Here at CraveOnline we like to be on the front lines of film festivals. Not just the big ones like Cannes and Sundance. I went to ActionFest while it was going on, and Screamfest here in Los Angeles. So when we heard there was a new film festival coming to Austin, the location of SXSW and Fantastic Fest, we wanted in.
The first annual Forever Fest has a connection to Fantastic Fest. Brandy Fons heads publicity for the Alamo Drafthouse chain of movie theaters (which are also venues for SXSW), and Sarah Pitre programs Girlie Night, a monthly series of slumber party movies, at Alamo Drafthouse. From November 1-3 at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz, Forever Fest has a weekend of films and events aimed at a female audience, though welcoming men too of course.
Screenings include Empire Records and Can’t Hardly Wait, and Sixteen Candles with special guests. In between films, Forever Fest has panels and dances and more. We spoke with Fons and Pitre about their new entry onto the festival circuit. Tickets are now on sale at www.foreverfest.com, and you can still contribute to their Kickstarter with premium rewards packages still available.
Forever Fest presents SIXTEEN CANDLES from Alamo Drafthouse on Vimeo.
CraveOnline: At what point working film festivals did you decide to embark on the dream of your own?
Brandy Fons: Forever Fest came from an idea not this last Fantastic Fest but the year before, in 2012. As you know, I’m involved with a bunch of Fests and at that time I was obsessed with the movie Pitch Perfect and was trying to put it out of my head because I was in genre world, Fantastic Fest time. I guess it got me to thinking that there really wasn’t a fest that celebrated these types of movies that I was obsessed about. What did exist was Girlie Night programming and this blog that Sarah also has called Forever Young Adult. That had a proven audience and I was a big fan of that and what Sarah does. So I asked her about this idea, about partnering together and doing a festival to celebrate what she was already doing, but over a weekend and create a festival for the fans, but the fangirls.
Sarah Pitre: I think that when we were putting this together, it basically became the weekend of me and Brandy’s dreams. If you look at the programming, it’s basically a list of our favorite things and I think that the more we talked about it and the more we shared the idea with other people, we really saw that there were a lot of other people like us that totally wanted to geek out over a weekend. It’s just been really exciting to help foster that community of people and provide a space for fans to come together and celebrate their obsessions without any sense of shame.
Has it been a little frustrating that Fantastic Fest is so male dominated?
Brandy Fons: I don’t think frustrating by any means. The nature of the festival is genre and naturally that brings an audience and it’s not as strong female as it is male, in that organic way of who attends the festival. At least when we’re just looking at badges and numbers, that’s what gives us a viewpoint of that. While we feel those films are universal, we’ve never talked about the frustration of it, but what we’re doing on this girlie side of pop culture celebration is just so vastly different from that genre audience of Fantastic Fest. But they still are a community that wants to celebrate, so we wanted to create an outlet for us to celebrate first and foremost, and then to celebrate with other likeminded people. Kind of like how Comic-Con started for the fans at the beginning and how Fantastic Fest operates like that as well.
Sarah Pitre: And I should say that a lot of Fantastic Fest regulars have also pledged to our Kickstarter so there’s definitely a very supportive vibe coming from Fantastic Fest which we really appreciate.
So far the agenda for the first Forever Fest is reparatory shows. Is the goal eventually to invite new films and new filmmakers once you have a name and have a competition film festival?
Sarah Pitre: We would love to be able to showcase new films and we reached out to several studios who have upcoming films that we’re really excited about to see if we could partner together. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen necessarily for our first year, but we really do hope that next year we can get even bigger and better and really expand our offerings. We definitely would love to showcase not only major studio films, but also burgeoning filmmakers. Anybody that really captures the spirit of Forever Fest, we would love to be able to include them in our programming.
Yeah, the studio films would be like a gala opening or closing, but thinking of a film festival there could be all sorts of unknown great girlie films out there.
Sarah Pitre: Definitely. Brandy and I heard about this great documentary that a person was doing via Kickstarter, a documentary on teen films of the ‘90s. Brandy’s team tracked him down to see if we could get his film but unfortunately it’s not going to be ready yet. That’s a great example of something that would’ve been really in line with our vision for the festival.
Brandy Fons: And even speaking about that film, something so cool about that was that came from a Fantastic Fest producer that backed our campaign on Kickstarter and then also was like, “By the way, I saw this other film, I think you guys would really be into it.” So the fact that filmmakers that we’ve worked with already are excited about what we’re doing and they’re even sending us films to check out that should be on our radar is just super cool because that support is definitely being shown by people from within that community.
Whose bedroom was in your Kickstarter video?
Brandy Fans: This bedroom is in all of our stuff. My little girl is five and a half and she plays with another little girl who’s five and a half who has a 12-year-old sister. I spend a lot of time at their home because they have a pool and we do playdates. This 12-year-old sister, that’s her room. I was over at their house and we were working on something for Sarah for Girlie Night where she was going to do her photo shoot that really depicted her and her programming. I was like, “I see my dream room. I’m going to take a picture of this.” And I sent it to her, and she loved it. So that’s also the same little girl, by the way, that drew our logo. That was all organic and coincidental that it ended up being our logo as well.
