more “on it” frankly. So, FINALLY, here are the photos from the Austin-adjacent Lake Travis Film Festival’s 2021 Filmmaker Awards Red Carpet as well as some shots from the awards themselves and some Filmmaker Award winners happily posing with their Lake Travis Film Festival kaleidoscope awards.
“We are proud to offer audiences an inspirational line up celebrating diversity and inclusion on screen and behind the camera, to demonstrate the power of intersectional equity in entertainment media. Through our unique inclusion qualifiers, we are giving voice to directors who are 71% Female, 75% BIPOC or AAPI and 33% LGBTQIA+,” said Geena Davis, Bentonville Film Festival Chair. “We were excited last year to see our audience grow globally as a result of our virtual component. Come to our Festival this year, in person or virtually, and be transported into stories that can change the world,” said Davis.
Paul Metchik, president of the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival Board of Directors, credited Eidson with many individual achievements, such as holding the first Surf Nite at the Fremont Theater featuring Riding Giants, initiating the Filmmakers of Tomorrow youth competition, staging “Hollywood and Vine’’ events that paid homage to the Festival’s beginnings as a classic film festival, and screening Citizen Kane in 2015 at the Hearst Castle private screening room, garnering worldwide attention.
Co-Founders Gabriel Horn and Michael P Hanson, said, “As filmmakers AND film fans ourselves, it was a thrill to see this this weekend instantly become a joyous coming together of the people who make the films with the people who love the films. Big Bear once again lived up to its reputation as a place that embraces the moviemaking spirit, with a rustic setting that is beloved by the people that make those movies. Our award winners exemplified that spirit, both with their wonderful films and with how they immediately felt at home in this amazing locale. We absolutely expect to see several of them returning to make their next films here.”
Kat Albert’s Lake Travis Film Festival has A LOT of ambitions. And founded and directed by a woman who is a filmmaker herself, those ambitions have an eye toward what filmmakers want and hope for in a film festival. And one of those things is getting attention for themselves and their films. Therefore, in its second year, LTFF literally rolled out the red carpet. In fact, while Lake Travis is adjacent to Austin, this was the first red carpet that city has seen since the pandemic had shut things down as far as in-person tests were concerned last year. And Austin has got a couple other film festivals that people pay attention to from what we hear.
In the interview, we talk about making horror movies for people that don’t like horror. We also talk about “using the space” cinematically – in this case shooting a film on a stage (or making us think we are on a stage) and making it interesting, if not frightening, as well as utilizing the sound design to also enhance those efforts. We also discuss the work of Greer Phillips to pull off a performance that had so many challenges to make it all work on so many levels.
In the interview, we talked about trusting the audience and not spoon feeding them plot points and character beats and allowing them to “solve the puzzle”. We also talk about editors saving our lives. And there is the inevitable discussion about the blowback he got for shooting in black and white (Spoiler: One distributor told him to “Go to hell.” And hung up on him.)
Deep in the Heart FF co-founders and directors Samuel Thomas and Louis Hunter, said, “Last year was an important step in our film festival’s continued growth as this city and area’s primary presentation of new film discoveries, but it will be incredibly exciting and fulfilling to welcome film fans back into the theater and give our filmmakers that interaction with audiences that is so vital to their development as artists.
Lake Travis Film Festival Founder and Executive Director, Kat Albert, said, “We didn’t go into the second year with huge expectations, but we were blown away by the sheer numbers of the audiences and attending filmmakers. Obviously, people missed the connection of seeing films together and the magic of meeting the people behind the curtains.”
The 2021 EarthxFilm festival shook of the pandemic cobwebs in Dallas and brought filmmakers and subjects from its environmentally focused film festival to Dallas as people began to come back out to public events and in this case – attend a “Green” Carpet event before an outdoor screening and music event celebrating Earth Day.
