clubs in 24 countries, operating under 48 different names. The company operates under the name Walmart in the United States and Canada, as Walmart de México y Centroamérica in Mexico and Central America, and as Flipkart Wholesale in India. It has wholly owned operations in Chile, Canada, and South Africa. Since August 2018, Walmart holds only a minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was renamed Grupo Big in August 2019, with 20 percent of the company's shares, and private equity firm Advent International holding 80 percent ownership of the company.
Bentonville is the tenth-largest city in Arkansas, United States and the county seat of Benton County. The city is centrally located in the county with Rogers adjacent to the east. The city is the birthplace of and world headquarters location of Walmart, the world's largest retailer. It is one of the four main cities in the three-county Northwest Arkansas Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is ranked 105th in terms of population in the United States with 546,725 residents in 2020, according to the United States Census Bureau. The city itself had a population of 54,164 at the 2020 Census, an increase of 53% from the 2010 Census.
Centerton is a city in Benton County, Arkansas, United States. Located west of Bentonville on Highway 102, Centerton has grown from a railroad stop and fruit orchard community in the early 20th century into a suburban bedroom community within the rapidly growing Northwest Arkansas (NWA) region. The city's population has grown from 491 in 1990 to 16,244 in 2019.
Samuel Moore Walton was an American businessman and entrepreneur best known for founding the retailers Walmart and Sam's Club. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. grew to be the world's largest corporation by revenue as well as the biggest private employer in the world. For a period of time, Walton was the richest man in America.
Virginia Elizabeth Davis is an American actress, activist, producer, and former model. She is the recipient of an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to nominations for a British Academy Film Award and a Primetime Emmy Award. In 2019, she was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for the work she has done over the decades to fight gender bias on and off screen in Hollywood.
James Carr Walton is an American businessman, currently the heir to the fortune of Walmart, the world's largest retailer. As of January 2022, Walton was the seventeenth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of US$64.6 billion according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is the youngest son of Sam Walton.
James Cotten is an American actor, film director, film producer, and writer.
Matt Riddlehoover is an American filmmaker. He is best known for the 2020 documentary My Darling Vivian.
Old High Middle School is in the building which was once Bentonville High School, and is located at 406 NW 2nd Street, Bentonville, Arkansas. Construction costs when it was built in 1928 were $25,000. It was designed by John Parks Almand, in a combination of Spanish Colonial, Mission and Mediterranean styles.
Scott Haze is an American actor and filmmaker.
Northwest Arkansas (NWA) is a metropolitan area and region in Arkansas within the Ozark Mountains. It includes four of the ten largest cities in the state: Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers, and Bentonville, the surrounding towns of Benton and Washington counties, and adjacent rural Madison County, Arkansas. The United States Census Bureau-defined Fayetteville–Springdale–Rogers Metropolitan Statistical Area includes 3,213.01 square miles (8,321.7 km2) and 546,725 residents, ranking NWA as the 105th most-populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. and the 13th fastest growing in the United States.
Carl Douglas McMillon is an American businessman, and the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Walmart Inc. He sits on the retailer's board of directors. Having first joined the company as a summer associate in high school, he became the company's fifth CEO in 2014. He previously led the company's Sam's Club division, from 2005 to 2009, and Walmart International, from 2009 to 2013.
Janet Grillo is an Emmy Award-winning producer, award-winning, critically acclaimed filmmaker, former Senior VP of Production/East Coast at New Line Cinema, and a professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts “Kanbar Institute of Film and Television".
The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media is a US non-profit research organization that researches gender representation in media and advocates for equal representation of women. The institute is currently headquartered at Mount St. Mary's University, in Los Angeles, California.
Steuart Walton is an American attorney and businessman. Born into the billionaire Walton family, he is a director of Walmart, the world's largest company by revenue, co-founder of private equity firm RZC Investments, which bought British cycling brand Rapha in 2017, and founder of Game Composites, a composite aircraft manufacturer.
Jack of the Red Hearts is an American film directed by Janet Grillo and centered on the issues of orphanage, family, autism, exclusion and inclusion. The film premiered on May 6, 2015 at the Bentonville Film Festival and released theatrically on February 26, 2016.
The Scott Family Amazeum is a non-profit, interactive children's museum located in Bentonville, Arkansas, USA. The museum opened in 2015 following over 10 years of community support and fundraising for the project.
Sean Olson is an American film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. He began as an editor for KPHO-TV, KMGH-TV, Extra-TV and Crime Watch Daily and the feature films How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer (2005) which was in dramatic competition at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and Wyatt Earp's Revenge (2012) starring Val Kilmer. He edited the Hallmark original movie Christmas Under Wraps. Christmas Under Wraps was the highest rated telecast in Hallmark Channel history and the second highest rated cable movie in 2014. Olson has directed The Contractor (2013), The Dog Who Saved Easter (2014), The Dog Who Saved Summer (2015), A Christmas Reunion (2015), The Other Mother (2017), F.R.E.D.I. (2018), Mommy Be Mine (2018) and Christmas Wonderland (2018) for Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. Olson's feature film F.R.E.D.I. won Best of Fest at the 2018 Bentonville Film Festival founded by Geena Davis and Best Family Film at the Burbank International Film Festival.
Gossamer Folds is a 2020 American drama film directed by Lisa Donato and starring Alexandra Grey and Jackson Robert Scott. Yeardley Smith serves as one of the producers of the film. It is Donato's directorial feature debut.
Deborah LaVine is an American theater and independent film director. She is also the dean of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts School of Filmmaking.