Gatlinburg’s 1st film festival debuts in Spring
Filmmakers have til Dec. 1 to submit their films
By Tesa Nauman, SevierCountyNews.com
 

Left to Right: Amy Garland, Jessee Black, Jennifer Thompson, of the Gatlinburg ScreenFest. Photo by Tesa Nauman.

Gatlinburg may not have a movie theater, but come this spring it will have its own film festival.

Gatlinburg ScreenFest, a film festival featuring the work of area filmmakers, will be held March 13-15, 2008 at the River Terrace Resort and Convention Center.

Festival Director Jessee Black came up with the idea of having a film festival in the resort town while working at the River Terrace last spring.

“I was watching conventions come in and out and I thought, ‘What’s something that Gatlinburg doesn’t have?’” Black said. “What I saw was a prime opportunity to do a film festival. “It’s something I’ve always been interested in, and it’s something I think Gatlinburg can benefit from. It’s something different, new and fresh.”

Black thinks Gatlinburg is a perfect location for a film festival and pointed out that Gatlinburg, a resort town in the mountains of Tennessee, has a few things in common with Park City, Utah, another mountain resort town. Park City has catapulted to fame not only because it’s a tourist destination but also because it’s the home of the premier independent film festival in the nation, the Sundance Film Festival.

After deciding Gatlinburg needed a film festival, Black, who was a member of an acting troupe, approached fellow actor and friend Amy Garland and asked if she’d like to be involved with the festival. Garland, who owned a video store in Blount County at the time and had always loved film and acting, agreed and asked her friend and co-worker Jennifer Thompson to come aboard the project as VIP co-coordinator.

In addition to the trio, the festival has a five-person board of directors, event coordinator, marketing coordinator, and the evaluating will be performed by a panel of judges whose identities will be kept confidential until after all the films have been evaluated, Garland said.

“We want people to know that their films will be evaluated by fair people who have an interest in the film industry and have behind-the-scenes knowledge of things such as the writing and editing” she said.

Black hopes the festival will benefit not only Gatlinburg but also filmmakers who may have the talent but not the know-how on how to get their films made and seen.

“We’re hoping to open the door to people who were like us, and open networking between filmmaker and studios, producers and actors and bring it all together in our little, gracious town of Gatlinburg,” he said. “Also, I think it’ll be great for people just visiting Gatlinburg to be able to see films made locally and regionally because a lot of those filmmakers don’t have an outlet to display their work. I think a lot of the people just passing by in Gatlinburg could enjoy the festival just as much as the family and friends of the filmmakers,” Garland added.

Anyone from the East Tennessee area interested in making a film and entering it in the festival can do so. Adult (age 18 and over) and Youth (age 17 and under) categories are the only two categories of films the festival will have. Any type of film will be accepted within those categories, including documentaries, digitally made films, films made on video, animated or computer-generated, short films or full-length feature films no longer than two hours. No matter the format, the films must be submitted on a DVD disc or VHS tape, according to festival co-founder Garland.

“A lot of other film festivals have a lot of categories. But we wanted to keep it simple for our first year,” she said, adding that the group plans to make the festival a yearly event and hope to move it to the summertime with a couple of years.

To enter the festival, filmmakers can download an application from its website http://www.gatlinburgscreenfest.com. The deadline to submit an application is Dec. 1, 2008. The entry fee for adults is $35 and for youths is $15. Fees are payable by check, money order, PayPal, credit card and are non-refundable.

“After we receive all the submissions, they all will be judged and evaluated, and we will pick the top 10 adult filmmakers and the top 10 youth filmmakers that we feel have the most potential and screen them at the festival,” Garland explained.

Garland advised anyone who wants to try his or her hand at filmmaking but doesn’t have a huge budget not to be afraid to try.

“Don’t be afraid if you don’t have a budget of $100,000. That’s OK. We’re not looking for huge productions with outstanding special effects. We want people who have vision and who have stories that they want to tell who can put it together in a way where other people want to watch it,” she said.

“That’s really all it boils down to. We don’t need somebody to go out with his or her brand new digital camera and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars making a movie. It’s really the heart of the movie that’s going to come through in the end, anyway.”