Film Festival Start Ups :: Movies Films Film Festivals Essays

Film Festival Start ups Silicon Valley fairly bursts with life and energy. Everywhere you look new companies, ideas and innovations are on the move and on the rise. Welcome to the land of start ups; small companies with a dream who survive and thrive by skill, luck and sheer tenacity. While the term usually describes high tech concepts, start-ups abound in the Valley - from the small catering company on the comer to the neighborhood printing shop down the street to the local film festival. Yes, that's right - film festival. The Local Scene "Film festival" usually conjures images of stretch limos, glittering starts and rabid paparazzi. Think Cannes or Sundance and you think big budgets, big egos and big-time Hollywood take over. Even smaller, more local festivals have the same overtones. Take the San Francisco International Film Festival. Champion of such "outsider" interests as gay rights, and American Indians long before those concepts became acceptable, SFIFF has mellowed with maturity. Called the "gray lady of local fests" by Dennis Harvey in Variety (June 30, 1997), the SFIFF continues to support international diversity, but with more of a prestigious, elitist atmosphere. The air, apparently, has become more rarified in San Francisco. The second largest film festival in the Bay Area, the Mill Valley Festival has a much more relaxed atmosphere. But, even within this atmosphere, some of the need for mainstream acceptance and money tends to bleed through. Start-ups seem to have two destinies - wonderful success or complete failure, with little middle ground. Other film festivals have ventured into the Silicon Valley before. Most of them had wonderful prospects - at the beginning. The Santa Cruz Festival, the San Jose Film Festival and the Monterey Film Festival, all showed great promise, and none made it to a third year. The Santa Cruz Festival ran from 1982 to 1985, and died of erratic handling. Part of the Santa Cruz charm is its dedication causes, its fierce independence and the feel that comes together with one word - Burkenstocks. Unfortunately, the wild, eccentric and fairly unorganized tendency that adds charm to the city killed the film festival. With wildly erratic programming that could confuse even dedicated fans and the death of festival found Les Goldman in 1986, the Santa Cruz Festival passed into the night. In 1984 San Jose made its stab at a festival. The Cinema of the Fantastic focused on science-fiction and fantasy in the beginning.