SF360 Revealed! Part Five: Festfest
As we find ourselves gearing up for this year's SF Indie Fest (of which we're a sponsor! whoo yay us!) we find ourselves wondering ... is it enough? All these festivals that SF has -- the Indie Fest, Frameline, the Int'l Fest, Hole in the Head, the recently-concluded Noir Fest -- sure, they're all swell, but is that all there is?
No, apparantly, according to the SF Film Society. As a part of their recently-launched SF360 campaign, they're pleased as punch to announce three new fests, and boy they're really cool. One of them is going to be a collection of youth media from around the world, the first of its kind. They'll be treating the young auteurs just like grown-up filmmakers, with screenings and audience Q&A and valorization and those little "official selection" bages with the ivy leaves curling up around the sides. "The only difference," SF Exec Direc Graham Leggat tells us, "is that they'll have their parents with them."
The second new fest is even more ambitious: it's animated. But it's not just a collection of screenings, oh no. It's a conference, with workshops and speakers and discussions and probably some high-falutin' or-durves. And it's also a market, where industry-types and schmooze and network and examine each others' business cards before proceeding to eat a small fortune's-worth of shrimp. We've covered animation collections at fests in the past, but the prospect of having a single huge cartoony blowout has lifted our hats right off our heads. Or maybe that's just the very strong air conditioning.
"Now," you're probably muttering to yourself like a crazed streetperson, "how am I supposed to keep track of all this festivity? There's simply so much to see; how can I ensure that I'm catching the best of the best?" Aha, those wily devils at the SFFS are way ahead of you, Hobo Joe. They're creating a San Francisco Festival of Festivals, a three-ring collaboration with almost every film fest in the city which will allow you to catch the cream of the crop. We shiver with antici ... pation.
This is part the-last of a five-part series examining the anticipated impact of the new SF360 program. Monday featured a local film-news website; Tuesday featured a suite of free tools for filmmakers and audiences; Wednesday covered a one-city/one-film initiative; Thursday focussed on a network of projectors to be installed in local high schools; and today covered a slew of new local fests.