Film festival earns rave reviews

Planning underway for next year’s sequel in Bentonville

Janet Grillo (left), director of the movie Jack of the Red Hearts, and Jennifer Deaton, the film’s screenwriter, arrive at the Closing Ceremony Blue Carpet and Awards for the Bentonville Film Festival at Grace Point Church on Friday. The film won the Jury Award.
Janet Grillo (left), director of the movie Jack of the Red Hearts, and Jennifer Deaton, the film’s screenwriter, arrive at the Closing Ceremony Blue Carpet and Awards for the Bentonville Film Festival at Grace Point Church on Friday. The film won the Jury Award.

The award winners for the first edition of the Bentonville Film Festival were announced late Friday night. The host city fared well, too, said Trevor Drinkwater, co-founder of the festival.

"We're so encouraged. It's been a great week," Drinkwater said while walking the blue carpet entrance to Friday night's awards ceremony. "The town really embraced it, and I knew they would."

He also said every filmmaker and celebrity guest had a strong reaction, too.

"I don't think they ever thought it would be this big, or the town this beautiful," Drinkwater said by phone before the festival's last official event, a sold-out preview of Pitch Perfect 2 at AMC Fiesta Square 16 cinema in Fayetteville.

The five-day event closed Saturday with the preview screening and repeat showings of the seven films recognized Friday during the awards ceremony at Grace Point Church in Bentonville. Attendance at the festival was strong, Drinkwater said, although not as strong as it could have been. The film festival, a joint partnership between Drinkwater's Los Angeles-based media company ARC Entertainment and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, created a ticketing algorithm that factored in pass-holders, sponsors and walk-up sales. Organizers were too conservative in selling tickets, he said.

But with 70 sponsors on board for the first year, and with many individual films attracting large audiences, the festival made progress toward its goals, and toward a second year and beyond.

"This is a financial success. It wasn't a wildly financial success in year one, but it was successful enough," Drinkwater said.

Already, plans are being made for 2016, which will expand the concept of studying and advancing gender roles in the entertainment industry to advertising, social media and television. Drinkwater said he and his crew have a 20-page list of things to improve upon before the second installment. But he classified most of those tasks as minor. His biggest logistical concern of the week was having to move an event away from its scheduled location to a new venue to accommodate more patrons.

A central command post staffed by Fire Department personnel, emergency medical crews, police officers and festival security forces operated daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Larry Horton, deputy fire chief for the Bentonville Fire Department and one of those at the command post, said they contacted colleagues from the Park City, Utah, Fire Department to see how they handled the Sundance Film Festival in that town.

"They said their first year was a nightmare, but ours went well," Horton said. Horton said that to his knowledge, a few bandages and an ice pack were all the medical supplies handed out during the five-day event.

Residents and visitors alike got to focus on the festival events and see the town, a result of nice weather and safety policies, he said.

"It could not have been better for Bentonville," he said.

Cynthia Cooper, a Wal-Mart employee and Bentonville resident, was among the many who came out for the festival. She volunteered for several days, but took one day to catch a few films. She watched the Academy Award-nominated civil-rights drama Selma and the youthful hero movie The Incredible Adventure of Jojo (and His Annoying Sister Avila).

She worried initially a film festival inside hotel ballrooms and other nontraditional venues wouldn't be up to par.

"Even when I heard we were having a movie festival, I wondered if it would feel credible," she said. "But they did a good job of creating an atmosphere." She did wish popcorn was available at the venues, however.

Luke Wetzel, owner and chef at the brand-new Oven and Tap on Main Street in Bentonville, also welcomed the foot traffic. Wetzel and his partners started work on the new restaurant in January, right about the same time as the initial announcement for the film festival. Coincidentally, both debuted Tuesday. Although it is hard to say how much traffic was courtesy of being brand new and how much was film festival traffic, Wetzel said he drew large crowds each night. Festival pass-holders and sponsors, identifiable because of their bulky passes on black lanyards, were definitely present at the restaurant. Among the guests were festival co-founder Geena Davis, who dined there Wednesday. Her initial reservation called for 10-30 guests. Closer to 40 showed up, including actresses Jenna Elfman and Joey Lauren Adams.

"We did family-style meals. Menus weren't passed out. We just started cooking for them," Wetzel said.

As much as he welcomed the stream of guests, he also welcomed the concept behind the festival.

"Most importantly, I feel like the activities and the events contribute to the community. The film festival is here to work on equal rights," he said.

Davis, while on the podium during the awards ceremony, shared media facts ascertained by her institute. The number of young girls featured in children's programming is less than the number of boys, she said. And behind-the-scenes representation is similarly low. The festival only accepted films with female or minority filmmakers, writers or cast members. Films were selected based on their adherence to those guidelines, and a further scoring during the run of the festival awarded points based on meeting gender and diversity guidelines. The highest scoring film of the more than 50 in the festival was Meet the Patels, a tale of the interaction between a nearly 30-year-old, his new girlfriend and his parents.

Celebrities such as Courteney Cox, Bruce Dern and Melissa Joan Hart handed out awards during the ceremony, which was hosted by journalist Soledad O'Brien and rapper and television host Nick Cannon. The big awards for the evening went to Jack of the Red Hearts by Janet Grillo as winner of the jury award for best film and to Thao's Library for audience award for best film. Jack of the Red Hearts focuses on a con artist teen who lies her way into a caretaker's role for an autistic child as a way to make money. The two find they have a powerful connection. Thao's Library, a documentary by Elizabeth Van Meter, tells the true-to-life story of Thao, a legless woman who finds enough books to start a library for the children of a small Vietnamese village.

Other winners included Big Stone Gap for Best Ensemble; In My Father's House for Best Documentary; A Brilliant Young Mind for Best Family Feature; actress Stephanie Linus in the film Dry as Best Protagonist; Lizzie Velasquez, star of A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story as the BFF Spirit Award; and Ani Simon-Kelly, writer of The Short History of the Long Road as the "Dernsie" recipient for best screenplay. By virtue of winning their respective categories, In My Father's House, Jack of the Red Hearts and A Brilliant Young Mind will receive a distribution deal through AMC Theaters and Wal-Mart.

Drinkwater said he will return to Bentonville in the next few weeks for a series of public forums to accept feedback on the festival as a way to improve next year's event.

Metro on 05/11/2015

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