Cleveland International Film Festival | |
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![]() Director Flavio Alves at the 2019 film festival | |
Status | active |
Genre | film festival |
Frequency | Annually |
Venue | Playhouse Square |
Location(s) | Cleveland |
Years active | 48 |
Inaugurated | April 13, 1977 |
Founder | Jonathan Forman |
Most recent | April 3–21, 2024 |
Leader | Marcie Goodman |
Website | www |
The Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) is an annual film festival based in Cleveland, Ohio. CIFF is the largest film festival in Ohio and among the longest-running in the United States. [1] It was first held in 1977, showcasing seven feature films from ten countries over ten weeks at the Cedar Lee Theatre. [2]
Throughout its history, CIFF has experienced tremendous growth. Its 48th festival in 2024 included an in-person and virtual component with 363 films from 60 countries. [3] CIFF is also an Academy Award qualifying festival. [4]
CIFF had its inaugural festival in 1977 with seven feature films over eight weeks at the Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights. [2] In 1991, the festival relocated to Tower City Cinemas in Downtown Cleveland. [2] [5] At points during its nearly five-decade run, the festival has also put on additional programming and events at other local venues, including the Akron Art Museum, the Akron-Summit County Public Library, the Apollo Theatre in Oberlin, the Capitol Theatre on Cleveland's west side, and Shaker Cinemas on Shaker Square. [2] [5]
After 30 years at Tower City Cinemas, CIFF announced that it would move to Playhouse Square ahead of the 2021 festival. [2] Due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, the 44th festival, its last at Tower City Cinemas, was canceled. The festival moved to a digital streaming platform for the first time in its history over two weeks at the end of April 2020. [6] For the 45th festival, with the pandemic continuing through 2020 into 2021, the festival opted to continue with a digital festival dubbed CIFF45 Streams. [7] 2022 was the festival's first time at Playhouse Square during CIFF46.
Recently, the festival has focused on films that dwell on social issues, including feminism, environmentalism, Jewish and Israeli issues, and LGBT issues. [8] The festival also has a focus on family-friendly films and films from Central and Eastern Europe. [8] [9]
The Cleveland International Film Festival is sometimes confused with an earlier film festival in Cleveland with a similar name - the 1948 to 1956 Cleveland Film Festival - the first film festival in the country to honor sponsored films in all categories. [10]
The festival offers multiple awards and honors to its films and filmmakers, including for Best Documentary and for Best Central and Eastern European film. [9] In 2006, the festival introduced The Greg Gund Memorial Standing Up Film Competition, which honors films focused on social justice and activism and is sponsored by The George Gund Foundation in honor of Greg Gund, who died in a plane crash in 2005. [11] Another major award is the Roxanne T. Mueller Audience Choice Award for Best Film, which has been awarded annually since 1988 and is named in honor of the late Roxanne Mueller, who was a film advocate and film critic for The Plain Dealer . [12]
Cleveland, officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in Northeast Ohio along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the U.S. maritime border with Canada and lies approximately 60 miles (97 km) west of Pennsylvania. Cleveland ranks as the most populous city on Lake Erie, the second-most populous city in Ohio, and the 54th-most populous city in the U.S. with a 2020 population of 372,624. The city anchors the Cleveland metropolitan area, the 33rd-largest in the U.S. at 2.18 million residents, as well as the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton combined statistical area, the most populous in Ohio and the 17th-largest in the country with a population of 3.63 million in 2020.
The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 census results, the six-county Cleveland, OH Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) consists of Cuyahoga County, Ashtabula County, Geauga County, Lake County, Lorain County, and Medina County, and has a population of 2,185,825, making it the 33rd-most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the third largest metropolitan area in Ohio. The metro area is also part of the larger Cleveland–Akron–Canton Combined Statistical Area with a population of over 3.7 million people, the most populous statistical area in Ohio and the 17th most populous in the United States.
The Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) is a film festival held annually in Calgary, Alberta, in late September and early October.
Great Lakes Theater, originally known as the Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival, is a professional classic theater company in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1962, Great Lakes is the second-largest regional theater in Northeast Ohio. It specializes in large-cast classic plays with a strong foundation in the works of Shakespeare and features an educational outreach program. The company performs its main stage productions in rotating repertory at the Hanna Theatre in Playhouse Square, which reopened on September 20, 2008. The organization shares a resident company of artists with the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. On its main stage and through its education programs, GLT connects approximately 85,000 adults and students to the classics each season.
Playhouse Square is a theater district in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States. It is the largest performing arts center in the US outside of New York City. Constructed in a span of 19 months in the early 1920s, the theaters became a major entertainment hub for the city for much of the 20th century. However, by the late 1960s, the district had fallen into decline and its theaters had closed down. In the 1970s, the district was revived through a grassroots effort that helped usher in a new era of downtown revitalization. For this reason, the revival of Playhouse Square is often locally referred to as being "one of the top ten successes in Cleveland history."
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Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England. It was first established as a repertory theatre in 1948 when it operated from a former cinema in Goldsmith Street. Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop. The current building opened in 1963.
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 Cairo International Film Festival is an annual internationally accredited film festival held in Cairo Opera House. It was established in 1976 and has taken place every year since its inception, except for 2011 and 2013, when it was cancelled due to budget limitations and political instability. It is the only international competitive feature film festival recognized by the FIAPF in the Arab world and Africa, as well as the oldest in this category.
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Shaker Heights High School is a public high school located in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The high school is the only public high school in the Shaker Heights City School District, which serves Shaker Heights and a small part of Cleveland. Shaker Heights High School is an International Baccalaureate World School, the only public high school in Cuyahoga County to hold this accreditation and offer rigorous IB classes. It is consistently ranked among the top districts in the state for National Merit semifinalists.
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The Camden International Film Festival, stylized as CIFF, is an annual documentary film festival based in Camden, Rockport, and Rockland, Maine, in the United States that takes place mid-September.
Catherine Gund is an American producer, director, and writer who founded Aubin Pictures in 1996.
The 11th Chennai International Film Festival took place in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India from 12 to 19 December 2013. The event was organised by the Indo Cine Appreciation Foundation (ICAF) with support from the Government of Tamil Nadu. The festival was curated by actress-director Suhasini Maniratnam and inaugurated by Kamal Haasan and Aamir Khan. The Japanese drama Like Father, Like Son marked the beginning of the fest.
Life Feels Good is a 2013 Polish drama film directed by Maciej Pieprzyca.
Bad Actress is a 2011 American independent feature film, directed by Robert Lee King, written by David Michael Barrett, produced by Lisa Schahet, and starring Beth Broderick as has-been TV star Alyssa Rampart-Pillage. The picture had its world premiere at the Miami International Film Festival in March, 2011.
RiverBlue is a 2017 documentary film that chronicles a three-year, around-the-world river journey by paddler and conservationist Mark Angelo during which he uncovered and documented the pollution impacts of the global fashion industry. The explores the fashion sector, from denim to leather to fast fashion, as one of the world's most polluting industries.
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