Guide Home • A History of Film in East Tennessee • A Love Letter to the UT Film Committee • A Deep Dive into Movies made in East Tennessee
Knoxville has long had a relationship with the presentation of motion pictures.
As you may have read previously in this issue, theaters of various sizes and demographic pools have been a constant in Knoxville since the medium first came to the region.
Through the help of local powerhouse Regal and independent jewel Central Cinema, the form is alive and well in an era where the business has had to make some adjustments.
Knoxville has also had a steep history of film festivals. Since the beginning of this publication, we have covered Keith McDaniel’s Knoxville Film Festival, which was held most notably at the treasure that is Regal Downtown West and Michael Samstag’s Scruffy City Film Festival, which was held at Scruffy City Hall, Regal Downtown West and other downtown venues.
While the Scruffy City Film Festival last took place in 2018, the Knoxville Film Festival had its swan song just last year.
With no film festival on the horizon for the first time in two decades, Kurt Willis and the Visit Knoxville film office decided to fill the void.
“Keith McDaniel had the Knoxville Film Festival for about 19 years and then he decided to call quits last year,” Willis explains. “We have such a great film community and great filmmakers here, and not having a film festival was going to be a real shame.”
When the opportunity presented itself, Willis and company were ready to hit the gas.
“It was a natural fit for the film office to do it. We had talked about doing one before but since there was already one in town, it wasn’t the right timing. So Paul Harrill and Darren Hughes over at the Public Cinema and I got together and decided to make it happen. We’d already had conversations about it and we knew we wanted to move it downtown because downtown is built for a festival because it’s so walkable.”
Now that the location was in the can, the creative vision of the festival was on deck. That came from a collaboration between the Visit Knoxville film office, including Kim Bumpas and Willis, and Harrill and Hughes, Willis says.
“We talked about the concepts and competitions that we wanted to go after and we wanted to have the type of producers who made films that can be shot here. So Darren came up with the American Regional Film Competition. These are films that can be shot outside of the main film hubs like LA or New York. We have films from Kansas City, we have films from Iowa…I wanted these producers to see what we have here. So Darren went out and curated most of this festival and he found some amazing films.”
Competitions
There are three separate competitions at the festival, made possible with help from Regal and Visit Knoxville.
Atop the bill is the American Regional competition. There are six feature films in this race, which will all be shown at Regal Riviera throughout the weekend.
These films are full-length, feature films or documentary features that will be competing for the top prize of the weekend – an award qualifying theatrical distribution run through Regal Cinemas.
The second piece of the triad is the “Made in Tennessee” competition. These films can be shorts or feature length and were, you guessed it, made in Tennessee.
Harrill not only helped arrange many angles of the festival’s back end, he’s also a jury member of the Live Elev8or Pitch competition, the third part of the race. For this battle, 19 teams submitted an eight minute proof-of-concept short for a feature film. The top eight of those shorts will get to pitch their ideas live in front of a jury on Thursday and the top three will be part of a mentoring team that Harrill is leading. All the films will be screened in two blocks at the festival on Saturday.
Fin
There are films that will be featured outside of the competition, too, according to Willis. “We have international currents and revivals on the bill as well. There’s a great James Baldwin film on the schedule, for example. This is probably the only time you’ll get to see these films on the big screen in this market,” he explains.
For more information about the individual films and tickets to the festival, hit www.visitknoxville.com/film-fest-knox
Guide Home • A History of Film in East Tennessee • A Love Letter to the UT Film Committee • A Deep Dive into Movies made in East Tennessee
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