Need Advice: How To Start A Film Festival

I've identified several local business leaders & citizens who are interested in establishing a film festival in my town, about an hour north of downtown Atlanta, Georgia. Since none of us have any exerience in festivals (my car once broke down on the way Idaho, does that count?) I'm writing in hope that someone can put me in touch with someone who can offer good advice. Please reply to this post or contact me directly (t_j_bowers@hotmail.com) as you prefer.

I'm also interested in any and all input from festival goers. What feature/offering did you really like at a past festival, what really turns off attendees? I don't know but I do want to hear from you!

Everything is still tentative but we plan on holding the first festival in January or February of 2005. While that may sound like a long time off, we hope it will provide us with sufficient of time to prepare and do it right.

Thank you for time!

Jess Bowers
t_j_bowers@hotmail.com

P.S. This is my first post to these forum and I looked to see if this has already been covered but wasn't able to find anything. I apologize if I'm rehashing a discussed topic. If so, would someone please point me to the correct thread. Thanks!

I can't really help you from the organizational side, but I do have some suggestions from the programming side...

Being from Atlanta, I can tell you the one thing that irks me about the other local festivals here, and that is the lack of local films. It's almost as if it's harder to get into a festival in Atlanta if you are from Atlanta. Which I absolutely don't get, because your bigger audiences will be for your homegrown stuff. So, my suggestion is to cater to the local filmmaker. I'm not saying to accept anything that's made by locals, but there should be a nice mix of local films, especially if you want to have some built-in audiences.

- Mike.

Very hard to start up a respected successful festival. What is your motivation? To make a profit? To expose a certain audience to international or independent films?

The first 5 years will be tough. As a festival you have to earn a reputation.

re: Feedback

Thanks to both Mike and Guerilla for their replies. Let me address each of your questions here.

In an odd way I'm glad to hear that there's an abundance of local (Atlanta) filmmakers and lack of outlets for their work. Hopefully we can help fill that void. Indeed, I would like to have one screen, or at least one evening, dedicated to "homegrown" films, as Mike characterized them.

The purpose of this festival will be to add to the cultural awareness and education of local residents. Both the county and city arts councils will co-sponsor the festival and any proceeds will benefit a local charity. My gut reaction is that we need to focus the festival on one aspect of filmmaking, maybe local/regional films. Does anyone agree/disagree? Is that important?

Note: After some preliminary research of film festivials it appears that over half focus on a type of filmmaking (animation, international, family, comedy, etc...). I'm just not sure if that is what filmmakers and festival attendees are looking for.

Thanks again for the input!

Jess Bowers