With 50 films in competition, festival director, Nino Simone, truly makes The Beverly Hills Film Festival, a festival for the filmmakers. What does it take to produce this endeavor in a city familiar with such ostentatious festivals, as Hollywood’s AFI Film Festival? With a laugh, Nino emphasizes, “[It takes] a lot of money and a lot of manpower!” He illuminates the numerous phases to produce a successful film festival, from putting a notice out for open submissions to the rigorous selection process. With a staff of three full time employees year around, that number surfaces to 20 times as much with about 60 workers at festival time.

After viewing 1800 short films, Nino remembers them all. While not every film can be showcased, filmmakers love to know that Nino built this festival, in a city built around Rodeo Drive, movie stars, and palm trees, to understand the true vision, triumph, and passion each one of the filmmakers endures. The festival showcases such films as Hector Cruz Sandoval’s, “KordaVision,” a documentary on the Cuban photographer, Alberto Diaz “Korda” well-known for his Che Guevara image.

To start a festival, Nino emphasizes you have to know why you are doing it. Through a relationship with a New York City festival director, where Nino had won some awards for his film “348,” the idea to hold one in Beverly Hills, blossomed. His goal is to keep the festival traditional. He says, “It’s important for festivals to help their filmmakers.” Whereas Cannes may accept over 900 films, they only have about 30 in competition and according to Nino, “everything else there is either for filler or business transactions.”

Convenience plays a factor when screening the 30 films in competition. Nino considers location as key. He says, “What I didn’t want to do was have filmmakers come from across the world and have their films screened 3 miles away from the main venue. Amongst scheduled screenings as Alvaro Ron’s “Behind the Curtain” about a podiatrist’s out of the office experience and “Waking Up Dead,” Fabio Jafet’s documentary on Phil Varone’s experience as a “Skid Row” drummer, Nino and the festival producers organize intimate industry panels in an outdoor courtyard.

The panels throughout the 5 day film festival included independent film financing and distribution, a WGAw Independent Film Program chat, ASC’s Art of Cinematography panel, SAG indie’s Actors Studio, and the ASC’s Rise of Hybrid Cinematography. The Beverly Hills Film Festival closes with an awards ceremony dinner on Sunday, April 17.

www.beverlyhillsfilmfestival.com

- Michelle Paster
mpaster@partialreality.com
Michelle is a Los Angeles based correspondent for FilmFestivals.com and a writer for Film & Video Magazine