Group plans film festival's '18 Little Rock return

Year-round events include filmmaker forum in August

A group working to return an annual film festival to Little Rock announced Wednesday the formation of a new group that will set up a film festival in 2018.

The August 2018 festival would be Little Rock's first in more than three years, filling a void left by the abrupt cancellation of the Little Rock Film Festival.

When that festival announced its end in 2015, filmmakers in Arkansas expressed surprise and sadness.

Little Rock Film Society director and co-founder Tony Taylor declined to comment Wednesday on the new organization and festival.

Little Rock has several smaller film festivals focused on horror and on gay, bisexual and transgender issues. But the Little Rock Film Festival, which ran nine years, was a broader, weeklong event.

Kathryn Tucker, an Arkansas filmmaker, will be executive director of the Arkansas Cinema Society. The group will host more events than an annual film festival, Tucker said, including panel discussions, seminars and screenings.

The group's first event is Aug. 24-26, hosted by Jeff Nichols, an Arkansas native and director of the films Loving and Mud. Nichols told IndieWire in an interview published Wednesday that the event would host a filmmaker who would discuss his filmmaking process and inspiration.

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Nichols is chairman of the board of the Arkansas Cinema Society, which also includes actress Mary Steenburgen; writer and producer Graham Gordy; former Gov. Mike Beebe; Kathy Webb, a city director and Little Rock vice mayor; Clinton School of Public Service Dean Skip Rutherford; developer Rett Tucker, Oxford American Editor Eliza Borne; Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau President and Chief Executive Officer Gretchen Hall; Central Arkansas Library System Executive Director Nate Coulter; and Gov. Asa Hutchinson's chief of staff, Alison Williams, among others.

After more than a year of trying to find a way to offer a film festival, "the city leaders" -- as Tucker and others called themselves -- met with Nichols on March 14 and felt satisfied about the idea of collaborating with him on both a film society and a festival, Tucker said.

"We finally got everybody in a room together and sort of hashed out what everyone's goals were," Tucker said. "Jeff is extremely thoughtful and progressive, and everybody just got on board immediately with what he wanted to do."

Tucker said she wanted a festival and year-round opportunities to reach out to Arkansans interested in filmmaking but who may not know how to pursue it.

"Jeff and I both are adamant about this being something that's year-round," Tucker said.

"I've always loved cinema, and I was a fan of the Little Rock Film Festival when it was here before," Webb said.

The new festival is "very good for the city," she said. "It will attract people to come to the city."

The new festival won't have the name of the Little Rock Film Festival, Tucker said. The founders of that festival did not agree to let Tucker's group use it, she said. But Tucker said a new name would be better because the festivals will be different.

Little Rock Film Festival founders Craig Renaud and Brent Renaud shut down the festival in 2015, announcing that their filmmaking schedules kept them too busy to continue organizing the event, which was growing every year.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the festival had lost its nonprofit status with the IRS after failing to turn in Form 990 three years in a row. It also reported that the Central Arkansas Library System had canceled the festival's rent-free contract with the library the day before the Renauds announced the end of the festival after months of disputes with festival officials and volunteers.

Metro on 03/23/2017

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