The inaugural Long Beach Film Festival (LBFF) will be hosted at the Art Theatre of Long Beach the weekend of Aug. 29 & 30. Within the two days, there will be eight time slots featuring four feature films and four short-film vlogs.
Sonja Schenk, director of the film festival and owner of the ARTSPACE3232 art studio in Signal Hill, says their goal is to make the event bigger than what commonly takes place at the Art Theatre.
“A lot of the film festivals here are just film screenings, but we’re trying to make it a larger, regional festival. Our goal is to be in line with other festivals like Dances with Films, Newport Beach Film Festival, Palm Springs or Santa Barbara,” Schenk said.
Schenk said the process of choosing which feature films was exciting but also a challenge, as several were submitted. To select each film without bias, two key criteria were made to ease the selection process.
The first criteria was uniqueness. Each film has to be intriguing or something unexpected happens. The second criterion was films with meaning. Films that send a message.
“As a filmmaker, it made me happy to see the range and quality of the submissions,” Schenk said.
All directors from each film will be in attendance and every ticket holder will get a meet-and-greet Q&A session with the directors and, in some cases, with the cast as well. If a VIP ticket is bought, it will grant entrance to the film lounge, an exclusive hub for filmmakers and the press.
Concessions will be available at all screenings, as well as a wine bar. Food and drinks will be allowed inside the theater.
As for the film lounge, the VIP passes will have multiple activations so people can get food and drinks throughout the day, including free popcorn. “Cafablanca” is a barista cart that will provide pastries and coffee. Restaurants from across the theater will be open for guests to order from.
Hunter Stiebel, Director of Programming, says a workshop on the Sunday morning of the festival will be hosted for students and kids ages 8-12.
“Two of our board members have been teaching filmmaking to students on the regular and created a workshop that will be featured,” Stiebel said.
Andi Orendain, Director of Advancement and Community Partnerships, says the VIP passes also give priority entrance and seating to the screenings.
Orendain has a background in non-profits and was at the forefront of wanting to educate the next generation of filmmakers in the city of Long Beach. Every dollar raised from the event will support the LBFF Storylab, a program that empowers youth to be filmmakers in the future.
Long Beach filmmaker DJ Hale, writer-director of “Rescued,” will be featured to talk about his film and will be screened.
His film is about a homeless man whose life changes for the better after adopting a dog.
Attendees will also hear from filmmaker Mia Moore, whose sci-fi romance “Again Again” is one of the selected movies being screened. Another featured film is the psychological horror “Ugly Cry,” about the image crisis with criticism on social media, that Emily Robinson wrote, directed and starred in..
Several local companies supported the event with sponsorships such as the Queen Mary, “Visit Long Beach,” Arts Council for Long Beach, Wine on 2nd and the Art Theatre itself.
“We want to highlight the history. Long Beach was the original Hollywood and we want to bring that back to the city as well as bringing international filmmakers to Long Beach,” Orendian said. “We want to give Long Beach artists a place where they can highlight themselves, bring Long Beach to the global stage of filmmaking and create a cultural anchor for Long Beach.”
